sarah eve kelly

Herewith: the promised post about knitting. It will knock your (knitted) socks off.

Those following at home will know that I’m Living the Dream. Those who know me better will know that writing and Cambridge have been in daydreams and sightlines since I was about seven years old. I have also documented with some assiduity my compulsion to react badly to good fortune; I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to figure out why. I know now, and the reason is too pathetic and selfish to impart even to such a self-indulgent medium as this.

The upsides of Living the Dream are too many to count. I’m so lucky that I occasionally nauseate myself. Not only did I get to Cambridge: my husband got here too. You can’t imagine the logistical sets-of-three-train-connections shit that would have resulted if he weren’t a student here. We’re here; we’re together; we’re off in the same direction.

I also get to make my own schedule - provided said schedule gets everything done. Everything that requires doing, of course, can be done from this chair. Yes, I’m behind. Yes, I’m lost. Yes, I’m terrified. But I’m a lucky girl.

Also: really good fudge just down the road.

I have professional backing for a novel that I thought I knew would never see the light of day. It may never, still, but it has a fighting chance now. I love the world my clumsy hands have brought to life. I love the shaft-of-light moments that startle me into making it better. This I can also accomplish from this lovely, squashy blue chair.

There are so many other things, but stop me: I’m losing my point and I’m about to make myself vomit a little.

The problem with Living the Dream is that you’re living it out loud; you’re living it on deadline. The things that I used to do on the sly - character sketches, reading Eric Ives, wondering wondering wondering after the awesome power of getting to where I wanted to be - are (apart from the wondering) now done in the open, with expectations from people outside my own brain. I’m part of a club, but it’s not without its dues.

So when I sit down in my lovely chair for eleven hours a day of what I’ve wanted to do all my life, I often flex my fingers with a bad grace and a high heart rate. This has to be good; this has to be original; this has to be scholarly; this has to be riveting. Sometimes - just sometimes - this makes it feel like work.

And so, last term, being Michaelmas Term, I had a Long Dark Teatime. I clutched my towel. I didn’t know what came next; I only knew that I was doing it all wrong. I wasn’t all that good at admin work, either, but I was buffeted by a wonderful confidence that I didn’t have to be good at it: it wasn’t what I do. Well, this is what I do, and it’s being tested, now, day after day.

The upshot is that I’ve spent my entire life - from the age of six onwards - doing things on the sly. Deciding the main performance of the day just wouldn’t cut it. Now I’m here, doing this, and it’s not possible to make that excuse; and besides, if I were to do something on the sly, what would I do? All the fun stuff is already taken.

Enter knitting.

Two years ago, half a bot of sippy-cup gin into an evening, my dear friend Vanessa undertook to teach me to knit. Vanessa is an amazing, just-for-fun, on-demand, flashing-needles knitter. I swear to my heathen gods that half the reason I want children is because I want them to have a blanket by Vanessa. That night we drank and drank, and knitting took on a vitality, an importance: my stubby hands were making needles work.

Seriously: I suck at knitting. I really suck. It’s like chess: I sort of know the moves, but I get my ass kicked every single time. This is not Vanessa’s fault. I shall have to go back to Edmonton and get just as drunk to learn how to purl.

Still, I love it. Three weeks ago, Lent term threatened. Novel revisions are due; research writeups are due; so many things are due. So much fun. I’d have hidden under my bed if it weren’t one of these weird English beds that sorta goes all the way to the bottom. But instead of retreating to the corner I have specifically reserved for the fetal position, I dug through my closet and found two skeins of wool and a set of knitting needles.

To this point I have only ever managed lumpy trivets. But they are trivets!

In the fullness of time I want to be better at knitting - I’d like to make the hat, for example, that my agent asked for. But I don’t want to go overboard, and here’s why: there are two things that I’m good at. They are writing, research, and research writing. (No, that isn’t three. Shut up.) And I’m not nearly good enough at them to sit at the big kids’ table yet, but I’m getting there. Perseverance, discipline, love and love and love, a stiff drink. They all help. I’ll be what I want to be.

But knitting is the thing I’ve found to do on the sly. Nobody wants me knitting (trust me). But I take feverish joy in making lumpy scarves and squares and tearing them apart when they don’t work; I love to sit in front of some good television of an evening and plough away at these pieces of shit, knowing that they will never be evaluated. Knitting, if it has done anything, has made me love all the more what I now have to work really hard for. Before, it was OK to be a shitty writer; nobody ever saw. Now people see. But nobody - except Mike, whose love is, as yet, unconditional - has seen my knitting.

Knitting, and a couple of pub nights a week. That’s all I need to keep loving what I do. Both make me look forward to conquering a new day. Living the Dream is a burden of its own: you have to find ways to cope with it. It sounds ridiculous; it is ridiculous, but it’s true. There have to be failsafes, coping mechanisms to ensure that you continue loving what you’ve thoughtlessly loved your entire life. Knitting shows me that I’m horrid at something; it reminds me of what I’m good at, what I’m working towards.

Knitting is a life-affirmer. Ridiculous or not, it’s getting me through the Dream.

Maybe I’ll try basketball next.

A few notes: my next post will be on Living the Linear Life. My dear friend Amy Bai has begun ‘Confession Fridays’, and I’m thinking of doing something similar, just because she’s so faboo - any ideas for Theme Days on the blog? I’m eager for suggestions.

Till next time, &c &c.

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