You might not have e-spinners and elegant rhythmic spinning wheels gracing your internet feeds (I’m sorry), or fluffy color-flecked bats of scoured and carded wool. You might not get the particular thrill of seeing someone walk by you at a fiber festival with a garbage bag slung over their shoulder filled with a complete sheep’s fleece! (A huge thrill). It’s almost enough to make me, an avid, verging on obsessed knitter who does own a carding comb and a spinning wheel, start to spin my own wool into yarn. This we all know is a gateway craft and before I know it, I could be a fully fledged shepherd.

So, no, I do not currently spin, but I think that is almost besides the point to this question. Because “spinster” is defined by Merriam Webster as:

1: a woman whose occupation is to spin

2a (archaic): an unmarried woman of a family of high social station

b: an unmarried woman and especially one past the common age for marrying

3: a woman who seems unlikely to marry

Ok, let’s address number 1 - I own a knitting business called Knit & Gather with my partner Kate and it is my main job. I would say this is a point in the yes column. I knit, teach knitting, and make knitting tools for a living.

2 a & b - while I’m very firmly middle/working class, this may be considered high to some. And even though the marrying age is creeping up there, I do feel like a bit of a late bloomer in the romantic sphere of my life. I am engaged but I feel like this falls outside the scope of this question as it stands today ;)

3 - Ok yes, I am going to get married next year, but since I am marrying a woman, would that even be recognized in the archaic time when the word “spinster” was used? Plus it felt dicey there for a while before I met my fiancé. I think turning away from patriarchal norms and expectations to procreate does count for this question. Spinsters were even “accused,” back in the day, of being lesbians or worse, suppressing their sexuality (the horror!). Please note my sarcasm here.

What I’ve found while looking into this, is that for many many years the word “spinster” was completely synonymous with the title “old maid.” Even in my life up to this point, I would describe the common usage of “spinster” to be derogatory. There really isn’t an equal word to describe an unmarried man because the very root of “spinsters” existing is in the patriarchy. Being single made a woman more desirable to work in a fabric factory because she would not be busy child rearing.

But getting to know actual spinners and weavers, and diving headfirst into the local fiber community, it’s full of a diverse range of impressive and inspiring women. My spinning wheel, which was kindly gifted to us from a crafty neighbor, is sitting in our fiber studio and it does call to me. It’s only a matter of time before I succumb to its charms. By this time next year, I might have my own flock.

Conclusion: I am a spinster, and I’m proud.

Fiber Book Club

For those who don’t know, we are currently reading through the collection, Knitting Pearls. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments if you’ve enjoyed it so far!

What’s clear to me is that knitting touches many lives, like a literal web, spinning out from the person who actually knit the object. Almost half of these essays are from that other side of the knitting exchange, gift receivers or just observers. This book also lives at the intersection of knitting and writing, and I found the essay Positive Capability especially interesting as someone who loves to knit and loves to write. The author, Maile Meloy, compares the two craft and asks, ‘Should one know what they are doing midprocess, or do you wait for the end result?’ In knitting, you usually have a plan and a set of skills to complete that plan. I think her final paragraph sums this up well.

“Knitting, I’ve come to think, is not about working in the dark and doing what you can, or doubt being your passion. Writing is about that. Knitting is about having a good light and a good friend to fix your mistakes. It’s about setting aside time to think about the new baby, or the beloved wooden ship, or the man who will unstuff the stocking, while you work. It’s tangible evidence of love, manifested through time, stitch by stitch. At least that’s what it is for me, now, and all it needs to be.”

Next month will be the last Fiber Book Club of Knitting Pearls! So, read to the end if you have been following along.

Thanks for being here! I’d love to hear more about you if you feel like introducing yourself below.

Happy knitting,

Laila

For a long time, there was so much I didn’t understand about knitting. Kate and I think about this a lot when we plan our knitting classes: knitting is not a craft you can just drop into. It’s not an activity that you can spend a single session doing and get something beautiful or even useful out of it (I’ll give you the cotton dish cloth, I guess). I learned to knit in third grade in an afterschool program and I made a hat. I don’t even know how 8 year old me managed to decrease in a perfect dome shape - probably a fair amount of the teaching ladies grabbing the needles from my small hands and just doing it.

