I don’t know whether this happens to you, but I find that when I knit while reading or listening to the news, bits of those stories are knitted into my sweater. I am not saying that my cooking will make you fall in love with me or alternatively eternally suffer from flatulence, as in Like Water for Chocolate, not at all. It’s more personal and less externalized. I’ve just realized that I associate the stories with the knitting.
Not too long ago, I was working on the Josephine Top and reading The Road From Coorain, and I realized that when I picked it up the next day, I was back on that long, dusty road with an occasional glimpse of the river, on my way to herd 700 or more sheep. And it was very vivid.
As I was working on some knitting last night, I was listening to news about Iran and Cuba, and tonight as I knitted a row, those news bits replayed in my head. I don’t think that the stories would be relevant to anyone else, and I wonder whether they will stick, but I find the notion at least intriguing, that these associations are formed while I am not paying attention - or maybe the knitting helps me focus the way that doodling supposedly helps people on the phone or kids in class. (I was a big doodler, but I never knew whether it helped me focus or retain information.)
Right now I am knitting this into this:
