Push and Pull

I am knitting a scarf like a net. The dark blue yarn is pale in places as light streaking the underside of a lake; it is only by turning it that you notice the change is not an effect but the dye of the wool itself.

The pattern is simple: purl-two-together, yarn over, repeat; the result is a mesh of slants and gaps. If you picture knitted fabric as an enormous matrix, then the simplest formula for creating a new row is to make one new stitch out of each existing stitch. My pattern alternates between subtraction and addition, so the total number of stitches remains constant from row to row but their spacing is not even across each row.

The subtraction occurs when two stitches in the old row are combined (knitted together) to form a single stitch in the new row. Likewise, a stitch can be created out of new yarn without corresponding to any stitch in the previous row. Knitting stitches together draws the yarn diagonally into a dense knot and adding stitches opens a hollow. Hence, the net.

As I knit my net, I imagine each stitch, each strand, is a person. Now they lean towards each other, now away. Now they embrace, now sulk. They are knotted together and still they shy, still they turn, still they cling. Like I said, it is a simple pattern.