Holding on to gentleness in a world that feels anything but
Knitting in uncertain times
I usually write my newsletters in the early morning hours when my household is sleeping and my beagle, Molly, is pressed up against me, softly snoring. I like to think this gentle, homey, and contemplative energy infuses each letter.
And so, in this spirit, I offer a very warm welcome to so many new subscribers. I’m glad you’re here. I like to organize my Sunday letter around an idea that’s been comforting to me over the past week and then bring it back to knitting, which is my creative practice—and, I suspect, yours too.
The point of my newsletter is to knit together (both literally and metaphorically) a community of quiet progressives. Here, we knit and sew and make things with our hands, and are fiercely resolute in our desire for equity and inclusion. We center the folks who are pushed to the margins and create softness and joy for all of us.
Content note: We’re going to talk about gun violence and the epidemic of school shootings today. Please take care of yourself and skip ahead to the pictures of yarn if you need to.
This week, I’ve been curious about my reaction to the news of yet another school shooting and the desperate need for gun control in America. My first thought, I’m embarrassed to admit, was numbness. Of course there was another school shooting. Of course our children aren’t safe. This is the world we live in.
I was too numb to share calls for action on social media, even the most practical and helpful actions, even though I know this is something you and I and everyone in my circle care about.
Instead of sharing action steps, I remembered a fiery take about the Sandy Hook school shooting that went something like this: I knew there would never be gun control when we saw kindergarteners die, and we did nothing.
The numbness wore off when I read an excellent piece by journalist Meg Conley, who imagined what the history books would say, a hundred years from now, about the era we are living in:
100 years from now, there will be a section in U.S. textbooks about The School Shooter Era. The horror, the dead children, the bullet proof backpacks and active shooter drills will be explained in a couple paragraphs. It will be easy enough for a fifth grader to understand.
During a multi-decade campaign of far-right radicalization, Republican politicians adopted positions of gun extremism to maintain and expand their power.
After allowing the assault rifle ban to lapse in 2004, they began nurturing a first-person shooter culture previously unknown in America. Many even sent Christmas cards featuring their elementary age children holding rifles made for combat.
Republican rhetoric created a right to kill. In Republican speeches and legislation, the right to kill became the primary right associated with the right to freedom. Republican gun extremism had three primary purposes.
Read the whole article👆🏻 (and, if you can afford it, please become a paid subscriber of Homeculture; Meg is doing such important work.)
Meg’s work helped me see three things:
This is the world we live in.
This era will pass, because no awful era lasts forever.
How quickly it will pass depends on us.
I think this is the essential work of being human: to not grow numb to the pain and heartbreak and awfulness of the time we live in, and to find the one or two or three things we can do to bend the moral arc of the universe in our small, seemingly insignificant ways. This might be to challenge inequitable talk around the dinner table, or to take those practical action steps that are shared on social media about gun control. Or, to say to the knitting conference organizers, “why don’t you have any teachers of color? I’m not coming again until you do and you have a plan in place for their emotional safety in this white-dominated space.”
Each thing we do matters. Each issue is connected. The issues we choose to work on, or highlight, or learn about … it’s all connected as part of a beautiful patchwork quilt. What we are doing here, with our knitting and sewing and small things, in our families, with our dollars, and in our communities, these things matter in the way that drops of water add up to an ocean.
Keep going. Stay alive to all the feelings. And if your knitting group says “we only talk about ‘soft’ things here,” respond that talk about equity, stopping gun violence, inclusion, the rights of trans people, these are soft things. Radically soft.
Soft yarn for making something soft right now
Most of you know that over the last 18 months, I’ve scaled down my knitting business because I’ve been tending to my own and my family’s health during the pandemic.
I didn’t actually stop dyeing yarn or creating, it just became more private. So, while I didn’t dye in the same quantities as I used to, I still created new colors, still dreamed of projects and kits, and still gently experimented with technique. I created because I feel most alive when I am creating, and I carefully packed away the yarn I dyed because I didn’t have the bandwidth to share it.
As I’m moving gently back into more paid work, I am opening up these (more limited in quantity) treasures and starting to share them with you. In this spirit, I have an offering for you today:
These are sets of my Merino DK yarn (231 yards, 100g, superwash Merino wool) in a palette I’m calling Flower Studies. I created these colors while watching spring come alive in my backyard. The colors harmonize together for, perhaps, a blanket, a striped sweater, or colorwork accessories. I have 28 skeins in total (4 of each color), and while the colors will all be available again, but, my plan is to no longer stock this particular base. I’ve packaged half of them as sets and half as single skeins, so if these colors speak to you, you can …
On Friday, April 7, I’ll be releasing my California Street collaboration with shawl designer Tyne Swedish. I’ll be sending out a few more newsletters than usual over the next 10 days. If you want to be sure to receive them:
Go to your Settings page.
Scroll down to Subscriptions, and click on “Anne is Making”.
In the middle of the page, under “Notifications,” tick the box next to the topic “shop updates”.
Likewise, if you’d like to skip this launch sequence, just untick the box next to “shop updates.” I promise I’ll continue to think kindly of you no matter how many, or few, emails you want to receive from me.
A well-wish for our collective well-being
Today, I wish for you to know that all the things we care about are connected. You don’t have to take on all of it; you just have to do your small part. There are so many of us, so many very smart people, doing so much to move the world to a better place. We just have to be in community and bend our tiny part of the moral arc, in our small places. Small is okay. Small is enough. Small is meaningful.
With love,
Anne
Thank you for articulating so well how we can bring change to our world. I love your phrase " bend the moral arc of the universe". I have always focused on what I can do in my "sphere of influence" and taught my boys (now in their 30s) to do the same. We do have influence, in the choices we make, how we spend our money, and how and when we speak up. Numbness is a reaction to overwhelm. Staying grounded is essential; breathing in Spring helps me maintain my balance. Thank you for another thoughtful writing, Anne. I look forward to being with you this way every week. xox
With all the trauma and drama in the news and every where you look and read, it’s hard to stay centered. The shootings, the tornadoes, weather changes, inditement, political rancor, etc. I needed to see pretty colors together, the emergence of spring and the greens and pinks coming form the earth. Thank you. I can only say and advise to not become complacent, not to hide in my knitting, but to stay informed and in tune with the world around me and to personally take peaceful action to influence and make the world a kinder place. To talk with people, to share joy and look for the emerging spring and rebirth of the earth as your yarn colors promise.