Knit One, Purl Two, Write 500.

For the next several weeks, I’ll be wishing I had four hands: two to write, two to knit.

With Christmas just around the corner, I am behind – again – on my  gift schedule. This year I have yet to rewrite my list four or five times (whether for neatness or edits). But, with a whole afternoon to myself today, I shopped anyway.

At one point, I stopped at the fabric store and perused the yarn aisle. Drawn to the color and the texture of yarn, I bought more than I needed, I’m sure. While I can’t wait to get to my needles, I approach knitting with caution. If you read my last post, you’ll know why. I’ve decided to knit dish rags this year (safe and easy, they say), and I’ll claim creative license if they don’t end up perfectly square.

On top of enough yarn for a stack of rags (hope my family plans on doing a lot of dishes), I also committed to write 500 words a day. Thanks, Debbie Ohi, for the challenge. The badge is up. With today’s 500 under my belt, I’m on my way.

In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, she writes that creativity presents itself in many different ways. All we have to do, as artists or writers or knitters, is open our mind to the Spirit (or muse) that guides us. 500 words a day doesn’t sound like much, especially when you’re just coming off of NaNoWriMo, but it still means sitting down and writing or editing 500 words on one story or another. I hope, in knitting dishrag after dishrag (boy, that’s an unappealing cluster of words), one creative endeavor will influence another.