True in real estate, true in life: location is everything. Well, not exactly everything – the knitting is really everything, but location is an important part, since it’s just as much about the process for me as the finished object. I knit in two places: my cozy corner of the couch, and on the subway. I enjoy knitting both places, but the couch is much better. It’s my corner of the couch, with my ginormous Land’s End bag (really, it’s big enough to hold part of a cord of wood, which was its intended use, I think) filled with yarn and projects and papers and notebooks. Periodically I go through that huge bag (as I did during my recent fearless knitting inventory), but just glancing down at it while I’m knitting makes me happy.

The side table has a drawer, and it’s full of all kinds of junk – random knitting tools like a cable needle, a pair of scissors, my iPod cable for syncing it to my laptop, my card reader for my camera, an external hard drive, stuff like that. On top of the table is a stack of magazines – FiberArts, Threads, Craft. My laptop on top of them. Enough space (but not more!) for a cup of coffee. The table is squeezed in between the couch and my sewing table, so when I sit on the couch, I’m kind of in the midst of my creative space, even though it’s just a tiny corner of a relatively small living room that’s crowded with other stuff. Ah, Manhattan.

Since I don’t have very much time to knit, it tends toward an exact routine: In the mornings, around 5am, I put on a pot of coffee, pour a bowl of cereal, and go to the couch. I open the laptop, and while I’m eating my cereal and waiting for the coffee, I open iTunes and download podcast updates and sync my iPod, and read a now-tiny set of sites: gmail, statcounter, and ravelry (I check the forums and look at my friends activity). Now the coffee is finished and so is my cereal, so I pour a mug, return to the couch, close the laptop, and knit in the deep quiet for about an hour, maybe less, depending on the hair situation. I’m usually wearing a pair of socks I knit, and I usually pull a blanket I knit over my legs. And I knit. Knitting in this hour is a very important experience; I don’t think I’m actually thinking about anything, and I’m not knitting anything that requires the strictest concentration and/or struggle. I do that knitting on the weekend. But in the mornings, I think I am in some kind of meditative state, where everything disappears, my mind and even my self sort of disappears, and I’m just kind of floating. My fingers are making their small repetitive movements with a gentle and even rhythm, the yarn is flowing between my fingers, and rows are finished. It’s always a bad moment when I happen to notice that it’s 6:00; it’s kind of like crashing into a brick wall in some way, now I have to leave this state and get busy, get ready, get going, get to work, get at it, don’t stop. The pleasure is primarily in the knitting, but it’s also in the spot. My cozy spot, surrounded by my creative stuff, my little safe and textured corner of the world.

To read other bloggers’ thoughts on this topic, click here: knitcroblo5