Let's make more space for knitting

Media guidelines that I hope will inspire you to critically evaluate, and help dampen, the noise that's coming into our lives

Me, wearing a sweater of my own design (Blossom, coming in August) and frolicking like it’s 2008 in the midst of wild California native grasses.

These are uncertain times, to be sure.

Four years ago, the summer of 2020 saw the largest civil rights protests in my lifetime. This summer, campus protests are the largest they’ve been since 1969.¹ It’s still baffling to me how many Americans support a proto-fascist for president. And because it’s an election year, everything is getting noisier.

Meanwhile, we are here. Knitting through it. Crocheting through it. Driving the carpool, paying the bills, caring for sick loved ones, caring for ourselves. Life keeps on life-ing.

The noise out there can be loud, and it can be so very dysregulating.

I often share how knitting and making things by hand is an important way to slow down and to find joy. Today, I want to share some of the other things that help me make space for my knitting.

Over the last number of years, I have learned, usually the hard way, that news media and social media have fundamentally changed.

I came of age in the Web 2.0 era, a term first introduced in 1999 to describe the way the internet was starting to connect people, not just deliver information. I found friends and fellow writers on late ‘90s text-only forums, felt my knitting world burst open when I joined Ravelry in 2009, and was a fairly early adopter of Instagram in 2012.

Starting in 2017, I found solidarity online, as well, with organized craftivist protests and, in 2019, discussions of how racism shows up in knitting spaces. (An antidote to the constant and ongoing erasure of people of color in fiber spaces is to read This Long Thread, by artist Jen Hewett, which celebrates the diverse work of people of color in the craft community and explores the personal, political, and creative potential of textile arts and crafts.)

But, friend, the last few years have been long years of news media and social media competing for our attention with ever-more extractive methods. It’s easy to blame “the algorithm” (and I still fall prey to way too many clickbait headlines) but I’ve set up a few rules that have helped me dampen the noise coming my way and keep me focused on my own north star: equity and joy.

I limit where my news comes from. I use this media bias chart to understand the bias is that is baked into news from various sources so I can help avoid misinformation and its resulting outrage. Those of us who took media literacy classes are surely getting a workout these days.

I take news and social media breaks. I like to remember that my attention is the product for news outlets and social media. (Watch The Social Dilemma to understand how our attention is attracted, packaged, and sold.) I increasingly need to draw a mental wall around my attention, akin to a secret garden, so that I can sink my hands in the metaphorical dirt and feel alive again.

I remind myself that social media is just the highlight reel. Even this newsletter, right now, is just a highlight reel. It’s my most regulated, most reflective, most generous self. Not everything (or perhaps even most of what) I see from others, or what I share myself, is the raw, crunchy, complex and nuanced life we are all living.

Golden hour sunshine falling on a moss-covered tree. 📷 by me, taken at Filoli gardens in Woodside, California.

It seems to me that our critical work, at this moment in time, is to take in what’s happening in the outer world, to try and understand it and our place in it, but not be bowled over by it.

I’m reminded of what it used to feel like to be the mom of a toddler, whose emotions were so raw and big and out there. I had to model for my kid how to regulate all those feelings. How to feel them, but also how to let them move on through—both the raucously joyous ones and the deep despairing ones.

It’s only at my most-regulated, most embodied, most grounded, that I can really think about what it means to be alive at this moment in time. And what it means to try and add my own, unique contribution—the one that only I or that only you can offer—to my self, family, and community.

I’ll close today with a few links, a few pictures, and a reader spotlight!

• Time Spent Offline by Mehret Biruk: a newsletter about spending less time online and (re)discovering the pleasures of the offline world

• 100 ways to spend more time offline, not your average list, also by Mehret Biruk.

• How technology is hijacking your mind, a sure-fire read that will make you turn off your phone and pick up your knitting.

• Caregiving of older parents: An article that will make you feel all the feels. (content note: death, grief, and also moving self-knowledge)

Here are a few pictures of golden hour at Filoli (a local historic house and gardens, a symbol of contradiction itself: built from great wealth amassed in the Gilded Age, on land that used to be the home of the native Ohlone people, and now a locale that’s ostensibly open to everyone, but in reality only open to people who can afford a membership. Life is a lot these days, my friends.).

A row of cultured Foxglove, a beautiful but poisonous flower.

A field of Red Campion, which looks like it should be native to this part of California, but isn’t.

Things I’ve been enjoying this week

• Lavender syrup in my coffee, recipe about halfway down this post.

• Knitting on a new pair of Jeff’s Groovy 70s socks. Mine are out of the Ocean Depths set.

• Yoga at home from this amazing teacher.

• This food-neutral, weight inclusive, with an intersection of social justice, newsletter.

Tell me: What are your “rules” for regulating the media (social or otherwise) that you let in? What helps you make more space for knitting, crocheting, or sewing?

1. Here’s an interesting and brief comparison of the two eras of campus protests, courtesy of Teen Vogue.