Hands...

Hi. It's been a year. A year. I only knit one thing.The Hybrid/Shirt Yoke seamless sweater from E. Zimmermann's Knitter's Workshop. It was a distracted and fraught with mistakes, but in the end, good, experience. Distracted, because, out of an entire year, I didn't make proper time for it; I worked on it when I was tired, or rushed, or both. By Spring, I had managed to make one sleeve slightly wider than the other, both a bit too long, and screw up the decreases after joining the body and sleeves, then set it aside, and got on with my Summer.

This past weekend, I woke up Saturday morning, sat up in bed, pulled the book and sweater into my lap, figured out where I left off and what needed to be fixed, and knit for two days (sitting in bed watching subtitled Naruto Shippuden and eating frozen pizzas). I knit it by the book, but did add some increases along the body at the point the back begins to broaden, and made the saddles even (with the woven seam directly in the middle).

There it is. A year. You're looking at it.

The Guilty One

I declare myself guilty of never having
fashioned, with these hands I was given,
a broom.

Why did I not make a broom?

Why was I given hands at all?

What purpose did they serve
if I saw only the rumor of the grain,
if I had ears only for the wind
and did not gather the thread
of the broom,
still green on the earth,
and did not lay the tender stalks out to dry
and was not able to unite them
in a golden bundle
or attach a wooden cane
to the yellow skirt
so I had a broom to sweep the paths.

So it was:
I do not know how
I lived my life
without learning, without seeing,
without gathering and uniting
those elements.

At this hour I cannot deny
I had the time,
time,
but not the hands,
and so, how could I aspire
with my mind to greatness
and not be capable
of making
a broom,
not one,
one?"

- by Pablo Neruda, from The Hands of Day