Knitting a River
What are you knitting, a river??
That’s what my husband asked when he sat down next to me.
YES!!
Funny you should ask. I bought this yarn for its color, but also for its name: Wissahickon.
The Wissahickon Creek runs through Philadelphia, our old home town. The yarn’s from O-Wool, and partially sourced from PA and NJ, both of which I’m “from.” I felt nostalgic when I saw this “Wissahickon,” so I bought a skein.
A couple months later, I got to wondering, what should I knit with this one skein? Well, I can always use another cowl… Poking around on the internet, I found this cool, improvisational cable pattern from Cat Bordhi. Perfect! The pattern (I hardly noticed at the time) is called “Rio Callina.”
“Scatter cables impulsively,” says Cat in the instructions. “Rivers never make plans. Let the river carry you.”
Cat was an innovative knitter and designer. She passed away last fall. But before she did, she posted this pattern for free on her website. You can read her words about it and download the pattern here.
When I was asked about the river emerging from my needles, right in that moment, I realized the theme connected more than yarn and pattern. Just a couple of months earlier, I had been seeking an apt metaphor to describe the way our personal psyches flow into and through each other and the world. “It’s like a braided stream,” I thought. And so it is. I have been pondering the nature and beauty of “braided rivers” ever since.
Google it and you’ll find many more exquisite images like this one from Andre Ermolaev: A braided river in Iceland. Photo credit: Andre Ermolaev/500px
