Purls of wisdom
With 2020 being her toughest year yet, Phil Saul explains why knitting is her constant companion…
A particularly di!cult 2020 leads Phil Saul to find ultimate solace in knitting
Doubtless I’m preaching to the converted here, because if you don’t like knitting then it’s fairly surprising that you’re even reading this magazine. But even though you know it already, please just let me say this aloud in my shoutiest voice – knitting is the best hobby/post-apocalyptic-life-skill known to humankind! And right now, I’m more grateful for it than ever.
IT’S BEEN THAT KIND OF YEAR
You see, it’s been a particularly 2020-ish few weeks around here, culminating in a cancer diagnosis. (No, don’t look at me like that: everything will be completely fine in the long term.) The point is that along the bumpy route towards everything becoming fine, I’m going to be spending lots of time sitting around on hospital wards, sprawling on the sofa at home recovering, loitering in waiting rooms waiting for treatments, and needing distractions whilst I’m o sick from work. Enter stage left, a whole yarny heap of luscious knitting to be done. In the tougher moments, I’ll need some easy mindless comfort-knitting: hello, ultra-simple socks in pretty colours – frankly, I could knit you in my sleep, so you’ll be just perfect to help get me through the worst days. Right now, as I wait for treatment to begin, I’m appreciating the distraction of some fiendishly complicated lacework: when lace goes wrong, it goes very wrong very quickly, so there’s not much brain capacity left over for worrying. I think I might be more scared of lacework than I am of cancer!
ULTIMATE GUILT-FREE KNITTING
There can’t be many upsides to this illness, but there’s definitely this stonkingly enormous one: the prospect of several months of guilt-free knitting time. This is not an opportunity that I plan to squander. Of course I don’t want to have this diagnosis, but given that I’ve got it, I plan to exploit the situation mercilessly for its yarny opportunities. Plenty of things will need to pause over the coming weeks, but not the knitting. And at the end of it all, I’ll have… who knows? New socks? Jumpers for my children? Or maybe a reproduction of the Mona Lisa in lace weight yarn?
WITH NEEDLES IN HAND…
I’m guessing that quite a few of you have travelled this road before me, or have walked beside a loved one doing the same. And I’d bet my very last skein of cashmere-merino DK-weight blend that knitting helped you in some way at the time. Life may have been upside-down, but hopefully you could still appreciate the comfort of a ball of your very favourite yarn in your hand. Hopefully you could still pick up your needles and make loop after comforting loop, enjoying watching the pattern that emerged before your eyes. And if you too are dealing with anything like this right now, then I hope you’re going through it with needles in your hands (as well as this magazine – you’re going to need a lot of hands!) And I hope that you’re finding comfort and distraction in every stitch. Because whatever troubles you’re experiencing, at least as a knitter you need never have to say, “I’m bored”.
Dr Phil Saul (aka The Twisted Yarn) is an NHS clinical psychologist and a knitting writer. If you are dealing with a cancer diagnosis or know someone who is there’s much help and support here: www.macmillan.org.uk or by calling 0808 808 0000.