Honoring Your Craft

The following article excerpt is taken from Sally Melville's knitting series Book 2: The Pearl Stitch/Becoming Intuitive.  Seeing that I'm knitting gift socks (this pair for instance is for my mother-in-law's birthday.  Shhh, don't tell her you've already seen them) and seeing that the prospect of offering handmade gifts--whether knitted or otherwise--swirls around in many folks' heads this time of year, I figured it an appropriate time to share her words of wisdom:

A survey done on Canadian radio posed the question, "What is the most dreaded Christmas present?" 

The answer was not the heavy-as-a-brick fruit cake...It was a handknit sweater!

I'm not sure what this says about our craft. Perhaps it harkens back to a childhood in which one desperately wanted a Red Ryder BB gun but was given a brown and orange, ill-fitting but practical handknit sweater.

Whatever this was about, we can all make it our personal mission to override such a dreadful stereotype...by learning all that we can to be the best knitters we can and by raising public consciousness about the knitting community.  Here are my suggestions:

 

• Knit in public. (You'll answer questions, meet other knitters, learn a trick or two, and perhaps even teach a new knitter.)
• Access your knitting community.(...visit shops, bookstores, Web sites...to which you can connect and from which you can learn.)
• When you knit for others, make sure it works for them! (This may mean knitting something you don't like--in a style you don't like, in a stitch pattern you don't like, in a color you don't like.  It may also mean ripping and re-knitting to make it fit.  But they get what they want--which does much for knitting--and you'll learn from the experience.)
• When you find yourself excusing a mistake ("a blind man on a galloping horse will never see it"), you need to fix it...or repeat it.  If done three or more times, it becomes a design feature.
• Notice--and compliment--the knitting you see. (If I see someone wearing what I think is a handknit sweater, I ask, "Is that a handknit sweater?"  If the answer is "Yes," I then ask, "Did you make it yourself?" If the answer is again "Yes," we start a conversation and perhaps bond for life.  If the answer is "No," I then say, "Someone loves you very much.")

 Happy gifting!