Knitting Through Motherhood

There was a time in my life when you would rarely see me without yarn and needles in hand. If you met me today, the fact that I knit would be this little known tidbit likely never mentioned. Something that was once a defining part of who I was, has suddenly become a piece of me only rarely shared. I used to knit purely for the finished product; a new hat or pair of fingerless gloves, a gift for a new baby, a washcloth to say thank you, or yet another coffee sleeve for a friend. But now the urge to pick up a skein and pair of needles is driven by the need for the therapeutic rhythm of knits and purls.

Like most hobbies, when I picked up knitting somewhere in the midst of graduate school several years ago, I became immediately obsessed. I tore through pattern books and watched every tutorial available on YouTube until I had it down. I would spend weekends on the couch binge watching The Wire and drinking cheap chardonnay while tackling project after project. It was my escape from hours of dynamics homework and battles with Fortran code.

Now, years later, in the thrones of motherhood it’s still my escape, but in a different way. It’s a way for me to reconnect to a tiny part of who I used to be before life and kids and marriage came along. A way to shut out everything else that is going on and get lost in the intricate cable patterns of Brooklyn Tweed, or the mindless knits and purls of a basic rib pattern.  

When I became pregnant with my first, I carefully picked out the perfect blanket pattern and spent way too much money on fancy cotton yarn to complete it. I would spend weekend afternoons just knitting away, dreaming of when I would finally get to wrap my sweet baby in the squishy goodness. The blanket turned out perfectly; but the anxiety and anguish of early motherhood prevented me from ever letting my son use it for anything but a photo prop.  

It took almost four months after he was born before I got the courage to start another project. Everything felt overwhelming and the idea of starting something big, that I may never finish, was daunting. I finally forced myself to just do it one night in that rare moment of silence between putting the baby to bed and going to bed myself. It took an hour to cast on some 200 stitches for a cowl, and in that moment I felt defeated and frustrated that I had only gotten that far. 

But in the weeks, months, and years to follow I would find snippets of time where I could sneak in a round or two, and the comforting familiar pattern of knits and purls made the stresses of sleep training and tantrums and discipline and potty training fade to grey. It was reassurance that even if I felt I had failed at life that day, I could still do this, this one thing that I had complete control over. It took almost four years to finish that cowl, and to be honest I was a bit sad when it was done. It had been there with me through so many firsts and lessons learned as a new Mom. It was the constant familiar piece in the craziness of that time. The funny thing is, I never actually wear the cowl now. It ended up being about so much more than the finished product.

There’s a quote I came across early in my knitting days, “Knit on, with confidence and hope through all crises” by Elizabeth Zimmerman, and I find myself coming back to it often. It’s fitting now more than ever, that no matter what motherhood throws at me I need to continue on. The every day ups and downs we encounter as moms are like the simple knit and purl stitches of an intricate knitting pattern.

In the end it’s not the individual stitches that matter, but the the rows upon rows, twists and turns of cables, that come together to create this beautiful pattern of life with our children. And that’s what really matters.

Stephanie
Stephanie lives in Shawnee with her husband and two crazy redheaded children, Jack (7) and Allison (4). When she’s not working full time as an aviation meteorologist, or trying to stop her kids from fighting, she enjoys running, knitting, attempting to bake, cheering on the Huskers (#GBR!), and catching up on her DVR. You'll often find her dragging her kids and husband to breweries around KC in search of the best IPAs the city has to offer. You can follow her day-to-day snippets on Instagram (@stephavey).