In Stitches
A South Ferry-bound 1 train rolls into the 137th street — City College station. dozens of people cram into the chilly, pungent cars, pushing and shoving each other in hopes of snagging one of a few open seats. I get lucky, and I squeeze in between a snoozing construction worker and a teenager whose headphones blare so loudly I can sing along. I settle in, unzip my purse, and pull out a fuzzy, slightly itchy orange ball of Jiffy yarn and a cool, smooth, metallic Wright Boye crochet hook. People always stare; looks of bewilderment spread across their faces before they dismiss me as just another strange New Yorker.
But I’m not so strange. For quite some time now, I’ve seen more and more young people crocheting and knitting. In fact, I am on my way to the Lion Brand Yarn Studio in Chelsea. The Lion Brand Studio, which opened in late 2008, is the only retail store of the Lion Brand Yarn Company. Lion Brand is one of my favorite yarn brands. From the cozy fuzziness of Jiffy — Hunter, the family cat, is a big fan — to the snuggly warmth of Wool-Ease — nothing like a thick, wool cowl neck to keep out the New York winter! — Lion Brand and I seem to be quite the pair for churning out homemade scarves galore come holiday time. Behind schedule as usual, I am just buying Christmas-present supplies. If I were simply buying presents, I’d have a jump on the general population. Considering that I am crocheting all of my gifts, and I have a rather large circle of loved ones, I’m in a bit of a time crunch.
The pressure to illustrate my love through presents is not the only reason that I’m venturing to the studio on this particular day. The instructors there offer free advice and technical assistance. As Andrea, one of the beginners’ teachers, looks over my stitched-a-bit-too-tight mangled necktie — I’m really no good at reading patterns; fpdc is a particular weakness — we begin to chat about my theory that younger generations — i.e., mine — have stolen yarn crafting from the world’s grandmothers. She laughs, but agrees. Over the last decade, she says, crocheting and knitting have become “hip” hobbies.
“Here it’s been cool for the last 10 years or so. Since I was in college, I’ve seen a big increase. In the beginning classes, we have a lot of people coming in who are in their 20s and 30s,” she said. Andrea is careful to state that these crafts are hip “here,” but not in other countries around the globe. Andrea assured me that when she was 19 and living in Germany, crocheting and knitting — she does both — were by no means cool. Many of the kids her age looked down on the activities as something that old people do. I could relate. When I studied abroad in Rome, I took one skein of yarn with me. It only took a few bus rides and a plethora of stares for me to realize that crocheting was an activity best kept hidden, not the conversation starter I had secretly hoped it would be.
In Brooklyn, Megan Canning runs Knit+Wine Brooklyn. This group meets monthly at Bar Olivino to chat, knit, crochet, embroider, and drink wine. Megan started the group in January 2009: “I was a new knitter, and I wanted to tap into the local Brooklyn knitting community that I knew was there and launch a platform for knitters to gather and share and help one another,” Megan said. In the beginning, there were only about three members attending each month. Now Megan has to waitlist people every month, as the group maxes out at 20. Although the group’s members range in age from 20 to 50 years old, Megan said that most members are somewhere in the middle; but even 30 is far from grandma territory.
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“She supported my hobby with yarn deliveries and tales of projects she’d completed or seen on a recent episode of ‘The Martha Stewart Show.’ On this day — her penultimate one, in fact — she could no longer remember how to crochet, so I started a blanket as she watched, more interested in my face than the stitches.”
It took countless hours of practice, dozens of yards of yarn, and quite a few hand and back cramps before my creations were good enough to be given to others. I picked up my first hook when I was 18. That summer, while working as a counselor at an art camp in Columbia, Md., I convinced one of my coworkers to teach me to crochet. Heather, a morbid 20-something secretary, was the last person I would have guessed was capable of crafting dainty pastel mini-purses and trinkets. Nonetheless, she had been crocheting the most beautiful purses, scarves, and trinkets for as long as I could remember. So one night, after a long day of crafting and sarcasm with my group of tweens, Heather gave me my first — and only — lesson. Aided, or perhaps inhibited by red wine and desert, I learned enough of the basics to proceed on my own. And proceed I did, resulting in endless rows of jagged single crochet stitches.
