Is knitting your hobby or a way of life?
A few months ago, you all surprised the heck out of me by sharing that you’re all mostly solitary knitters. I asked the original question after sharing the memory of attending my very first fiber festival and how meaningful it was, for me, to look around and see people who were just as in love with knitting and yarn and fiber as I am. Most of my life, I’ve felt like a square peg in a round hole, and at that, my first, fiber festival, I felt like I had found my people. I had no social anxiety, no shyness, no hesitation to talk to other people. It was easy and fluid to be with people—in line, in crowds, or on a bus. Our common love of knitting, well, it knit us together.
At the end of that essay, I asked how you fill your own knitting “love bucket”. A full 60 percent of you said that you are solitary knitters. I have been mulling this over since October because there is just so much to unpack with the idea of solitary knitting.
I may be in my solitary knitting era, as well, so here are some things your unexpected survey responses prompted me to ponder:
Knitting has become a way of life for me. It’s no longer a hobby or “just” something I do in the evenings. Knitting—like crocheting for some people, or spinning or weaving for others—has become a place where I find joy. I love everything about this small, portable, seemingly insignificant craft: the physical feeling of yarn running through my hands, the rhythm of working with both hands in coordination, the way my brain can calm down and lose track of time as I slowly knit loop after loop (complicated or simple) and create fabric.
My home reflects my knitting way of life. Sprinkled throughout my home are signs that a knitter lives here. Some of my husband’s relatives visited this past fall, and one particularly observant cousin noticed the small knitted pumpkins I had placed on our fireplace mantle. He admired them and immediately connected the fact that these little pumpkins express my inner self: my love of knitting, of yarn-dyeing, of fiber, and of making things by hand. It was a beautiful moment where I felt seen. (How many other visitors to my home saw the little pumpkins but didn’t make the connection that they are an outward sign of the inner me?)
I don’t need to share a love of knitting with anyone else for me to feel nourished by it. I love when someone admires a sweater I wear (and I always, so happily, say “I made it!”), but I feel just as proud and just as beautiful when I am dressed in a handmade sweater and stay cozy in the house, never seeing another person outside of family members (who have long since stopped being impressed by my knitting!). I love knowing that I spent so much time making this garment and that this garment is for me. I am worth the time. I am worth the cost of the yarn. I am warm and loved, and I don’t need anyone else to see this fact for it to be true.
How about you?
If you are also a solitary knitter, or if the way I am describing my own solitude resonates with you, tell me more!
Whether you are a solitary knitter or a social knitter who loves to gather with knitting family or friends, or whether both types of knitting connection fill your love bucket, I hope the coming week, and indeed the whole season ahead of us, brings you more connection and times when you feel truly seen.
With love,
Anne
I’m both! I knit most evenings while watching tv as well as take some project with me wherever I go. I also have a long standing knitting group with members who have been with us for many years and where new people join us regularly. The group is made up of people from different political and religious views but we come together over knitting. During the pandemic we continued to meet every Saturday morning over zoom to knit, share our week and stay connected. Several of our members are “anti vaccers” and of a different political party, and I set boundaries about contact at events when we were coming out of quarantine. We’ve sometimes had opposing discussions about our political views, but it’s always been respectful. I’m grateful we’re able to keep our connections in spite of our differences and for the glue knitting provides to hold us together. It’s easy to demonize people you see only from afar then up close where their positive qualities shine through. My contact with these knitting sisters helps me maintain an open heart and mind.
What a beautiful meditation on solo knitting. And your content warning for next week is the most tender acknowledgment of grief’s complexity I’ve ever read. My most recent knitting burst began in 2019 during cancer treatment — as a way to rest my body while soothing my mind. As an antidote to hospital visits and the probing curiosity/care of family and friends, solo knitting became a place where I could be whole, where I didn’t need to meet anyone’s expectations, where my grief and joy could co-exist, where I experienced being intimately connected to all beings without a single word. While knitting with others is wonderful and occasionally feeds my soul, solo knitting is as essential to my wellbeing as good food and fresh air. As someone who believes that we really are all expressions of a single something (organism, fiber, soul, spirit?), I never experience being alone when I knit solo; in fact, the clamor quiets enough to feel the whole of us more keenly. Thank you for sparking such deep conversations.