Break It Down

There’s a new show on the airwaves (or whatever they are these days…I’ve lost track). I should love it. I should be head over heels in love with the very idea of it. Here are the elements:

It’s about knitting and crocheting. Obvious win, right?

It’s hosted by an Olympic diver. This is one of those “two truths and a lie” facts that I often use at ice-breaking events. You’d never believe it to look at me now, but 100 years ago, I was a competitive diver. I peaked in high school, placing 13th at State. (I give autographs on request.) My stinky little brother actually had real talent in the sport and got college scholarships for it. I figure my function was to activate the sibling competition switch and then step aside and watch the magic happen.

In any case, I like the sport quite a bit, and I’ve liked the host ever since he got spotted knitting in the bleachers at the Olympics and ‘fessed up to using knitting as a stress reliever during meets.

It’s modeled after one of Greg’s and my current favorite shows. I have watched every season of the Great British Baking Show and love it. I feel like I meet the nicest people and learn fascinating things all the time.

It’s British. Yes, that makes me like stuff. I know it’s shallow. God save the King.

I should clear the decks and prepare to adore this new show, Game of Wool, and yet I’ve been ambivalent.

I love the attention to Fiber Arts, but speed-based? Yikes! That’s so opposite to how I think about this kind of work.

And apparently there’s some kerfluffle about whether there’s much careful deliberation about precision and accuracy about technical issues and terminology and history, or whether this is more simply about trying to popularize the crafts.

Can we just pause for a moment to reflect on the awful dread at the thought of an island of angry knitters?

Because I’m a curious human, when I happened upon an enormous social media thread about the show, I started browsing through. People are fascinating. Opinions and reactions are as varied as knitters are, which is to say, every possible demographic save “non-knitter” is represented.

However, among all the varied and opposing, entertaining and sometimes puzzling comments, one stopped me in my tracks:

Knitting is a special skill that not everyone can learn.

Hold the phone, I thought. What?! I read it again. No, I wasn’t missing any sarcasm or dry humor (sometimes I do). This dear person fully believed what they’d written and elaborated more fully later on: Knitting is a talent that is a gift, like a beautiful voice or the ability to pick up languages easily. One either has it or they don’t.

Well, friends, I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

When I’ve spoken to people in the past who are nervous about learning to knit, who are afraid they won’t be able to figure it out or remember all the complicated steps, I often ask one question:

Can you tie your shoes?

Granted, there are a few of us (and this number includes me on some days) who really ought to live in the land of the slip-on shoe. But I don’t think we have a collective idea that shoe-tying is a mysterious and daunting process that most of us will never overcome.

It’s a series of physical movements in which we manipulate string to form the secure configuration we want.

Smells like a transferrable concept, doesn’t it?

Knitting (and crocheting) is the same. A series of easily broken-down steps. It’s not magic, it’s practice.

It reminds me of my recent trip to the County Tag Office to register the RV. The wonderful lady who helped me was new to the job, under enormous stress (link in case you’re curious and the server woes of the State of Kansas Treasury Department hasn’t hit the top of your news feed), and now faced with only her second RV registration. But she’d made herself a checklist of all the important tasks that had to be dealt with in every interaction. So even though this one was a doozy with weird forms, a minor computer crash, and a whole bunch of a lot of questions for supervisors, she didn’t miss anything. She’d broken it down to the basics.

My sister-in-law, a special education teacher, and one of the people I most admire on this earth, did something similar with some of her most profoundly disabled students in one school. She took a muffin recipe, broke it down into the simplest individual steps, and helped them each accomplish what steps they could. Can you imagine the joy and sense of accomplishment she gifted these children?

How does it feel when something we think is out of reach becomes accessible?

I wanted to reach out through the internet to the person who posted that comment. Then thoughts of stalkers, true crime, and misunderstandings crept in, and before long the introversion fuse blew, and I remembered there’s a knitting journal for just these musings.

While I want to affirm, with joy, gratitude, and wonder, that there are special gifts granted to some of us, the practice of fiber arts in general is available and accessible to everyone. That’s part of what makes them such valuable tools in educational, therapeutic, and social settings. We are all attracted to color and texture. We can all appreciate something hand made. Fiber arts are an entry-level, baby-step, introduction to so much richness in other artistic pursuits, media, and endeavors.

If you can tie your shoes, you have what it takes. Now, what will you make?

Greg’s Got Questions:

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week!

LAST WEEK’S QUESTION:

What’s your position on historical fiction? Is this a good way to learn history or an opportunity to be misinformed or misled? What mindset do you take when reading this genre to avoid potential pitfalls?

My father and I had many, many debates around these questions. As a history buff, he was horrified that I preferred to learn history from fiction books. I told him that if the history books hadn’t been so boring, I might have learned from them!

The truth is that my favorite historical fiction authors are history nerds. They often have long “Author’s Notes” in the back of the books that sort through what elements of the stories are based on historical facts and what are not. One of the things I’ve learned is that the historical truths are sometimes almost unbelievable.

Sometimes I end up doing internet searches based on something I’ve read. Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth series has a plotline about the wool industry I found particularly fascinating (surprise, surprise), and so I researched into that. I deepened my knowledge about the Industrial Revolution in England and how central the spinning and weaving industries were in that world-shaping event.

Many times, however, I enjoy just absorbing the atmosphere of another time and place. Authors who manage to covey those things with small details in their settings, characters, and tone make me feel like I’m learning something, too.

Greg’s Questions for This Week:

Here are the questions up for the vote this week. I’ll answer the winner in the next newsletter. (As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: If you could redesign the “Game of Wool” to make it as awesome as the Great British Baking Show, what changes would you make? Who would replace Paul Hollywood, Prue, Noel, and the new lady whose name I can’t remember?

Question 2: Which is easier for beginners to learn, knitting or crocheting?

Question 3: What is the most common initial challenge you’ve seen beginning knitters encounter and overcome? And, how have you helped them get over that first hurdle?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J