So when the inkling to knit came back to me as a teenager, I decided to go to a real yarn store and see what was going on. That store was Knit Purl in downtown Portland, Oregon. One of my favorite pastimes after school was to take the bus downtown and go to Pioneer Place mall to shop or get frozen yogurt. But that day I tried something new. I walked into this small corner shop with minimal inventory and saw small stacks of hanks in gorgeous tones. I don’t think I’d ever seen a hank before. I remember picking one up, in a deep and very natural emerald green, and looking at the price tag. I had only ever worked with cheap yarn, and I don’t remember ever purchasing it myself. So, in 2010, staring down at a $30 price tag for one hank of yarn? On a teen’s budget of money earned teaching summer swim lessons? Terrifying. I remember feeling like I could not stay and walking right back out the door.

Knit Purl closed in 2018, and this memory came back to me because they contributed a pattern to this book, Knitting Pearls. I wish I could go back now and appreciate the artistry they were surely doing. But learning to knit also comes with learning a culture and an industry. One of the main questions our students ask when they are beginners is, ‘how do I know what yarn to choose?’ The variety of options of not only the yarn (fiber content, weight, color) but also the tools (straight needles, circular, double points) is overwhelming. And forget about learning to read a pattern! These skills need to be collected over time. If you’re lucky enough to have good teachers, friends or mentors to guide you, it becomes easier to see the big picture.

The main takeaway I keep coming back to as I’m reading through Knitting Pearls is the myriad of ways that knitting connects us. Lily King writes in her essay, The Italian Hat, how “handwork” was one of her daughter’s classes at an Italian private school. It was a class she could excel in because she didn’t need to know how to speak or understand Italian to succeed. Jane Hamilton writes about living with a Harris Tweed weaver in Scotland (What Happened in Scotland) and how in the evenings she wasn’t allowed to read but she could knit as they sat by the fire. She feared her host might not have had the skills to read full novels, but knitting was common ground for their nightly pastimes. And two writers explore how they did not knit, one connecting with her mother-in-law (My Mother-In-Law, Her Knitting, and Me) and finding a place in a new family, and one unable to succumb to this “women’s work” when she could be writing (How We Spend Our Days).

I was especially touched by Perri Klass’s essay, The Museum of the Lady with Only One Neck, as she cleans out her late mother’s apartment and finds all the pieces she knit for her over the years. Each garment holds such a specific memory. I think that is the power in craft. We make something with our hands, we learn, we redo, we modify and we find a worthy home for that object. The style, the color, the fiber, remind us of the maker and act like a time capsule of the time it was made. Was the yarn fancy and expensive? Was it the color trend of that year? Does the recipient wear it because they love it or because they love the hands that made it?

I’ve really been enjoying reading these essays, as a knitter and as a writer. Thanks for reading along with me. Did you have a favorite essay this month?

My favorite passage I noted was this, “Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” This line has been a touchstone and a rallying cry for me as I’ve struggled to find time to write fiction while raising three boys, teaching, and working as a freelance editor. Ms. Dillard’s words remind me that it is easy to let days go by without writing, but in doing so I am making a statement about what I value, what matters most to me.” - Christina Baker Kline

Here’s to finding time to do the things we love!

Happy knitting,

Laila

Work In Progress (acronym), a project you are working on or a personal identity marker (me), see pic below. Many crafters use “whip” to refer to any partially done craft project. Creators also like to share all of their WIPs on Wednesdays in videos known as ‘WIP Wednesday’

• Honorable mention: Languishing WIP - a project that is so old that it is starting to impact one’s psyche, will it ever get finished?? Could also be long forgotten and stashed in a project bag within a project bag within a closet

(verb: to frog) Official term for undoing your knitting, often in a flamboyant manor. Also known as a sad state of affairs. May or may not come from “rip it rip it” sounding like “ribbit ribbit” :P

• Honorable mention: Tink aka knit backwards/undo

Finished Object (acronym), anything that you have recently finished and want to show off, most heard on FO Fridays. The next level up from a WIP.

• Honorable mention: UFO - Unfinished Object “there’s UFOs everywhere!!”

Cast On (acronym/verb & noun), to start a new project or another name for a WIP one just started; example, “check out my new cast on”

Bind Off, finish that thing it stinks! ;)

(noun) Your yarn hoard! We know you’ve all got one. It’s the leftovers, the scraps, the beautiful single skeins and hanks from traveling, and even the planned sweater quantities waiting for their moment in the sun. Example, “I’m using all stash yarn for this project”

• Honorable mention: Destash - getting rid of your prized stash yarn in an organized way like selling or gifting

Local Yarn Store (acronym), everyone’s favorite place <3

Knit-Along or Make-Along (acronym), when a group gets together in-person or online to craft the same object or to craft similar objects under a theme. Examples include everyone making the same knit design within a specific time period, all using the same yarn, or all using stash yarn.

