I have been a devotee of playing with fiber since I was seven years old—and that is far enough in the past that I don’t quite want to say how long ago it was. Suffice it to say that I have crocheted, knitted, and needlepointed my way through many swings in any one craft’s social perception. I’ve been steadfast in my refusal to follow the dilettantes who put down their hooks and needles when a craft isn’t hip anymore.
Currently, I suffer discrimination when crocheting. However, the perpetrators aren’t the ones you might suspect. I have been working on a blanket for Project Linus recently, striped in vibrant blues and greens in response to the local chapter’s request for less traditionally girly colors. It is soft, cushy, and bright—and it is crocheted. When I work on it in the waiting room of my daughter’s dance class, no one says a word other than to comment on how pretty it is. When I pull it out at the local yarn store’s sit and knit night, however, I can see the eyes roll and the teeth grit as soon as it become evident what project I will work on that night.
“That again?” says one woman who has umpteen unfinished knitted things in her bulging project bag. “Isn’t that … crochet?” says another as she looks down her nose and shudders. Here among my fellow fiber addicts, where I think I should feel completely comfortable in my choice of craft, I feel the sting of rejection. It is as if I have whipped out a cheeseburger and fries in the middle of a vegetarian restaurant. Often I am tempted to stuff the blanket back in my bag and pull out a pair of complicated socks knit on five double pointed needles just to fit in and prove that I am a “real” knitter. And some nights, when I am too tired to buck public opinion, that is just what I do.
In the last few years we have heard all we ever wanted to about knitting. The media blasted the same headlines over and over, “Knitting is the new yoga! Knitting isn’t for grandmothers anymore! Knitwear leads the fashion trends!” I knitted when it was trendy and I knitted when it wasn’t… the only upside that I can see to the media trumpets is that people don’t look at me quite so oddly when I knit on the bus.
But I feel on some levels that the knitters jumped onto the cool kids’bus and have tried to lock the doors behind them to keep the other crafters out. Are they so insecure in their newfound societal acceptance that they don’t want to muddy the waters? Is there only so much fiber tolerance in the world? Is it really that they can’t reliably do a double crochet and are jealous? I just don’t know.
I find it especially odd, because at the most basic level, crochet and knitting both are all about fiddling with string to make something beautiful. So why the competition? Why don’t people do both? And why do I feel compelled to hide my crochet habit when I am outnumbered? I find myself sneaking Interweave Crochet into the bottom of my stack at the local yarn store underneath the knitting magazines. If pressed, I might even blurt out that I was buying it for a friend.
Craft, like medicine, has become increasingly specialized. Years ago, craft magazines catered to crocheters and knitters both, as well as those who did embroidery or needlepoint. There weren’t different magazines for each craft. You paged through McCall’s Needlework and Crafts, or any of the popular women’s magazines, and made whatever appealed to you. We weren’t neurosurgeons; we were general practitioners—solving whatever problem was put in front of us with the best tools we had at hand.
Like living through other trends, I am trying not to get carried away on the specialist wave. I make what I like, when I like it, and am happy enough to knit or crochet (or weave or spin or needlepoint) if that’s what I feel like doing at the moment. I got faked out by the surge of knitterly acceptance and need to get back to my “do what I feel like” roots.
But crocheters, knitters, weavers lend me your ears! Can’t we all just get along? I really need to finish that blanket …