Lack of Woolly Love ...

 It's been over a whole year since I have posted anything woolly here - and I'm honestly not sure why.  I take that back - I am sure why - my heart has not been into the knitting this past year, not a single bit.  I used to LOVE it.  I would live and sleep and breath wool and knitting and then one day, it stopped.  Something changed in me, my love for it had gone away.  At first I couldn't really see where I had lost it, but as time went on, and the want to knit wasn't coming back, I realized I knew where it began - it started with social media.  In fact, it started with Instagram.  

People had begun attacking each other and this new cancel culture appeared, and it was overwhelming, disheartening, upsetting and exhausting.  Have you ever heard the term "damned if you do, damned if you don't"?  That was how I felt.  Speak up about something and you were wrong and should be listening.  Stay silent and listen and you were wrong and should be speaking up.  Support all makers and you were shamed for not only supporting certain ones.  Leave a platform because you were feeling depressed or threatened and how dare you do that because it was your privilege that let you leave - not you taking your own mental health into consideration.  People were attempting suicide because of other people ganging up on them.  Some people even went out of their way to FIND something wrong with ANYTHING that people said, and turned it on them and then asked, no demanded, that others turn on that person too and destroy their lives.  

Oh my goodness I can't tell you how much stress and worry and emptiness this all made me feel.  I began to not look on social media anymore because all I saw everywhere was hate.  Then I slowly stopped picking up my knitting because when I did it just reminded me of what was going on in the knitting community so I would put it down after 3 or 4 stitches.  

I used to want to surround myself with everything that was knitting and wool related - but now I started slowly moving my things downstairs, tucking them out of sight.  In the process I lost all of my knitting needles - not sure where they went - and I still don't really care. 

How sad is that.  How terribly sad that one minute the one thing that makes you feel alive can now bring so much empty depression and sadness by simply looking at it.  

I have more yarn then I could ever knit in my lifetime and at one point I honestly thought about just giving it all away.  Bagging it up and dropping it off at some woman's shelter or something.  But then I realized that sure, if I still felt that same way after a year then that would be the best time to do that, but making rash decisions in the midst of a hobby depression was not the best of plans.  

I still haven't knit much, I did pick up my Guthrie sweater by Caitlin Hunter and finished the body and one sleeve 3 months ago - and that was nice, but I haven't picked it up again since to finish the last one.  I will at some point though.  I did however pick up my crochet blanket and start working it in the round (square?) and that is feeling good every now and again.  

So I guess, in the longest round about way, that is why I haven't talked much knitting, because there hasn't been any.  Because I don't love it anymore, no matter how much I want to.  And I want to.  I miss it.  I miss wanting to watch other knitters and their podcasts.  I miss wanting to dye yarn.  I miss wanting to do KAL's - I even tried to do one through the summer but just got burnt out again with all the drama.  

I'm ready - SO ready - to just love it all again.  

Today a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to knit a sweater along with her - and I do, and I will.  I am hoping that it will be one of those projects that help me fall back in love with knitting.  I will look at yarn this weekend and see if I have anything that will work.  I might not, and that's OK.  Maybe I should just not care and knit it to knit.  I don't know.  

 Maybe you want to knit along with us - if you do, that would be so much fun.  

    

Its the Nurtured pattern by Andrea Mowry. 

If anything, it will be fun to even just look through all the yarn I have since it's literally been months. 

...

Please, I ask that if you do just read this whole post, and you think that I am completely wrong in my own perception of some of the things that have been going on, then that's OK. All I ask is that you please remember that these are my feelings, and I am not discounting anyone else's, I can only speak to what I know or feel myself - just as you can only speak to what you know or feel yourself.  I do not begin to assume that I know how any one person feels about anything - I also will never cancel out your voice and tell you that you are wrong for thinking or believing something else other then my opinion. 

With that said, please do not make ugly comments.  Please do not go out of your way to spew hate.  Please respect one another and if you choose to make a comment by yourself on on someone else's comment, please please please do so with love and respect.  

Love breeds love.  

Maybe you can see where I'm coming from and maybe you don't.  

Please just choose kindness. 

Ill leave you with this.....

"In a world where you can be anything, be kind" - Caroline Flack

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom." - Aesop Fables 

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” - Henry James  

- S