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Last week, I bought my first skein of yarn. All I wanted was something soft and in a shade of gray. I'd just found one when the saleswoman came over to see if I needed any help. I asked if she had recommendations for someone just starting out. "That's a good medium weight," she said, motioning to the yarn I was holding, "but dark colors are also more difficult to work with. It's hard to see the stitches while you knit."

I bought it anyway. Isn't knitting half about the feel of it? Over the past week, I've already noticed my comfort with knitting drastically changing. I'm getting the hang of holding the needles, of gauging the tension of the yarn. Yet it's the same set of motions from that first day.

Sometimes, when I first wake up, I watch the leaves outside my bedroom window. To say my eyesight is bad would be an understatement – without contacts in, I can't read someone's expression more than a few feet away – and to me, that morning view out the bedroom window is nothing but a palette of greens and circles of light. If there's even the slightest breeze outside moving the leaves, those soft circles of light blink and shift, fade in and fade out. In the end, though, it's not really about what I'm seeing or not seeing. It's just the feeling.

Works in progress: a patternless scarf (the whole thing is just knitted) and these fingerless gloves.