Although I had faint recollections of my grandmother crocheting when I was younger, I had never attempted it myself before this night. Ragged, uneven edges aside, I took to the craft immediately. For the same reason that I never read instructions when assembling furniture or stop for directions when I’m lost, I refused to count my stitches. I wanted crocheting to be a carefree activity that I did to relax, to de-stress after a long day. It would be nice, I thought, to make pretty things; but my main goal was a fun, inexpensive, and relaxing hobby. This is why I refused to count. This is also why it took me months to crochet anything with a remotely straight edge without stopping, unraveling, and starting over five times. I’m sure that sounds quite stressful, but with no end-use in mind or deadline approaching, it wasn’t. (As a journalist, almost any moment spent not thinking about a pending deadline is a good one.)
While I decided to learn to crochet once I was an adult, many people learn at a much younger age. Andrea, the Lion Brand instructor, learned when she was 4 years old. A great-aunt taught her, although she doesn’t remember learning; It became something that she felt she always knew how to do. On the other hand, my grandmother wasn’t successful at passing the skill down to my aunts and mother. She must have crocheted often, because there were at least a dozen afghans littering her quieting house in her final days. Giant, itchy, unfinished pink ones — undoubtedly meant to be a gift — and smaller, softer, somber ombré ones with slowly unraveling loops; you get the picture. My aunt Leila is about as crafty as a thumbtack, so I understand why she never picked it up, but my mother and aunt Christina are both artsy types. “I asked her to teach me around my teen years, when I saw some of the stuff she made. She showed me how, and I did it for a short while before I lost interest,” Christina said. This sounded vaguely familiar, as she tried to pick up crocheting when I learned. She gets about five rows in before she decides there is something else she needs to be doing.
In my grandmother’s final days, I attempted to crochet with her for the first time. We were always close, but before I became an adult, I didn’t share her interest in crocheting. Once I learned, and began to share my not-yet-completed projects with her, she criticized my projects as too tightly stitched, convinced that I had no clue what I was doing — yes, those were her words. Nonetheless, she supported my hobby with yarn deliveries and tales of projects she’d completed or seen on a recent episode of The Martha Stewart Show. On this day — her penultimate one, in fact — she could no longer remember how to crochet, so I started a blanket as she watched, more interested in my face than the stitches.
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After more than five years of my own simple creations, I’ve started to rely on patterns. Using patterns is a big step for me; it means being less selfish with my hobby, but it also means growing and expanding my craft — I can see a light at the end of the scarf-laden tunnel! Although I’ve been making my family’s Christmas gifts for the past three years, they haven’t been anything spectacular. Mostly, I hand out simple, rectangular scarves. Sometimes they are striped. Sometimes they have fringe or pom-poms. Occasionally I branch out to cases for cellphones, GPS devices, and iPods, but I never stray far from a square or rectangular shape. My aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends never complain. Nevertheless, my own needs as the creator have always trumped those of the receiver: I had an exam and needed to relax, so I made my dad a scarf. I didn’t make it for him; I made it for me. Not anymore. This year my family will get pieces created especially for them, with their needs and wants in mind. Logan, one of my younger cousins, will get a ruffled, tricolored scarf — just prissy enough for an aspiring princess. Someone will get the blanket I started crocheting to bond with grandmother but am finishing to remember her. As of now, it has been unfinished, but not drastically so, for more than a year. Perhaps, inside a carefully, brightly wrapped box under our artificial tree on Christmas morning, someone will discover the blanket — still unfinished.
Among the laundry and books that always litter my floor, there are instructions for a dozen crochet patterns and stitches. One of them, the Peephole Chevron Stitch, makes my head spin each time I read it: “Skip 2ch (count as 1dc), 1dc into each of next 4ch, *skip 2ch, 1dc into each of next 4ch, 2ch, 1dc into each of next 4ch; rep from * to last 6ch, skip 2ch, 1dc into each of next 3ch, 2dc into last ch, turn.” Armed with a bottle of Tylenol, a skein of yarn, and my favorite hook, I get started.
