Accidental KALs: Knitalongs, Community, and Recovery

In this episode, I talk about my current sweater project, knitalongs, and the joys and challenges of community.

Music Credit: Ketsa, "Day Trips"

Transcript

[Intro Music: upbeat melody with trills]

[holly 00:30]

Hello! I hope you’re well! It’s Friday morning; I’m trying my new schedule and I’m really excited to be taking a break from a busy work week in order to think about knitting and stuff that makes me happy. I thought that things would get easier in October (laughter) but that has not happened. This is a hard semester, oh my goodness, but here we are! And so I’m going to enjoy this time with you.

[Holly 01:10]

Thanks so much for showing up and listening to me ramble about knitting and how it connects to other parts of my life. For me, that’s recovery. I’m in a 12-step program (Al Anon) and you know it’s a busy season of life right now at work and I’m finding it hard to even show up at meetings. Of course this is a bad instinct; I need to carve out time for the things that make me happy, which includes recovery and my knitting. One of the things I’m finding with my knitting that is also hard for me with recovery is community.

 [Holly 01:56]

I’m the kind of person who would prefer to read something and process it on my own and then never, ever, ever talk to anyone about it. That’s sort of who I was as a kid and that’s who I was before recovery. And that’s who I am in my low moments; that’s the instinct I have which is not the right one. I should reach out and find experience strength and hope with others. And this podcast is a part of that. 

[Holly 02:23]

But what I’ve been thinking about right now is accidental knit alongs. I don’t think I’ve ever formally participated in a knit along. I think I’ve haphazardly participated but not formally. I find that I get really stressed out with a deadline. I can see the value of community and I can see the benefit but it just, especially with knitting, it just freaks me out a bit. 

[Holly 02:58]

I’m thinking about this because the project I’m working on right now—the Solbein cardigan by Mary Jane Mucklestone—is framed by knitaongs. I think I bought the pattern and the yarn way back in 2019 because of a knitalong with fringe association, right before everything unfolded about racism in the knitting community. And I learned so much that year through the knitting discussion about racism through the community, the really expansive community. I was really glad that I participated in that. I think it helped to make me a better person. But I didn’t end up knitting the cardigan [laugher]. I felt overwhelmed and I just threw it in the bottom of a bin. 

[Holly 04:01]
 That was 2019. In 2020 I knitted a lopi sweater—the felix sweater—that was also a knitalong I think. That was a cheaper brand of yarn, Reynolds I think, and it’s pretty scratchy. It’s great—very warm—but I’m limited in where I can wear it. Mostly just to the ice hockey arena for my kids’ practices. {laughter]. Anyway, one of the things I said last time was that I’m just yearning to knit a sweater. I’ve been rocking on accessories … but I am yearning for a sweater project so I dug this one out. 

[05:29]

I was having a lot of fun with it even though it wasn’t going well. I did a lot of math—I kni a swatch, I even blocked the sweater on the needles but it just wasn’t looking right. So I ended up ripping it back and starting over. Which normally that’s not a pleasant experience with colorwork but I was enjoying the process and practicing my colowork. And boy does this pattern give you a little bit of a workout about it because it’s at times a 3-color-stranded colorwork. There’s a lot of yarn management and you hve to think about its tension. And I was having a lot of fun with it.

[Holly 06:16]

And then I realized that there’s a knitalong happening right now for this pattern and a few others. I think it’s called #quickiecardikal. And I found myself in this dilemma of the pressure of a knitalong. This is why I’m rambling about this today. I really love community. I find it makes me a better person, even though my instinct is to hide (laughter). I’m finding that I love this community; I love that there are people out there who are also interested in thinking about knitting and recovery. It helps me to feel a little less alone. And someday I’d love to figure out a way for us to connect and to share your stories and hear your thoughts about knitting. I can’t handle it right now but hopefully someday I’ll be able to figure out how we can do that and remain anonymous and share our experience, strength and hope. But for now it’s enough that there’s a community out there.

