It struck me on the way in to work this morning that the reason I love knitting so much is because it’s design in almost pure form. With web design, there are so many hurdles you have to jump through to get your design into a working state – css attributes to learn, scripting languages to inhale, content management systems to navigate, coding issues, browser inconsistencies, bugs, communication, frustration, office politics and ridiculousness; the pure visual design work (the part I love) is only about 15% of what I get to do, and the rest is just necessary evil.
Knitting, on the other hand, is just pure design elements: space, line, color, texture, shape, form, value – all right in your hands to sculpt at will with nothing in between you and the finished work – blissful flow.
I feel the same when with photography much of the time as well — just me and a camera and vision in my head captured.