This afternoon my friend Bonnie taught me how to knit. Well, started teaching me. It’s not exactly something you learn in an afternoon. But I did learn how to “cast on,” which is how you initially connect your yarn to your needle, as well how to knit a knit stitch. As I understand it, there are two basic stitches in knitting–knit stitches and purl stitches–so this means I’m like, halfway to being an expert already. But seriously, I’m not. Bonnie flies through the basic movements lickety-split, faster than a speeding bullet. Me? I’m slower than Christmas.

Bonnie says I’ll get the hang of it. At some point, I’ll figure out how to hold the needles with one hand and the yarn with the other, and doing all the things will become muscle memory. Until then, I’m having to think about everything, and I don’t mind saying it’s frustrating as hell. Like, I’ve been excited about learning, and all I wanted to do during my first lesson was cuss (and I did). But this is the deal when you learn something new–it’s hard work. That’s how it is with dancing, and–now I know–that’s how it is with knitting. If someone makes it look easy, it’s because they’ve spent hundreds of hours practicing.

Despite my feeling frustrated today, Bonnie said I did a good job. And even though I said a few cuss words, I actually had fun. First, I enjoy learning new things. Second, it was good to do something creative and work with my hands. Third, it got my mind off my recent knee surgery and all the things I currently can’t do, like run, dance, and hula-hoop. (Confession: I couldn’t hula-hoop before my accident either.) Lastly, it was exciting (and is exciting) to think about making a scarf, cap, or blanket during this extended period of down time. Maybe six months from now I can look back and say, “Yeah, knee surgery and rehab sucked, but look at this cool afghan I made.”

Bonnie says I’m not ready to make an afghan–yet. This last weekend when we were in Nashville and I asked about what I was going to knit first, she said, “First you’re going to knit a small square–think of it like a potholder for Tinker Bell if you want to–then you’re going to tear it apart. Then you’re going to knit it again, then you’re going to tear it apart again. And again and again until I say you’re ready to move on.” So I called her Mr. Miyagi (from The Karate Kid, Mom), since he made Daniel buff cars repeatedly in order to learn self-defense. Now that’s our joke–wax on, wax off.

This is obviously a new endeavor, but I already see a lot of parallels to dancing, writing, and even knee rehab-ing. Everyone wants to do the thing–knit the afghan, dance the cha-cha, write the novel, um, walk. But before you can do the thing, you have to learn to do the thing, and learning to do the thing is almost always mundane, repetitive, boring, and awkward. This means you not only have to be willing to be a newbie (that is, bad at something), you also have to be willing to be patient with yourself. So I’m trying to lean into this wisdom of wax on, wax off in knitting, knee-rehab, and in life, this wisdom of slow and steady wins the race.