Seven Cast Ons

I cast on seven times. Seven effing times.

A while back, I wrote about how I was rage knitting again. I didn’t think I’d start raging at the whole idea of knitting, but there I was.

Knitting rage probably started around cast-on number three… but who’s counting? Each time I’d end up with too many stitches or too many holes, I’d pull everything apart and mutter, f*ck knitting. And then my Taurean stubbornness would kick in, and I’d pick it all up again.

There’s a story here about my decision to keep trying, one I hope will have a happy ending if I can get past whatever this means: K2tog, K2, sm, K2, SSK. (Yeah, what the hell, knitters?)

Part of the struggle was that I was sick. Covid brain is not ideal for counting stitches. And part of it was the yarn. The first yarn I chose was completely unforgiving. Every uneven tension, every tiny mistake, every gap became a glaring flaw.

After cast on #5 (again, who’s counting?!), I switched yarn, something softer, more forgiving. Around the same time, my brain cleared a bit. And somehow, on try number seven, something had shifted. It wasn’t perfect, but it was easier.

Lo and behold, I had learned something without realizing it.

Now the ribbing is done, and I’m about to move into something I’ve never done before, armed with a language ChatGPT had to translate for me.

This knitting thing. It’s a whole new creative world, and there’s a little thrill in that.

Here’s what’s interesting. I am not, by nature, someone who likes to be told what to do. Give me structure, and I want to break it. This is why I dropped out of Corporate America and basically worked for myself for the past thirty years.

I follow spark. I follow the deep yes. I love intuitive making. I like picking up wool and seeing what wants to happen.

If I’ve mastered any technique through my art, it’s needle felting. Yes, there’s skill involved. But once I learned the basics, I could run with it. Trial and error. Intuition. A conversation between me and the material.

Knitting is different. It requires a pattern. There are a whole lot of fancy stitches. I can’t just wing it. Not yet. Probably not without a great deal of practice.

I have to count. I have to pay attention. I have to watch someone demonstrate slip slip knit about twenty-seven times before I understand what my hands are supposed to do.

There’s structure. There’s order. There is a plan.

And strangely, that feels soothing right now. The repetition. The rhythm. The clear beginning, middle, and end. The small dopamine hit at the end of a row. The quiet satisfaction of seeing the stitches stack in neat columns.

In a world that feels chaotic, there is something deeply grounding about choosing to submit to structure.

That’s the part that surprises me.

My astrology and Human Design help me make sense of myself. I’m a Manifesting Generator, someone who loves variety and following energy. I’ve always trusted my instinct to move toward what lights me up. But I’ve rarely been drawn to disciplined learning for its own sake. If something felt too rigid, I’d lose interest.

This feels different. It feels like choosing to be a beginner. Not just that—it’s choosing to learn a skill that requires humility and repetition and a willingness to not be good at it for perhaps a good while.

Something in me wants the structure. The order.

I can’t fully explain why that feels exhilarating right now. Because it’s hard and frustrating to learn something by doing it again and again, trusting that if I cast on seven times, I might actually become someone who can knit.

At a certain point in life, we circle back to making not because we want to impress anyone, but because we want to say, I made this.

I see it at the end of my workshops when women hold up their dolls—stick dolls, spirit dolls, worry dolls—and there’s that unmistakable energy of pride. Not perfection. Not comparison. Just the quiet recognition that something has come through their own hands.

That matters.

And you know what? This damn hat matters.

Not because it will change the world. Not because it’s revolutionary. But because it’s mine. Because I stayed with it. Because I learned something new at this stage of my life, when I could have easily said knitting’s not my thing.

Creativity is always teaching us. Maybe making this hat (again and again) is helping me find the balance between spark and structure. There’s the deep yes I’m so accustomed to, but I’m also willing to sit still long enough to learn the stitches.

Casting on until my hands know what to do.

PS. Wish me luck… 21 rounds of my little red hat to go.

---

Everything I write here is free to read. If this post touched something in you and you’d like to support my work, you can treat me to a coffee (or a chai) right here. Your support means so much. 🫶🏼