(noun) That feeling when you’re not sure if you’ll have enough yarn but you take a gamble on that last sleeve (or any part of the project). Sometimes you win, more often you lose.

(noun or verb) Usually an organized event that involves many stores in one area or state. A day or weekend where they entice you to go to all the shops! Typically passports or cute tote bags are involved and each store will be doing something fun. Basic definition, going to 2+ yarn stores in one day or weekend ;)

Bonus acronym: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy

I hope you learned something or at least had a giggle. Welcome to the knitting club, now you should be fully prepared to jump right in! Leave a comment if there was something new for you :)

In Minnesota, the biggest fiber festival is Shepherd’s Harvest, every year on Mother’s Day weekend. This was our second year vending at this event and it really filled our cups. There is something really special about being surrounded by people who not only take part in your hobby but other craftspeople who are thrilled to make a few thousand dollars. You can sense that every sale is making someone’s day or even year - us included!

We got to see so many friends, students, and wool obsessed people. I spent time with a vendor talking about the collapsible spinning wheel he designed with his wife. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Bits of raw wool float around the fairground.

Sometimes I feel like I talk about community too much. But it is half of our business name and ethos. It’s the echo we hear from students again and again. It’s the neighbors and friends who come to our monthly craft night and confirm when the next one is. It’s the people who we met through this endeavor who bring by plants to our home and give us their unwanted yarn so we can rehome it.

We are really careful about what in-person events we do. I’m on month 8 of trying to see if I can make Knit & Gather my full time job. Each class is carefully planned and scheduled. Shepherd’s Harvest is so worth it, and we were able to almost double what we made last year! It is also a great place for making connections and we’ve gotten several wholesale opportunities from those we’ve met, including the Yarn Adventure Truck who buys extra inventory on the spot! Not to say it’s not SO much hard work; Kate and I have been prepping and making/sourcing inventory for months.

(Let me know if you want to hear more business behind the scenes or details, I always find it interesting to get a peek behind the curtain of other creative businesses).

We were most excited about our new Valais Blacknose Sheep pin. It will hit the website soon! Sign up for our email list here.

Fiber Book Club

This month we read five essays in Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting (The Unravelers, Handmade at Home, Wool, Why, Yes - I Can Knit My Way Out of a Wet Paper Bag…, and The Red Vest)

In our experience as knitting teachers, we have noticed a few things about the type of people who are attracted to knitting (not all, but many): perfectionists, overthinkers, those looking to gain some control - I’m very much talking about myself here. Students will all of a sudden be ripping back their work before Kate or I can turn around and sigh, “nooo!” Mistakes can be fixed or mended, we don’t always need to go back to the beginning. This is what the essay The Unravelers by Stephanie Mannat Danler made me think about.

“You can fix almost anything in knitting. That’s what keeps me going.” Knitting attracts the kind of creative mind that likes a starting line. Not the blank page. One can become freer within parameters than let loose to start from scratch. Danler writes, “Women who knit are able to sit still. They can sit with themselves for hours and not want to crawl out of their skin.” I don’t know if I agree. For me, in that way, the knitting is the coping mechanism. Sitting still with myself is not my strong suit, but the rhythmic pace of the stitches helps me.

My mom picked up knitting recently. Her mother knit and taught knitting as a part of her Norwegian import business. Gagga also sold yarn and Norwegian sweaters. But my mom was not the one who taught me. I now have an almost two year old nephew, and my mom wanted to knit him a baby blanket. In Jared Flood’s essay, Handmade at Home, he reminisces on a special sweater his father had. The appreciation for this garment, knit by his mother, was not in the practical nature of it (even though it was hardy wool and very warm), but in the stories it held and the legacy of passing down clothes and textiles.

I helped my mom as much as I could with the blanket, even knitting some rows while we were traveling together. Nick Flynn’s essay, Wool, makes me wonder if I would have been as interested in knitting if it was something put in front of me as opposed to something I ended up finding over and over again. Alternatively, I enjoyed reading about how Diana Gabaldon (author of the Outlander book series), learned to knit out of spite after being denied to her school’s 4-H knitting class.

