Dabbling

I’ve been thinking about dabbling. As in following your interests where they lead you.

There is an exhibit at a local museum on Nordic knitting and an expert knitter on cables has been invited to speak and display her work. It’s the lifetime of exploring not just knitting but cables that sparked my interest. What it would mean to continue, year after year, to find ways to use them and to see where they lead. To make them speak of more than light and shadow and twisted stitches but of a knitter’s imagination and a Viking past. A life’s work.

I seem to have taken another path.

Instead of focusing on one thing intently- I have thrown myself into a variety of interests- often intently. When I became interested in roses for my yard- I went to the library and got out a couple of books. By the time that I was finished reading- I had checked out all of the books on roses that the library had- more that 300. Did all of that reading affect my enjoyment of my garden? Probably. I certainly fell in love with roses that I had a bit of trouble finding to buy. In the end, my reading did broaden my love and understanding of roses- their history, their needs, their variety and their possibilities.

And so it goes- gardening, knitting, sewing, cooking and baking. Reading. My interests overlap and influence each other. Each leaves me wanting more time to explore and develop skills. Each adds to the other in a variety of ways. And, I would be hard pressed to choose one to give up if I needed to.

If I had focused on just one- by now, perhaps I would have a body of work to reflect my efforts. But, maybe, by dabbling here and there- following my inspirations- that body of work is still to come.


Dabbling- ‘to work at anything in an irregular or superficial manner: to dabble in literature’