Early January is a time to pause
and take a breath. The holidays are over, the hustle and bustle of the past
month has slowed, and winter is just getting started. As I recently mentioned
to some friends, winter is the knitter’s natural habitat, especially if you’re
a knitter who enjoys working with wool. I’ll go a step further here and say
that if winter is the knitter’s natural habitat, January is our nesting time,
the time when we can settle in, hunker down, and focus on projects that we want
to do for ourselves.
As
I said, the holidays are over, the projects that we spent weeks and even months
working on with that very special someone in mind are finished, wrapped with
care, and have been given or shipped, for better or worse, to the lucky and
very loved recipients. Knitters and other crafters have been focusing their
creative talents on other people for months, have been putting other endeavors
on hold in order to make, from scratch, projects made with very particular
people in mind. Not that I’m complaining, I’ll certainly continue to make
knitted gifts in the future, but now it’s time to sit back and dig into those
very enticing projects we’ve been ignoring, projects meant just for us.
Because
of this tendency for knitters en masse to focus on themselves, January has come
to be known in the crafting world as “selfish knitting month.” Readers may balk
at this term, as did I when I first heard it, because the word selfish has
definite negative connotations. Knitters in January are no longer focusing on
other people, but are using their labors to solely benefit themselves.
Wait, hold the phone.
Modern knitters knit as a hobby, because it’s an activity they love to do.
According to Anne MacDonald in “No Idle Hands: The Social History of American
Knitting,” knitters a long time ago, in a colonial America far, far away, did
knit for industry. The original knitters were men, who practiced knitting as a
skilled craft as members of guilds. Household items from blankets to shirts to
socks to long underwear to diapers were hand knit by women and children because
to make these items from scratch was significantly cheaper than buying these
items pre-made. Knitters of today will verify that this financial benefit is no
longer the case; we knit because we love knitting, not because we have to or
because we’re saving money.
And by the way,
knitters and crafters are by no means beholden to make handmade gifts for
others, so we can just let go of that eighteenth century notion. Some people
take pleasure in knitting gifts or knitting for charity, but it’s just not
everyone’s bag. I know plenty of people who don’t do gift knitting, or who only
make one gift per year. This is perfectly fine and we don’t need to feel guilty
when we don’t knit and craft for others. Knit for you, and don’t feel guilty
about it. This has been a public service announcement.
Let’s think of some
other hobbies done solely for the benefit and enjoyment of the person doing the
activity. After all, we don’t say people are engaged in selfish golfing,
selfish hiking, selfish woodworking, or selfish baking. Knitters and crafters:
let’s take the self-deprecating “selfish” out of January. We are all absolutely
entitled to knit and craft for ourselves without shame. Instead of selfish
knitting month, why can’t January be “self-care knitting month?” Our loved ones
can probably attest that we are both calmer and saner when we have time to knit
and craft in peace. Let’s all start talking about January as self-care knitting
and crafting month – we could start a revolution, huzzah!
How am I celebrating self-care knitting month?
Thanks to a recent yarn sale at Ocean State Job Lot, I now have the supplies to
make the Yggdrasil Afghan by Lisa Jacobs (look it up on Ravelry – yeah, it’s
pretty awesome). I’m also knitting from stash on the Granite Hues tunic-length
sweater by Jill Wright, published in the January 2012 issue of Creative
Knitting magazine, and re-published in their special Fall 2015 issue.
Are you inspired to
take up knitting, or are you looking for fellow crafters to work with? The
Morrill Memorial Library offers Learn to Knit classes once a month (class size
is very limited, so contact the library at 781-769-0200 to sign up), and our
casual crafting group, Stitch Therapy, meets on the third Tuesday of every
month. We also have lots of knitting, crochet, and other crafting books if
you’re looking for fresh project ideas for the new year; the library also now
subscribes to Vogue Knitting magazine. Remember how I alluded to knitting not
necessarily being a cheap hobby? The library can take some of the financial
considerations off your mind: we lend knitting needles in most sizes in the
form of straight needles, double pointed, and two lengths of circular needles.
Go right ahead and knit for you, Norwood, you’ve earned it!
