Process or Product?

I don't know if I could write a compare and contrast essay on the writing process and the knitting process, but I do know that process, any process, is a funny thing.

On the product end, sooner or later we stop getting graded on our writing projects and no one grades us, thank god, on our knitting projects.

On the process end, we all have plans for projects in the pipeline: a letter to a friend, an email to our boss, a novel; new socks, a baby blanket, an aran sweater. But the funny thing about process is that you can sit down, intent on cranking out a certain project, and then without warning, something completely different appears.



It's almost magical sometimes.

I wonder how she did it, J.K. Rowling. What she has pulled off has so many layers of meaning, is so intricate (although occasionally simplistically symbolic), that it boggles the mind. My big question is how did she know to lay clues so many years ago for things that would come together in her seventh book?

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• The book scarf is done in double knitting in fingering weight on 1s. I did think it up by myself, but it turns out a lot of other people had the same idea.