So Knitting Is Trendy. (Who Cares)
At this point the internet has existed long enough that I’m no longer shocked by what becomes trendy. Harmonica solos? Of course. Showing off a stack of hand-carved linocut stamps? Naturally. Somebody somewhere is going to love something obscure and make it popular. This is a quirky but kind of beautiful part of life with the internet. I like that old skills are coming back en masse due to a greater awareness of them. From wood-working to bobbin-lace, this is how skills of the past are kept from dying. It’s cool to learn them from someone in your real life, but learning from the delight of an internet stranger is its own, special thing.
I’d be lying if I said that my recent return to knitting wasn’t a little influenced by seeing young people busting out their needles across social media. When I discovered a yarn shop in my favorite part of town my fate was sealed. But I can’t help it. I love when someone’s delight has pinged up to space from their phone and back to mine phone and it’s still so very palpable even through a screen. When I see people on social media practicing all of these half-forgotten skills it’s like we’re collectively returning to slower ways. Like we’re remembering that we are able to learn, that we love to learn. That old does not mean bad. That half-forgotten is not all forgotten.
Do I feel a little silly that it took homemade knitwear blossoming across social media to convince me to pick it back up? Yes. But in my defense, this isn’t my first romance with needles. Like the 2010’s hipster culture, I was into knitting “before it was cool.”
As a 90’s homeschooled kid, I grew up with lots of spare time, comparatively little screen time, and few formal extra-curriculars. As a child of musician parents, I was destined for a creative path. Of course it turned out that I didn’t follow a musical path, but my fine motor skills developed at a clip all the same. Pick any day; I could be found knitting, crocheting, making hand-appliqued quilt squares, hand-sewing clothing for dolls, machine-sewing clothing and costumes for myself, doing “red-work” and other embroidery, trying (and failing) to make tatted lace, learning to smock and then never using the skill again. (To say nothing of the other art forms in which I dabbled.) I’m not here to claim that I became expert in any of those things, but I did spend hours in the practice of creation. To make something out of nothing is...spiritual. I think the best feeling in life might be when you feel powerful, creative energy spilling from pricked fingertips and tired hands. Whether I’m casting on a new project or typing up another Substack newsletter, writing in my journal or decorating a sourdough loaf with a scored feather pattern, “busy creating something” is my most natural state.
So far, the act of creating. Then there is enjoying what you create! A swift way from creation to consumption would be, of course, to cook a meal. But other less consumable ways of enjoyment exist, and one of these is to make something wearable and gift it to yourself, or to someone else.
This is what I’ve come to adore about knitting.
My Grandmama spent her career as a ballet instructor at her own studio and, later, as a skilled seamstress. For years she created elaborate costumes for the ballets, yes, but could also make literally anything else imaginable: heads of Nutcracker Mice, Halloween costumes, drum mallets, sofa cushions, historical clothing, aprons, baby blankets, wedding gowns. Whenever I stepped from the kitchen into her sewing room, I knew I’d be met with a Degas heap of tulle, satin, and lace flung across her felt-covered table. Over this reigned a black Singer sewing machine, received as a wedding gift in the 1950’s and still in use for as long as she continued sewing. The classical music station crackled comfortably as Grandmama quietly pushed fabric under the foot of her machine. I loved that room.
I loved the sounds of the sewing words: rick-rack. bobbin. spool. muslin. seam ripper.
I loved the way each word got trimmed short when she had spare pins clamped between her lips.
I loved the sound of sharp fabric scissors cutting through layers of fabric. Snick…snick.
Really it was impossible not to get sleepy in her sewing room, lulled into a comfortable drowse by the pervasive hum of sewing machine, radio static, words, textures. She taught me how to sew, and though I’ve forgotten much of how to work with patterns, fabrics, the machine itself, I know those skills are only dormant. Like my knitting, I know that one day when I have more space in my house and access to a sewing machine again, I can regain what she showed me.
Though Grandmama is no longer here, the things she created remain. Tangible things, like the costumes that are mine, hanging in my parents’ closet; the quilt that covered my hope-chest; the toddler-size dress with tiny red roses that I hope for a daughter to wear one day. Intangible things too: skills passed from her hands to mine, locked up somewhere in my memory. When to cut on the bias. How to mark a pattern with a chalk. I don’t currently remember these things, but I know I could remember them.
I love that the things we make - paintings, carvings, pottery, drawings - have a life outside of the time it takes to make them. Since beginning to knit, I’ve made a sweater for a baby I do not have, and three Oslo beanies from Petite Knit. Two are for me, one is for a friend. I love the way it feels to be handling knitting needles and yarn again, working through a pattern like a puzzle, seeing something grow over time. It is not quick. It is not even cost-effective. No one could tell you honestly that spending $120 on yarn for an adult-size sweater is cheaper than buying a sweater ready-made. But it is worthwhile.
I guess that concept is something my knitting practice is showing me: that the act of making is, itself, worth any price. Next week Andrew and I are headed out of town for a combination wedding & vacation, and I picked a new project to take with me on our planes/trains/automobiles style travel. I wanted something small, portable, but more challenging than yet another beanie, so I am going to attempt my first pair of socks! I’m a little bit of a coward and have so far chosen to stick the patterns from Petite Knit because they are thorough, fairly easy to understand, and often have video-instructions to help you work through any of the complex bits. These socks are no different. I’ll be trying (trying being the operative word) to try to knit a pair of Ruffle Socks.
I don’t really enjoy knitting in the round on double-point needles, I have definitely never tried anything so complicatedly three-dimensional, and the 2.5 mm needles look remarkably small. But I’m excited! I know that I can learn, and therefore I know that I can do it. After occupying the shallow end of “level 2 out of 5” difficulty I’m ratcheting up to a 3, and maybe it’ll kick my butt. But maybe I’ll come out the other side with some really cute ruffle socks to wear with my Birkenstock clogs this fall?
When it came to reviving my ability to knit, a couple of YouTube videos brought back to life whatever desiccated muscle memory remained. I had never been good at knitting, so the lost ground recovered swiftly and each project has built upon the last. So all misgivings aside, I do think I’m ready for socks. Or I’ll try to be. Or I’ll blithely spend time knitting and unravelling and knitting again till it looks somewhat right. In any case, it will be worth my while.
Love,
Rachel
P.S. Tell me, have you rediscovered any skills lately? Or can you think of one you’d like to learn?
Yes! I, too, have been in a reawakening of creative skills laid dormant. I crocheted two dish clothes in the past month. I'm on a mission to see what kinds of projects I can do without purchasing anything so I'm glad that granny squares are cool online now because I want to make some interest granny squares as I work through my yarn bin.
My parents got an old sewing machine tuned up for me so now I need to gather up the courage to learn that machine again after not having used a sewing machine for 15 yrs. I want to work through the fabric bin that was holding lots of old WIPs in my parents attic.
Love this so much! “Trying (and failing) to make tatted lace” speaks very deeply to me lol. Still hoping to figure it out someday… I re-learned how to can with my mom over the past two summers. So many things have come rushing back that I remember her telling me as a child, but now that I’m ready to use the knowledge repeatedly, it’s sticking!