SED 407 Literacy Profile: My Knitting Literacy

I started knitting after college, during a significant period of transition in my life. I had just left New York City where I had been in school and where all my friends remained. I was living with my parents, had an internship, and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. This was also the early 2000s and the crafting/DIY movement was just getting started – all the cool kids were knitting. I have always been a crafty person and knitting appealed to me. I wanted to make beautiful knit garments that I could wear or give to friends and family. And, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t a student – no homework, no exams to study for, more time for hobbies. I also had this sense, which is funny to me now, that my real adult life was beginning. I was thinking a lot about what I wanted that life to be like, what kind of an adult I wanted to be, and part of how I envisioned myself was as a maker or a crafter – a knitter.

My knitting education began with me buying a skein of yarn, a pair of single-pointed knitting needles, and a how-to knitting book for beginners. I remember sitting on my bed at my parent’s house, teaching myself to knit. I think I successfully managed to cast-on, knit, and purl, but I quickly realized that if I wanted to do more, I’d need some help. So I signed up for a knitting class through the local continuing education program.  The teacher structured the class around knitting a sweater because she said a common mistake made by beginning knitters is that their first project is usually a long scarf in simple stockinette stitch – most people get bored with this, put the project down, and never pick it up again. Knitting a sweater is more interesting and demands that a knitter learn more than just simple stitches. I never finished the sweater I started in this class, but I’ve never stopped knitting. Taking that class, working through the mistakes and awkwardness of my first project with the instructor and my classmates, initiated me into the culture of knitting. I was no longer an outsider, with no clue what knitting was all about – I was knitting literate, at least on a basic level. I didn’t learn everything about knitting in that class, but I developed confidence in my ability to knit, allowing me to move forward and learn more on my own. I was officially a knitter.

Though now I am at the point where I can teach someone else how to knit, I still continue to learn about knitting every time I start a new project. When I need help, I turn to books, magazines, online videos, and other knitters. The community of knitters is rich and lively, both online and in real life. Knitters love to get together to share projects, talk about knitting, and help each other out. No matter what strange town I might find myself in, I know I could go into the local knitting shop and ask for help with a project (after fondling all the beautiful yarn, of course). The knitting community was particularly important to me in the year after I lost my father, when I joined a local Stitch & Bitch group. The weekly act of knitting with others, building new friendships over a shared interest, was healing. I’m inspired by the beautiful and creative things that other knitters make – from complicated Fair Isle sweaters to silly stuffed dinosaurs. I’m especially impressed by knitters who can create their own patterns, a level of knitting literacy that I have yet to achieve. I mean, check out this brilliant anatomically correct knit brain! And beyond learning more and more about how and what to knit, I love learning about the history and evolution of knitting. I love art inspired by or involving knitting, such as Dave Cole’s Knitting Machine or the giant knit rabbit made by Italian art collective Gelitin. I love the political side of knitting culture as well; that knitters are yarn bombing trees and army tanks and sending knit uteri to congress.

I have never thought about knitting in the context of literacy before, but as I do now, I realize how much of a specialized language knitting requires. There are the terms I’ve mentioned already, such as knit, purl, stockinette, casting on. But that’s just the beginning. There are many other types of stitches and techniques – garter stitch, seed stitch, ribbing, cables, binding off, increasing and decreasing, intarsia. There are needles of all sizes and they’re double-pointed or circular or used especially to make cables. Yarn comes in bundles called skeins, in numerous materials and weights, such as fingering and worsted and sport. You must learn how to read knitting patterns, in which everything is abbreviated – to know, for example, that “ssk” means “slip, slip, knit” (and what does that even mean?). And when you’re ready to try lace knitting, there’s the daunting challenge of reading lace charts. And now you want to crochet? That’s a whole new language. I’ve loved learning the language of knitting and being a part of the “knitting literate.” I also love the math and spatial reasoning of knitting, the problem solving. I’m a better knitter than I was when I bought that first skein of yarn, but knitting continues to be a pleasurable challenge.

For me knitting is more than a hobby, it’s something of a mindfulness practice. It’s simultaneously stimulating and relaxing, almost meditative. It can be a social activity, connecting me to others, or a solitary one, connecting me to myself. When I’m feeling down, the act of knitting can pull me up – on a bad day, if I accomplish nothing else, at least I can say, “I knit an inch of a sock today.” It feels good to have made something with my own hands. It’s interesting to think of the impact knitting has had on my life through the lens of literacy and in considering my future as a teacher. It’s helped me to recognize my knitting abilities as literacy, literacy that has helped me develop valuable skills and allowed me entrance into a rich community. As a teacher, sharing this experience with my students may be a way to model motivation for learning. I had an interest, set a personal challenge, and reached out for the help I needed to accomplish my goal. Furthermore, I want to be a teacher that recognizes and values the non-traditional literacies of my students and helps them use those skills and interests for academic success. I want to send the message that it is not only the traditional academic subjects that have value in our lives. Knitting could easily be brushed off as simply a fun hobby, but it has enriched my life and expanded my mind. And the world is full of other such seemingly unimportant pursuits for all of us to explore.

This is me (years ago) with an octopus I knit.