There comes a time in everyone’s life when we are forced to admit we are a 78 year old, living in a 21 year old’s body. Mine occurred during my second year of uni, when, as my housemates and I settled down in front of our fun-sized TV to a traditional Saturday night of Take Me Out, wine and complaining about essay deadlines, without even realising what I was doing I reached down the side of the sofa, pulled out a ball of grey wool and a pair of knitting needles, and began to cast on. Looking up, I was met with gazes of mottled confusion, curiosity and judgement from my housemates, the intensity of which caused me to attempt to justify my actions by adopting what I deemed to be the voice of a cool, confident woman who owns her eccentricity and idiosyncrasy, and saying ‘that’s right. I knit now’.
Contrary to my unapologetic statement, I didn’t admit then that my knitting adventures were not really that new a thing. As the daughter of a former textile buyer and owner of a jumper company, it was inevitable that my childhood would have comprised a vast amount of fabric, buttons, yarn and beads, but until that one fateful moment,I had managed to keep my involvement in this world firmly away from my peers, breaking out only as I managed to successfully thread up a sewing machine in my second Textiles GCSE lesson before the others had located the power switch. Fast forward a few years, and in November 2011 my life changed forever when my mother finally achieved her lifelong dream and opened a textile craft shop, in which I began to work casual hours whenever I was at a loose end. Like all good retail employees.
In the way that having the leftovers of a cake or bar of chocolate in the fridge niggles at you until you just have to eat them, being surrounded by so many incredible colours, textures and possibilities in the shop niggled at me constantly, until I simply had to yield. Relearning how to knit, after the uneven and curtailed scarves of my younger years, was possibly one of the most significant breakthroughs I have experienced, and unlocked the creativity within me that I had been repressing ever since my dad threw away my prized collection of fruit-scented gel pens, because ‘the odour was giving him migraines’.
Like all practical skills, my knitting began prescriptively and cautiously, as I got used to how the yarn felt between my fingers, letting the patterns’ specifications guide me and regularly seeking aid from my mum for every tangle, dropped stitch and bit of terminology I didn’t understand. The garment I was secretly knitting at uni was actually for my ex-boyfriend Tom, after he had foolishly once expressed an interest in owning a handmade jumper, an offhand statement I am sure he heartily regretted the second he was presented with the finished article, the sleeves of which would have been snug on even a particularly underweight 7 year old boy. After many failed attempts and miles of unpicking however, my jumper prowess began to improve.
Because it is actually possible to have too many jumpers, I elected to take my knitting a step further, and instead of being lead by other people’s designs, I let the colours of the yarns fuel my creations, every combination of tone, hue and texture sparking some form of excitement and thrill within me. I had never realised quite how much colour can captivate until I began to use it as a raw material. Kaffe Fassett, one of the most prolific knitwear and patchwork designers of the last 50 years (and consequently my mum’s personal Jesus) refers to this phenomenon as ‘being totally turned on’ by colour and texture, and as much as the grumpy cynic within me wants to respond ‘shut up Kaffe you randy old bastard’, I really do get what he means.
My obsession with the pop and sizzle of combining colours and textures overtook me and consumed me like very few things ever have. Before I knew where I was, I was using fabric, thread, yarn, beads and buttons to produce items of clothing and accessories at an astonishing rate, and receiving everything from awed compliments to judgemental shade as I paraded down the streets in my handmade creations.
As much as my newfound ability to turn whatever beautiful patterns, colours, designs and occasional discarded objects that took my fancy into actual, wearable (though some would disagree) items, the greatest outcome of learning to knit, sew, crochet, needle-felt and decoupage at the shop has been unlocking a whole new world of original, handmade gifts for others. Although I have ventured down this particular avenue before, when in 2009 my friends all received special birthday hand-drawn, charcoal portraits of themselves and their favourite celebrity in a loving embrace, I feel I have now stepped up my gift-game somewhat, using a variety of techniques to produce replicas of friend’s pets, quirky fashion accessories, and even homages to their favourite TV characters. Some have failed spectacularly, and some emerged magnificent, but I gave all away with infinitely more satisfaction than if I had arbitrarily purchased them from Amazon as I was previously wanton to do.