 [Holly 07:30]

So now I’m thinking that it’s the deadline. I’m finding that some of the joy of the project evaporated when I began to think about participating in the knitalong. I thought it would help me to propel it along. Sometimes the knitalong is appealing in other ways. For someone like me, who doesn’t have a huge yarn budget, the idea of prizes is fun and appealing. For some maybe it’s participation in the community, like getting more followers. That can be good. But for me it’s the deadline. It shifts it to a product knit rather than a process one, or something that I’m doing just for me. And I need to watch that, esp with knitting and Instagram. I find it doesn’t do good things for me and my mental health.

 [Holly 08:44]

When I do share things on Instagram, it’s lovely because my community, my whole community, not just my friends who are knitters, like the pic. It’s always humbing to me. I tried to create this private account for just my knitting and sewing makes. I felt sort of ashamed by how much time I was putting into the craft. And I didn’t want my neighbors or my coworkers (laughter) seeing how obsessed I was with knitting. And that was before recovery. I was hiding so much of my life. Things were falling apart and I was knitting a lot to help manage that and I didn’t want anyone to ask me about it because I was struggling with so much sadness and grief watching my partner struggle with addiction and so I thought I could create this separate account and just talk to other people about knitting. But of course everyone just followed me in the new account. {laughter] I mean not everyone. The ten people who followed me on the first account followed me on the new one as well… because they care about me and they want to support me. 

[Holly 09:50]

It’s been a learning curve. That is exactly the exercise I need to be doing in terms of community rather than trying to carve off pieces of my life and present it as shiny and good. 

[Holly 10:06]

 Anyway, back to the cardigan. I think it’s going to work out I’m through the colorwork yoke, even after the second time knitting I thought, yikes, this is going to be too small again. [laughter] Colorwork is really challenging! [laughter] I love knitting because there’s always something new to learn. My colowork is still not great; my tension is crap—it’s puckering—and I’m not sure how great this thing is gong to look but I am going to continue on. I’m going to enjoy and celebrate the community is out there and not feel I have to participate on anyone else’s timeline other than my own. And if I do choose to share I’ll do so with the joy of knitting to cheer on other people’s success rather than some kind of desire to be seen in one kind of way.

[Holly 11:30] 

There’s a joy and tension in community. I’m learning in recovery what the good parts of recovery and how I can participate while also protecting this precious thing that I do just for me, which is knit out of joy. And hopefully I’ll have a nice, warm sweater at the end.

[Holly 11:54]

This is the 49th podcast (I think). For the next one, I’m hoping I can talk about steeking this thing. Again, deadlines don’t work well for me. {laughter] I’m a true middle child. Once I have to do something, I drag my feet. [laughter]. But we’ll see but the idea of a steek and celebrating the community with something bold and I like that symbolism.  I’ve never steeked anything. [laughter] I have cut my knitting. Early in my knitting, I made a scarf for a friend. It was a total fail. It was so heavy; it was like chain mail! [laughter]. It was the wrong yarn. It was beautiful [laughter] but it was terrible. I also didn’t finish it will. I just tied off the ends of yarn I was joinging and then cut them. And not surprisingly [laughter] that didn’t end well. The yarn unraveled from the center out. [laughter]. And I developed a total fear of cutting yarn too close to any knitted object. All that’s to say that steeking is a threshold for me. I can’t wait to share. Even if this sweater is itchy, too small, and I actually cut a sleeve off of it, I’m going to celebrate the process. Because the process is how I recover both in my life and where I learn from knitting. I can always knit another sweater. [laughter}.

[Holly 13:43]

I hope that you’re well. I hope that you have beautiful, beautiful materials to work with. I hope that you are participating in a knitalong, maybe the mkal of Stephen West or the quickie cardi Kal or a fall sock KAL. I hope that it’s bringing you joy. I hope that it isn’t making you feel lonely. I hope the community that you are in sees all the parts of you. I know that sometimes that doesn’t happen. I certainly feel that with addiction. I know that it also happens with racism, with class, with sexual identity and with gender identity. I hope that where you are that you are fully yourself and that you’re seen and loved. And that you have a beautiful sweater on your needles…or maybe a crochet blanket. 

[Holly 14:40]

Take care! Bye!

[Outro Music: upbeat music with bells trills that slows down and trails off at the end]