A Place to Sit

The kitchen in Ceps, France, January 2024

100 Days | 06

Stitching: Petite Knit Stockholm V-Neck Tank. Not very good neck rib pick up, then I tried it on, looks all wrong! Not a good outcome. What’s the problem here?

Sometimes, it’s so hard to switch off the churning thoughts. Writing always helps, although I’d forgotten that. Write it all down! See it laid out plain, understand it, inspect it. Just express it.

And stitching.

In stitching, there’s a quiet. A soft rhythm that says something along the lines of:

Keep going, breathe slowly, one foot in front of the other, just make the next loop, or stitch, follow the pattern, and just keep going.

Occasionally I consider friends who do not have mental health struggles, or whose lives seem to have been blissfully—mostly—trauma-free, and I think how lovely it must be to be able to not overthink! My life has not been that, so I’m enormously grateful for the habits that settle me down and help me calm. Help me find the serenity again. When trauma is present, the urge to keep going at 100mph is strong, but that doesn’t help, ultimately. It makes a person exhausted!

Then there’s the press towards perfection, but if things don’t come out quite how I hoped—like today’s knitting project—and it’s not what I imagined that must not equal ‘wrong’! Oh the inner voice of a perfectionist. I know this happens a lot so I’m trying to remind myself that it’s not always about the outcome, but the practice itself is really the point a lot of the time.

“You want your life ultimately to be a lovely thing?” I ask myself. Well, sometimes, allow it to take time, and let the practice be the point. Building a lovely thing can take time. You know that’s where insights lie, and serenity, and peace.

You know that’s where peace lies.

Find a place to sit and settle down. Write. Stitch.

Everything will be okay.

{ think about: }

…a stitching practice that itself is the point,
regardless of outcome,
because it forces you to settle down and get back to peace.