I recently joined the social media platform BlueSky Social (I might be slightly addicted to social media), and have found on it a group of people under the heading “Just Knitting” (I have also joined a separate group called “Crochet and Knitting”, but as you all by know knitting is my main thing). There are not very many people there yet as it is a new platform, but one of them, Lauren (A Bee in the Bonnet) posted a blog entitled “Why I Refuse to Use the Phrase “Selfish Knitting”” which really caught my attention. You can read the blog here, but it talks about the idea that knitting something for yourself, whether a coaster or a wedding dress, is somehow selfish. The subject of who one knits or crochets for is one that come up all the time in the shop, obviously, and I have found that many people seem to feel that that this is true and that they should always be making for other people.
Consequently, I have been asking customers all week who they knit for and I have really enjoyed the conversations that have come out of that question. And of course, everyone has a different take. There are those who knit almost exclusively for their grandchildren, often regardless of whether their knits will be worn. Sometimes people have told me that they know the parents of the child they are knitting for aren’t keen on the garments, but it does not seem to stop them. I think those people are mad – I would have cherished anything that had been knitted for my children, and I have a (now very tatty) blanket that a friend of mine’s mother crocheted for my son and which I still treasure. Some people only knit for charity, usually baby hats or blankets and I really respect them for it and wish I could be more like them, but never seem to get around to it. Some people do guerrilla knitting – such as toppers for post boxes, or decorations for street furniture. Again, not something that I have tried, but I do love seeing them.
Most of my customers create garments of one kind or another – anything from hats to shawls to jumpers. This, I think, is where the issue of ‘selfish knitting’ might be most obvious. Someone I asked about it said that she thought that you have to be quite extrovert to knit garments for other people – you have to assume that you are skilled enough and that they will actually want the thing that you are knitting. A couple of other people suggested that they would only knit for people who were ‘worthy’ which I translated as being people who would appreciate and wear the garments. My husband, for example, seems to have something against hand-knitting. A hangover from his childhood perhaps? In any event, the cashmere scarf in charcoal grey that I lovingly knitted him a while ago only gets worn on dog walks, and not to the City as I imagined it would be. I could take it as compliment that he wears it all the time, but I know perfectly well it is because he doesn’t like the look of it, preferring to wear woven wool scarves. It means that it is extremely unlikely that I will ever take the time and effort to knit him a jumper. My son has said firmly that he does not want anything handknitted. Only my daughter wears the things I knit – mostly socks and the Buggiflooer Beanie I made last year. So in fact the only person I currently have to knit for is myself, and that is fine. I do not consider that I am being selfish in so doing. Self-indulgent, perhaps, because I have a fondness for luxurious yarns. Of course, I also have the excuse that I need to knit samples for the shop, but I have to be honest and say that I would never knit something for the shop I would not wear. Mandy, of course, has knitted loads of lovely things as shop samples – I am very lucky to have someone here who is such a fast and efficient knitter for sure, and she says she enjoys knitting for the sake of it, which seems to mean that she is happy to give away her hard work. She also knits lovely things for herself, so I do not worry too much.
So why do we feel we should be knitting for others rather than ourselves? Is it just the way in which women (generally) are socialised to always be doing something for others, cleaning, washing, cooking, so that we feel that we are not allowed to do something for ourselves? Is it a way to justify the expense (time and money)? Is it a way to allow ourselves the time to just sit rather than running around being busy? Some people I talked to mentioned the people who assume that because you knit you will be happy to knit them socks or jumpers, apparently from the goodness of your heart, and certainly for free (extraordinarily cheeky, I think). I would be very interested in what you all think about this and whether you knit and/or crochet predominantly for yourselves or for others.