Knitting Through Paris

Lately, I have been thinking quite a bit about my knitting and the times I choose to knit. I think of it as my stress reducer, my calming activity, the motions that carry me through an event or times when I need comfort.

Recently, I was on vacation in Paris where I had taken three knitting projects with me. I figured I would knit on the plane coming and going and perhaps a bit in a quiet moment or two. Instead, I knitted every where. I stood in line at the catacombs for almost an hour and knit in line. I returned to the apartment in Montemarte in the late afternoons and knit until dinner, then knit again until bedtime. Waiting for my traveling companions to get ready for the day, I knit in the comfy chair in the living room. The knitting soothed me, focused me, gave me patience as I waited for plans to come together. I carried it to every tourist sight as if it were a talisman.

During this trip, I realized just how much I needed the very act of knitting. I taught a friend on the trip to knit and she created a long and winding scarf, a real beauty and then as she craved to knit more; we searched out and found a yarn shop in Paris. I didn't need something specific to make, I just wanted to knit. I could answer the question, " what are you making? " because I did have patterns for the projects with me but it was difficult to explain to the non-knitter, just what it was that I WAS doing.

Without the thousand things I have to do at home for my family, the businesses and the many, many things to distract me ( television anyone? ), I just reveled in the act of knitting. Yes, I finished two projects, goals were attained but I knitted for sheer joy and comfort, so far from home.

So, the trip to Paris became an actual time of vacation, the first in decades, as I worked on knitting for the shop without distraction in the company of friends and conversation. I knitted in the company of strangers where I could still be aware and a part of what was going on around me. I knitted for me. I knitted for comfort. I knitted for the love of knitting.