Four years

On the way home from knit night I realized that today is the fourth anniversary of when I received my first knitting lesson. Four years?!

I don't know if I'd say I've come a long way since then. I've gone through knitting slumps and not stretched myself very much. Regardless, I'm certainly a lot better now than the guy whose early efforts were not so great, even though I didn't realize it at the time. I have done things I doubted I could do--knit socks, for example--so maybe I'm being too self-critical.

I started knitting at a time when I was stressed out about work tensions and living conditions. Here I am four years later and both those stressors are doing a number on me. (Granted, the work situation is a lot more immediate and serious now than in 2006, and the noisy neighbors are a secondary worry rather than a primary problem.) I haven't been knitting a lot lately, mainly because I've been busy and worn out, but with knit night giving me an excuse to work on something, I was reminded of the important role knitting has played in my life during this time.

The self-consciousness of being a male knitter is essentially gone. OK, it's still something that I keep compartmentalized from work, but that's due more to my desire to have a separation than any concern about what people, students in particular, might think. Maybe it's maturity, maybe it's confidence, maybe it's apathy that I don't care what the reactions there might be to news of that I knit.

I'm grateful for those who have helped me learn and improve over the years. I'm also thankful for the community of people I've met online, offline, or both as I've been on this journey. I never could have expected how a seemingly small decision to learn to knit would have a large impact on me. It has changed me in some ways, hopefully for the better. I've received all of this from just knowing how to manipulate two needles and a piece of fiber. How wild is that.