Before I moved to Warsaw I predicted I’d be knitting quite a bit, and at first I did. I knit on the long train rides between Gdansk and Warsaw and Wroclaw. I knit at night when the sun began to set by mid-afternoon. I knit all through January, when the temperature dropped twenty-two degrees below zero.
And then the weather changed, and without realizing it, I stopped. I started knitting a hat for a little while, but I lost interest in the cables and felt unmotivated to finish something I wouldn’t be able to wear for months. The weather was too nice, and suddenly there was too much to do. I had a long list of things to see and places to explore, and as it became spring, my time in Warsaw began to feel like it dwindled faster and faster.
After I came back to Warsaw from several weeks home in the States, the weather turned quickly. Overnight, it began to feel like fall. So I cast on a sock.
In doing so, it felt like something came full circle. The weather has returned to the way it was when I first arrived. I can imagine an alternate life in which I stay here forever, falling in sync with the Polish seasons. I’m both unready to leave and waiting impatiently for time to rush towards the next move I have planned: London, where the winter coat I bought for Warsaw will be far too warm, but where rainy days will mean plenty of occasions for handknit socks.
(Project: Retro Rib Socks from Interweave Knits Winter 2004.)
Chera August 19, 2012 at 9:56 am
I haven’t touched my knitting at all since spring, either. Instead, I find myself spending as much time out in the sunshine that I can. I think it’s because when one lives so far north (or so very far south, for that matter), one feels one must take advantage of the sunlight while it lasts!