On Knitting like Writing | Monday 29 December 2025
Published on HivePostify by @shanibeer · Mon Dec 29 2025
Code: keeping track of stitches, increases, rows. Turning two dimensions into three, creating a tube without a seam.
> Field Notes Attention is low in this the fag end of the year. I hadn't realised that the timing was perfect for a fallow period, waiting to see what emerges. Marginalia, drifting thoughts, waiting for synthesis.
Monday 29 December 2025 Monkton, Ramsgate 08:00-15:54
I find my attention has turned to knitting. Knitting, a major theme for years, has been lost these past few years. Close to breathing and eating, it's part of how life is metabolised.
Knitting asks for a kind of intention that writing doesn't: rhythmic, embodied. You can be fully engaged without declaring a position or making something mean something.
If writing is where you articulate and expose thought, knitting is where thought can recede without disappearing. I don't knit instead of writing; I knit so that other forms of attention don't become starved or brittle.
Knitting isn't leisure or compensation. It's outside the economy of justification. It doesn't need to earn, signal, or resolve anything. It simply occupies time in a way that doesn't convert attention into value. Perhaps one of the few forms of engagement that has not been instrumentalised. Both knitting and writing practice express intention, attention and experience in ways that aren't reducible to outcome or utility.
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I use a handwritten practice for writing. I write three pages, five pages. I set the intention, the writing meets the parameters of the container. I transcribe without editing, I set field notes before setting context and after capturing the creative ideas that emerged during transcription, I end with references to remind me. The whole is published online and others engage with it.
It seems like both practices operate as attentional ecosystems: spaces that that allow movement, creativity and replenishment without being ambushed by external demands.
>Field Notes Philosophical underpinnings began to emerge, instrumentalisation - contemporary life often converts attention into measurable “value” (productivity, likes, achievements), knitting as resistant practice, where value is intrinsic rather than extrinsic, rituals and symbolic perception. Writing as a ritualised, deliberate engagement with thought that can exist in dialogue with the world but still maintains its own ecosystem.
References [The disappearance of rituals and the exhaustion of constantly becoming](https://youtu.be/AeqeiZ3o0hw?si=nH8hmZuamzesJzLD) - Nina Montagne [I'm begging you to write essays](https://youtu.be/DO5MflXeik?si=sjLPDlVM9No2Fzu2) - Odysseas
Previous posts in this series [On How to Read Better](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-how-to-read-better-or-saturday-6-december-2025) - Saturday 6 December 2025 [On the Future is Already Here](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-the-future-is-already-here-or-monday-1-december-2025) - Monday 1 December 2025 [On False Starts and Fragments](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-false-starts-and-fragments-or-tuesday-28-october-monday-10-november-2025) - Tuesday 28 October - Monday 10 November 2025 [On Tea at the Tate Modern](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-tea-at-the-tate-modern) - Monday 17 November 2025 [On Loss, Grief and Origin Stories](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-origin-stories-flanerie-or-monday-20-october-2025) - Monday 20 October 2025 [On Pens, Diaries, Mrs Dalloway and Oliver Cromwell](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-pens-diaries-mrs-dalloway-and-oliver-cromwell-or-friday-10-october-2025) - Friday 10 October 2025 [On Rain before the Code](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-timid-usually-needless-commas-or-friday-3-october-2025) - Friday 3 October 2025 [On Transitions](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-transitions-or-friday-26-september-2025) - Friday 26 September 2025 [On Bringing New Audiences](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-bringing-new-audiences) - Saturday 20 September 2025 [On Liminal Spaces](https://peakd.com/hive-115590/@shanibeer/on-liminal-spaces-or-saturday-13-september-2025) - Saturday 13 September 2025
Tags: #transition#fallow#creativepractice#ritual#hive#symbolicperception#serialperception#knitting#code#teamuk