Why I buy yarn - Energy Conversion (Part 1)

I don't really buy yarn.

I buy potential energy. I buy a tight little bundle of what might become something beautiful. I buy the promise of many hours of happy activity and a sense of satisfaction and achievement afterwords.

I buy energy storage. I store any extra optimism, imagination, and anticipation in my yarn. See, I know that sometime in the relatively near future I will be bogged down in mundanity, or stripped of enthusiasm, or curled up on the bed exhausted and about to lose the plot with many many hours to go before any backup arrives. I know that if I place the new yarn just there within view of my bed, I will be able to see it in my time of trial, and I will tap into that stored potential energy, re-ignite my imagination with what it might become, re-ignite my hope and my optimism and get enough energy to keep at it.

I buy a place to store love. There are many people who I love, but who I can't say that to - because of context, or history, or simply the limitations of the English language. So I knit something for them and give it to them and both of us know that its sole purpose is to say "You are important to me and I love you". A special ball of wool or alpaca earmarked for some specific person - or intended for some generic project but knowing that I'll probably give it away when it's made - is a ball of love.

I buy threads of connection between people in time. Knitting connects you to all those knitters in prehistory and history, dust and bones under the ground or sitting in suburban yarn and coffee shops or (like me) in front of the TV with a thread coming out of the coffeetable drawer, subcontinental slum workers finding time to work on a child's jumper after a 15 hour shift in a toxic environment, or an adult orphan crying from grief trying to concentrate on a garter-stitch scarf to take their mind off their mum's death. Everyone knows a knitter- their nan or aunt or their gay uncle Brent (hi Brent!). Knitting also teaches your fingers a skill and technique which your mind doesn't need to know. This skill was passed on orally, then stored in pattern books and old items, copied and re-invented again and again, now it's carefully filmed onto YouTube and discussed interminably on forums. I buy the necessary ingredients to connect with all those people in all those places and times, just by holding some sticks, moving my fingers, and waving a bit of string around.

I buy hope - for myself to be able to make something, and when it's done for me or someone else to love it.
I buy just a little bit of fear - that I will never be able to do the yarn justice. That it will languish on my shelf and be forgotten and eventually eaten by moths or taken to the tip by some callous and uncomprehending future daughter in law. That I will end up a crazy old lady with sausage-swollen legs living on beans, and a house full of clever home-storage-solutions embarrassingly stuffed with yarn. Maybe this is what stash anxiety is about. I have to be careful not to buy too much yarn.

I buy interpersonal energy in a compact, dense form. I aim to convert into other forms of energy - anticipation energy, work energy, finished energy, gift energy, generosity energy, gratitude energy, lasting and meaningful human energy. I don't buy it because it's yarn. I buy it because it's energy.