Let's talk about hope

What knitting teaches me about living a happy life, even (and especially) when life gets a little bonkers

Life around my happy little knit and dye studio, in my home, and in my broader community (the U.S.) has been a little bonkers lately.

It’s been a combination of happy things, small worrying things, and outer world chaos. Maybe you’re feeling some combination of bonkers, too?

This week saw me releasing my very first sweater pattern, Blossom, and telling a lot of stories about the pattern, editing videos, and generally doing the marketing side of my job.

My kid who, just a few years ago, was a toddler watching Blues Clues with me in the afternoon is now somehow, impossibly, in the first month of his senior year of high school and there is a Great Big Looming Transition ahead for all of us. We are all having lots of feelings about it. This phase of motherhood—mom to a great big tall guy—is challenging me to learn more about how to signal trust, when to bring the safety net closer, and when to pull it a little farther away.

This week also saw a debate between Harris and Tr*mp, which the political pundits firmly analyzed was won, hands-down, by our candidate, Kamala Harris.

(As a reminder, this is a firmly liberal, intersectional space where we center the needs of folks who have been pushed to the margins by systems that generally end in -isms. It is a no-Tr*mp zone because support for Tr*mp is undeniably support for white supremacy, and I cannot hold space for what’s important for me and also hold space to debate human rights. There’s lots of other places on the Internet where you can knit without politics, or knit with hard-right politics. Just not this one. This is a space for you, my fellow liberal friends, where we can safely comment without worry about personal safety, without “but what about-isms” and without “oh I can never win -isms”.)

Earlier this week, I was walking Molly, our beagle, with the tall teenager and trying to make him laugh about all the “they’re eating the dogs” memes I’ve seen, and just generally being blown away by how funny so many people on the Internet are.

The teen (rightly) checked me on my own privilege by commenting that, along with the rise of these memes and that truly bonkers claim, Haitian (and other) immigrants are being harassed and harmed.

With that small comment, he reminded me that it’s easy to laugh or be silly when you’ve got a bubble of privilege around you, whether that’s the privilege of living in the San Francisco Bay Area with reliably liberal community, or my white womanhood that’s insulated from many of the -isms out there, or class markers of education or homeownership or other economic buffers that give some of us a safety net.

What’s hard is to hold that laugh or that joy while also holding that things out there are getting pretty real. There are real, difficult systems that make life harder than it should be. There are real, difficult people trying to game the system to take away rights and freedoms. There are real, difficult things happening in all of our lives, some of them big things and some of them small things.

Holding onto joy while all this happens is hard and important and also part of the work of being human.

Knitting is something I come back to, again and again, when I want to feel joyful.

I love the feeling of yarn running through my fingers. I love seeing stitches building, one on top of another, to create a shaped fabric.

I love how knitting slows me down. I love how working on a more complex piece of knitting can quiet my mind and can help my heart hold all the feelings of being alive right now, in this time, when all these things are happening, some I love and some that worry me to the bone.

I finished a drop shoulder cabled cardigan a few weeks ago, and finally got around to blocking it. But, because it’s on the cusp of autumn, I’ve had no where near my fill of cables, so I’ve cast on another drop shoulder cabled cardigan, and it will be my companion for the next month or so. (Autumn is for cables; this is the knitting hill I will die on.)

If the weather permits, perhaps I will wear it when I go to vote on November 5th. The teen will have passed a milestone birthday by then, and he and I will be voting together.

I like to vote in person, even though voting by mail has become the standard in California. There’s something celebratory for me when I cast my ballot and hear the little machine go zip-beep as my ballot is accepted.

Flashback to February 2008 and the Democratic primary. I was not sure who I would vote for until I stood in line that day, with my 18-month old kid in a stroller. I liked one candidate but thought the other was a safer bet.

I stood there and smiled at my little companion and thought: hope. I want to vote for the world I want to see, even if I don’t think America is ready to elect a Black president. I want to hope that it is. That’s the world I want to live in.

Coming back to myself in 2024, I remember the bleakness and chaos of the Tr*mp years (that never seem to end). I guess I was right: that maybe America wasn’t fully ready for a Black president. It feels like we are still living in a backlash from those heady years of hope.

But, it’s also true that the feeling of hope is one that isn’t dependent on what others do, how chaotic or bonkers it gets out there. It’s only dependent on me.

Knitting has taught me this. I can make absolutely anything with my hands, needles, and yarn. No matter how hard. No matter how much I have to learn. I may not always know how the journey will unfold, and it might end up being a lot harder than I thought when I started, but I can get there.

So, yes, I’ll be there in line at the polls this year. Still voting for hope. A bit more somberly, because the consequences are very real for a whole lot of people. But still voting for hope.

I released my first sweater pattern this week, y’all!! You’ve have given it such a warm reception, from the favorite-ing on Ravelry to the pattern purchases to the kit purchases to the congratulatory emails. Its release gave me lots of hope; thank you.

In this week ahead, I hope you feel glimmers of fall: a cool breeze, crisp in the air, perhaps the early color change of leaves, and a sense of being part of it all, once again. I hope your knitting or crocheting or other hand-making is engaging and gives you hope.