Gardening, Knitting and the Virtue of Slow Results

Jill Draper is a fabulous textile artist living in the Hudson Valley. She makes the most incredible hand-dyed yarn, and works up some amazingly evocative knitting patterns. A few years ago, she shared these thoughts on her blog about the relationship between knitting and gardening: 

Courtesy of Jill Draper Makes Stuff.

I see so many metaphors between gardening & knitting.  Maybe it is because both things occupy a fair amount of my brain space or maybe there is a true correlation.

The way I see it gardening & knitting both take a great deal of care & time for an end result that on the surface isn’t so terribly different from what you could “just get at the store.” Neither is  inexpensive or quick-resulted.  I think the slowness of the process might be what I enjoy best about both. I love eating fresh tomatoes as much as wearing a wool sweater in February but I equally love sitting in warm dirt in May or feeling yards of wool slipping through my fingers as I knit.

Both practices slow me down, give my fingers a task, allowing my mind to wander to the quiet, dark spots in the back. 

You can buy Jill’s yarn here.