Just as the glorious emergence of Geek Chic in the mid 2000s saw countless skinny white guys with social anxiety finally able to bask in the glow of mainstream acceptance, the handmade craft boom of the last few years has allowed me to open up about my free-time preferences, so much so that I can now crochet on board public transport without fear of ending up as a figure of fun on a niche tumblr site. Despite the growing popularity of handicrafts, catalysed by TV exposure including The Great British Sewing Bee, This Old Thing and Kirstie Allsopp’s dramatic freeing from the shackles of Phil Spencer, a common question posed to me is simply ‘why?’ ‘Why bother making things when you can just go out and buy them in a fraction of the time?’
This is a very valid question, I can’t deny. And I’d be lying spectacularly if I said that I’d never thrown a strop over just how many more goddamn rows I’d have to knit and how many weeks I’d have to wait to actually be able to wear the sodding jumper I was working on. Back in the golden heyday of crafting, this question used to be nobly challenged by the fact that it was infinitely cheaper to make something yourself than to buy it finished, but sadly that is no longer the case. I know personally that once I’ve shelled out for seven balls of nice quality yarn/fabric, buttons, thread and appropriate equipment, a swift visit to ASOS looks tantalisingly appealing. And despite the sometimes infuriatingly sub-par delivery service that ASOS provides, I would still be wearing a newly purchased garment a good month before any handmade one.
I say, if the idea of sitting down to a sewing machine with metres of fabric, or curling up with a pair of needles and balls of yarn fills you with genuine, retch-inducing repulsion, then fair enough. Its clear that crafting is just not your thing. I am lightyears away from being a patient crafter myself, and often find the lengthy processes that populate the time between having the beautiful vision of yourself twirling down the street modelling some stunning, handmade creation and finally being able to do so deeply frustrating. However, for those so inclined, there is undeniably and indisputably a profound value in the process of crafting itself; a quiet, internal flutter of self-motivation and validation that drives every flick of the yarn around the needle, and every satisfying removal of a pin just before fabric is wonderfully fused together by needle and thread. For me, the joy and enjoyment is derived from using colour and texture in a way that transcends visual appreciation, and means I am able to meld the two in a manner that only I can decide, to wear or display as an extension of my own creativity.
As well as the immense sense of satisfaction and achievement that comes from making things, not to mention the joy of being able to finally give my friends presents that I can be sure they will fully appreciate and enjoy, there is something about the physical process of craft that nourishes the soul like little else. A few weeks ago, I attended one of the biannual trade-shows for craft business owners, and happened upon a talk given by Betsan Corkhill, an ex-physiotherapist who discovered the incredible health benefits of knitting. Through her website stitchlinks, Betsan describes the remarkable changes that have occurred in mental health patients and suffers of chronic pain, simply through learning the rhythmic and calming process of knitting. From soothing panic attacks to allowing those with social anxiety to open up to new people, staving off alzheimer’s to reaching someone swallowed in a fog of depression, the effects are staggering, but all point to the inconceivably far-reaching power of handicraft – losing yourself in a world of meditative, repeated process, relaxing into the feel of fibre and diving into an ocean of colour.
I think I will always find my solace in craft, and will always turn to it to validate my own sense of self. Despite the stigma and negative connotations that still anchor knitting, crochet and dressmaking to the seabed of old fashioned, outdated and unnecessary pastimes, I’ve come too far now and am too many jumpers down the line to be stopped in my tracks. Whether craft for you is a hellish nightmare of a concept, cute and kooky idea to be dipped into every now and again, steady beacon in an otherwise hostile world, or simply a way of life, its important to remember that at its absolute rudiments, craft should be nothing but fun.