During my recent re-entry into full-time schooling after eight years as a professional ballet dancer, I’ve been greeted by many small culture shocks: new slang I missed while spending my days in the studio, the looming presence of AI, the casual nihilism that comes with classmates who can’t remember the world without extreme political tumult. What shouldn’t have surprised me is how occupied every student seems to be. 

Sure enough, the pressure to multitask is alive and well at Brown. I’m trying my best not to let that pressure take over, but it’s hard to do with the steady inundation of academic work and extracurricular business. Where’s the time for introspection? Absorbed in my studies, I sometimes lose sight of the breadth of life. But through my piling papers and filling inbox, I’ve seen the specter of a solution.

Enter: knitting. Knitting has been my on-again, off-again hobby for the past seven years. It’s a good way to keep the hands busy—it’s almost meditative, better than scrolling the phone or biting the nails or scratching the scalp. It quiets my mind; it gives me something to solve.

For me, knitting is a seasonal pursuit. When the air chills, I know I’ll want to sink my hands into soft wool and wind it around unyielding needles. I first started knitting during a slick-sidewalked Seattle winter while performing in a production of The Sleeping Beauty. Save for a couple of walk-on acting moments, my fellow trainees and I were sequestered to our dim dressing room and the theater’s cramped wings. One of my roommates brought in a ball of yarn and a pair of circular needles to pass the time between acts. Soon enough, we were all clacking our needles to the pulse of the orchestra and taking the 32 bus to Michael’s for yarn on our rare days off. We could have started a niche Etsy shop; I’m sure there’s a market for dancer-knit winterwear in today’s post-balletcore landscape.

Beauty closed, but there were new shows to understudy, new patterns to try. Then the summer rolled around, and I found myself not in the wings but out onstage. I let my yarn get dusty. Even now that my summer dancing days have waned, I try to avoid knitting when it’s muggy out—my sweat seeps into the yarn, and the filaments stick to my fingers. It’s getting cool again, and I’m back to being a tepid knitter, wishing I could generate some heat.

But on those rare weeks when my needles and I start to build up momentum, I face my fear of imperfection, of creating funky stitches or too-long rows or ending up with work that’s just plain ugly. Much of my homemade knitwear has turned out this way: uneven, lumpy, or, perhaps worst of all, unfinished. 

My body of knitwork includes: 

• a long, thin grey scarf (given to my dad), 
• a longer, thicker red scarf (given to my mom), 
• an intentionally holey, multicolored scarf (given to my childhood best friend), 
• a short, maroon anklewarmer (worn obsessively when I broke my foot several years ago), 
• several pairs of armwarmers (rudimentary fingerless gloves, chunky tubes with a small hole on the side meant for a thumb), 
• a couple of green-grey hats that I gathered at the top in a little puckered smooch-shape (who knows where these went off to),
• the bones of a navy-blue wool sweater, yet to fuse (I realize now that this is the first project I’m making for myself), 
• and a colorful myriad of works in progress.

The true reason I neglect my projects for months on end? I’m not a very good knitter. I drop stitches without realizing and weave them back in clumsily. I make holes between rows of stocking stitch without knowing how they got there. Sometimes I add an extra loop of yarn around the needle by accident and end up widening my project out of proportion. I’ve sunk days of my life into knitting work that has never seen the light of day because I’m too intimidated to attempt fixes. I knit obsessively for a few days or weeks, but once my ball of yarn gets knotty? Time to put down my work—see you never, half-made scarf. Momentum hides from me on the top shelf of my craft supplies, seemingly out of reach.

For me, it’s less about what I’m creating and more about the movement the creation brings. The tactility of knitting satisfies something in me, maybe an ancestral urge to become an artisan or scoop my hands into the earth. The movement doesn’t even have to be technically correct to be gratifying—it just needs to be happening. Once I get on a roll, my fingers twist and loop and pinch, and the yarn forms whorl after whorl like a fingerprint. And trust that each project is like a fingerprint too—no two stitches are exactly the same because I don’t care about forcing each one to be identical. It wouldn’t be fun anymore if I did.

Since starting at Brown this fall, I’ve noticed that some folks aren’t afraid to whip out their yarn during class time, mostly to crochet. For some, it may be an accessibility accommodation; for others, it may replace another fidget behavior. Or perhaps my peers just want to make the most of their time (Ye Olde Multitask) and create something during lecture. I find the muted sounds of the twirling yarn against the crochet hook soothing, but I don’t think I’ll be taking up classroom crafting anytime soon. I fear the tangled abominations I’d create if I tried to knit while keeping my eyes on the professor or the slides. Mostly, I’m impressed with the intricate patterns I see my peers crocheting. Is their technique easily harnessed, or is it perfectionism’s pressure that keeps their stitches in check?

My friend Bridget tried to teach me how to crochet last year. They showed me how to circle my wrist to best work the hook as we sat on the couch. Bridget finished up the last few patches of a floral granny square sweater, all gorgeous pale blues and yellows with a few white petals. I cranked out a single crocheted chain of dark green acrylic yarn before giving up and turning my attention to the episode of Drag Race we’d put on in the background. They have long since sewn up their sweater; I have not returned to the green acrylic. (If anyone’s giving private lessons and up for a particularly beginner pupil, send me your availability—I do want to learn!)

For all my self-deprecation, I don’t think I’m a lost cause. Early this month, my girlfriend’s mother came to visit. Her name is Gretchen. She’s an expert knitter with an enviable yarn collection and an eye for detail. I solicited her help on the crewneck sweater I’ve been working on for the better part of two years, though I have yet to even finish the back panel. I set down the sweater back in March when I hit a snag: I lost count of the number of rows I was working with. It sounds like there’s a simple fix for that—counting—but believe me, the thick dark wool was impossible to read. Gretchen smoothed my stitches and assessed the damage.

“Honey, there’s a measurement in the pattern. You don’t need to follow it exactly, just get to 13 inches, like it says, and then move on to the next step.”

Oh. It was that simple, huh?

“Just make sure you end on an odd row number. The long tail’s got to be opposite your working yarn.”

I knew there was a catch.

Albeit an easy one. I hit the length requirement and moved on, looping each pair of knit stitches together to shorten the row with surprising ease. Gretchen and I sat together, listening to the tick of my needles.

As I started on my next row, I noticed it: a hole. Some time ago (in February, perhaps), I must have dropped a stitch, or put the working yarn over instead of under, or committed another knitting sin that I’m not proficient enough to diagnose. The little gap was shaped like the mouth of Munch’s screamer and was just as haunting. I considered letting the sting of shame take over and putting my work away until it wore off. 

“Okay, Gretchen, how are we gonna fix this?” I said, offering her my work.

Gretchen put her glasses back on and brought the material close.

“That little hole? Oh, no one’s gonna notice that. The material is so bulky you can barely see it.” 

She put the needles back in my hands and patted my work. “Knitters make mistakes all the time,” she said. “If anyone’s looking that closely, they need to get a life!”