Write about another knitter or crocheter that you admire. Next, think about if anyone has ever told you how they feel about your knitting, positive or negative.
Them
In my most immediate personal circle, I keep an eye on the Canadians. Parallel timestreams – I can glimpse the life I would have had if I had stayed with the sheep, foggy mountains, and endless snow. When I sit down in the man-chair to knit, I think about sarahapple with the Alex Baldwin quilt on her lap (heavy and sweaty), knitting an octopus or Tardis onto a pullover. I think about robotaday cramming wooly mittens onto small pink fists. More fists than there are finished mittens, I imagine. They probably hang on strings, strung damp on foyer hooks or stuffed into coat pockets for soggy morning surprises.
Farther off, I admire Kate Davies, stomping the Scottish countryside with her black dog and writing about textile history. I follow the seasons (windy and cold, green and cold, brown and cold, white and cold, wet and cold) and imagine my ancestors living and working among the hills and rocky beaches. I squint in petty jealousy at Amanda Blake Effing Soule, with her beautiful handmade life and her passion for homesteading that makes me feel defensive about my disposable diapers and store-bought eggs (and soap, and honey, and clothes). If she ever takes up shoe cobbling, I’m throwing it in.
Me
I try to knit in private around here, to avoid the inevitable, “Why do you knit in Hawaaaaiiiii?” and “Oh, what are you crocheting?” I once had a patron who checked out a stack of knitting books to learn from, looked disdainfully at my cardigan when I tried to engage with her, and then said, “Oh no, I don’t like all that cables and fancy stuff, you might as well just buy it. If it doesn’t look homemade, what’s the point?” My head exploded.* But even with my anti-social knitting habits, I’ve been approached a few times at a Scottish function or at the beach by interested old ladies who examine my needles, feel my stitches, and then nod, “That’s good.” It is high praise. But the meat that feeds comes from my family; my sons still jump and hug when I give them an unseasonable hat, the man employs his kilt hose until there are holes in the toes, and my mother will only wear handknit socks when she rides her motorcycle, because they don’t slide down in her boots. They buy me yarn-shop gift certificates on holidays, and leave my knitting bag alone even without threats of hand amputation.
You have to practice being the person you want to grow into. Someone was run over by a car recently, and the headline in the paper read, “Killed woman, 55, liked dogs.” A whole life summed up in one brutal line. LIKED DOGS. It sent me into an urgent inventory of my life. Things made, places seen, books read, torches burned. I can’t go yet. I haven’t made the pacts;if I die, finish my queue. Send the letter I’ve been writing and discarding a hundred times. There are shins to be kicked and witty come-backs to finally deliver. I’m sitting and knitting the way a car roars in neutral.
So I don’t know what people think of my particular knitting, but they seem to like it being done in general, the way it is comforting to see someone banging around in the kitchen or crouched in the garden or laying under a jacked car. It shows that damns are being given, and the world is in order, and there might be a cookie in it for them at the end.
*This has become a household compliment when presented with finished projects. “Oh, that’s no good. It doesn’t look homemade at all, what’s the point?”
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