Beginner's Envy Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Here I sit
Hook in my right hand
Yarn tense in my left
Staring at a design
Made up of dots and lines
That if completed correctly
Should produce a lacy shawl
Fit for this coming spring.

As confident as only a novice can be
I work away at my double and triple crochet
Sure that within days, a week at most,
I will be wrapped in my masterpiece,
Posting photos in the feed
Along with the others I see
Showing off their perfect drape,
Their elegant taste.

Why are my stitches uneven?
How is my count always wrong?
When will I make any progress?
How many times must I frog?

I tell myself that these skilled women
With their puff stitches and fancy fringes
Once had fingers that needed to be willed
Through each delicate step of the cotillion
That must be performed to complete a pattern.

And so I will march mine through the basics.
I will drill and train, hand cramping,
My right eye beginning to twitch,
Until my stitches stand straight as soldiers
In endless, repetitive rows.

But little did I think I would come become addicted
To the feeling of wool slipping through my fingers,
The hook pulling loop through loop,
The colors shifting, the yarn thinning and thickening.

I imagine that I feel the oil of the sheep's wool.
I think of my friend Erica shearing her alpacas,
Of women around the world working a pattern in sync,
Of my ancestors carding, spinning, weaving, knitting,
And I feel the sisterhood that binds us together
In the essential human need to create something unique.