You won’t mind if I knit, I say, in cafes, on park benches and sofas and in other people’s cars, the way I imagine 50 years ago someone might have said, You won’t mind if I smoke. No, of course, my friends say. I don’t know what I’d do if someone said, Yes, actually I’d rather you didn’t.
My grandmother taught me to knit, as grandmothers traditionally do. She also taught me to read, bake cakes, identify a few of the thousands of plants she knew, memorise poetry and survive men’s anger. (The last two are related. Maybe they’re all related, survival skills of one kind or another.) After I’d knitted some dishcloths for her and a jumper for my teddy bear, I didn’t cast on again until I was living in Iceland, 30 years later. It was during the financial crash, which hit Iceland even harder than Ireland – Iceland let the banks fail – and survival skills mattered. Icelanders were knitting on buses and planes, at parties and bars, and in the classes I was teaching at the university. Students didn’t ask, they just took out their books, laptops, coffee – the first time I’d seen people carrying around cups of coffee – and knitting.
[ Róisín Ingle: The power of a good cardigan (and a compliment)Opens in new window ]
I was too new and shy to comment, and I quickly discovered that students who were knitting were usually paying more attention and contributing more to discussion than those intent on their screens. I also learned, as winter came on, that Icelandic knitwear was warmer, cheaper and better for the environment than technical fabric for outdoor clothing. Wool was sold in every supermarket and petrol station. Winter was long and dark, we had small children and no disposable income. I knitted. I knitted a lot. I have gone on knitting a lot. I wouldn’t have the time, people say, usually while they sit beside me with hands at rest, or on their phones. I wouldn’t have the patience. That’s okay, I say, it’s not useful. And I’m not patient, knitting helps me to wait, takes the edge off agitation.
I don’t mind, a new friend said recently, but why? Why do you do it? I was surprised, had no answer. It’s not necessity, or frugality. No one in my life needs an intricate lace shawl or a jumper with an intriguing folded construction. Economies of scale make it far cheaper to buy knitwear than make it by hand, however I cost my time. For pleasure, I said, because I like it, but she rightly persisted. Why do you like it? I like the colours and the textures of yarn, I said, I like choosing them, which is suspiciously close to I like buying stuff. I like patterns, I said, I like the algebra of lace and colourwork. The first computer programmes were weaving patterns. You knit lace in binary, every increase balanced by a decrease, zeros and ones. Patterned knitted fabric is made of “repeats” which are formulae. I like ways of representing patterns, whether in literary or textile form. Text and textile, I said, come from the same root, Latin textere, to weave. But you could like all that, she said, without wanting to knit every time you sit down.
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[ The Banshees effect: Meet the Irish makers knitting up a stormOpens in new window ]
She’s right, of course. The intellectual pleasures of knitting can be separated from the material practice. I could write code instead (well, someone could write code instead). I do, most of the time, write fiction instead. Repetitive movement is soothing. I am also a compulsive endurance runner and serious about yoga, so maybe knitting is running and yoga for my fingers when I have to sit still, but often knitting goes wrong and is not in the least soothing. It’s much more difficult than running which is just a matter of one foot in front of the other until you’re back home, or yoga which can be a dance with difficulty but shouldn’t be a confrontation with it.
I think I knit for various forms of pleasure and comfort, and also because my grandmother knitted, my grandfather made tapestry, my mother knits and sews and my father spins. In a stormy family life where words have often been used to hurt and silences last years, a shared, wordless competence and delight in yarn and needles is an enduring cord.