This past weekend I attended the NH Sheep & Wool festival. It was a lot of fun seeing so much yarn and fiber in one place. I bought myself a hand spindle, or drop spindle, so that I could make my own yarn. And I love it.

Before getting the spindle, I hadn’t really given much thought to spinning my own yarn. I bought yarn at the store, but didn’t really consider that I could make it myself at home. A couple of friends have spindles and kept telling me how fun it was to spin. Now that I own one, I understand their enthusiasm.

As I was sitting and spinning, I kept thinking about writing. I started off wanting to be a writer, and I somehow ended up knitting. Some people might not see the connection right away, but I believe there is one. Writing is a lot like knitting. You string together sentences (threads) to make a story, and at the end of it, you have created something that is bigger than the parts. Knitting is like this, because in theory it’s just one strand of yarn, knit into itself, to create something more. There are patterns in knitting and writing that make what you are creating different, and unique. Knitting terminology can also be applied to writing. You can spin a yarn in writing (tell a story). Or weave stories together, as if you were weaving yarn and fiber. A stitch in a story could be the details, the fine points that you sew together to create a plot.

When you need to edit a story, you rip it apart, much like ripping the stitches of a scarf you are unraveling. And a story can unravel too. There are so many connections to be made between writing and knitting, I don’t have time to go into all of them. Just be aware of them and you can start looking at things in a new light. Maybe other parts of your life somehow correlate to one another as well. Maybe I’m not just drawn to being a writer or a knitter because it’s fun, but more for the desire of creating things. I’ve always been a creator, an artist, someone who makes stuff. When I cook, I cook from scratch, because I love making things from almost nothing. Combining ingredients to create something new. With writing, you combine words. With knitting, you combine fiber, and then yarn. With photography, you combine light, color, an artistic eye, and a moment. With all these things, it’s the little things that make something new and exciting. It’s the creating that really gets me going.

This explains why I have so many hobbies. There are too many things out there that I haven’t created yet.