Knitting can be large, and knitting can be small. In my own life it has transformed to barely mentioned to my full on work. I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s there when we need it, it is a craft that can be shared, picked up and brought with. We can knit in our small spare moments, while the baby is asleep or we are waiting at the tire shop. Or we can deliciously knit all day, being “still” with ourselves.

My biggest takeaway from Knitting Pearls thus far is that knitting means so many different things to different people. It represents a metaphor of time, of connected threads and knots, of mistakes and failures, and of family.

I hope you’re enjoying reading along with us! Did you have a favorite essay this month?

For next month’s Fiber Book Club (June 11) we will read the next chunk of essays in Knitting Pearls: What Happened in Scotland through How We Spend Our Days (pg 113-160)

“Knitting in a dream often symbolizes the deliberate creation of your life’s path, representing creativity, patience, and the crafting of new opportunities or relationships.”

What I’ve taken away from Knitting Pearls so far is that it is very common for people to attribute deeper meanings to their own connections to knitting and craft, whether it is the actual practice and process - ‘unraveling,’ mending, fixing past mistakes, or breaking curses - or the significance of the finished objects like gifted sweaters.

In Melissa Coleman’s essay, Casting Off a Spell, she makes a specific reference to what I consider, the most famous knitting “curse.”

If you don’t know, “The Sweater Curse” is a belief that if a knitter makes a sweater for a significant other (before they are married), the relationship will end. I’ve really only heard this referring to hetero relationships where the woman is making the sweater for a man, but I digress. The break up is said to happen most often before the sweater is even completed, but can also happen shortly after as referenced in the essay, begging the question of all the time spent and if it was worth it. You can go down your own rabbit hole on the sweater curse, starting here!

In this essay, Coleman is attempting to fix her cursed situation (divorce) by knitting seven sweaters for family members. Along the way she decides that only once she has done this, will she be ready to marry again.

Michael Collier, author of the essay Big Maroon Sweater, keeps his misshapen acrylic sweater made by his mother out of sentimentality, reflecting later that he felt more sadness over never having worn it as intended rather than a fond memory.

What are the most common Knitting Superstitions?

1. Sweater Curse or Curse of the Love Sweater

2. The intentional mistake, or fairy stitch: this is to prevent mischievous beings from taking your work or being trapped in perfect stitches

3. Friday and Sunday knitting: don’t start a project on a Friday, or you will never finish, and don’t knit on Sunday or you will just have to frog again on Monday

4. Do not start a project for an unborn child, especially one that you will not finish: it is bad luck for the mother

5. Passing knitting needles point first to someone will harm your relationship

There are so many magical beliefs surrounding knitting. We can trace a lot of them to practical reasons like not passing needles point first because it could hurt, but I think it’s more fun to live in a more magical place. Knitting is powerful. Stitches can contain literal memories and traditions that get passed on, within families or as gifts. Knitting has been used to resist war, pass on secret messages and codes within the patterns. Some say that patterns were used to identify drowned fisherman. Using specific colors can also have different meanings.

Make your own set of knitting rules. Use the colors you’re drawn to, make a sweater for a loved one, and allow your black cat to sleep on your work.

There is a supposed cure for the Sweater Curse: leave an intentional mistake in the project, or knit a strand of your own hair into the work. We are all only human after all.

What other knitting superstitions or old-wives tales have you heard? Have you experienced the Sweater Curse or maybe you successfully gifted a sweater to a significant other?

Which of the three essays resonated with you the most? Answer in the comments!

Happy Knitting,

Laila

For next month’s Fiber Book Club (May 14) we will read the next chunk of essays in Knitting Pearls: The Unravelers through The Red Vest (pg 65-108)

Like many, I picked up my craft again during the pandemic. Determined to knit my first sweater. Crafting became a coping mechanism for so many at that time and yarn shops and brands had to figure out how to be online. I went back to pinterest to try and find free patterns.

To be honest my first two sweater attempts were big fails. The first was me trying to use some green fuzzy acrylic from my stash and cobble together notes from a free sweater pattern. I had no idea what I was doing, plus I spent many unnecessary hours frogging it to “save” that terrible and sticky yarn. For the second trial, I went the kit route and ordered a simple looking sweater from Wool and the Gang. It came with yarn, needles, and a booklet pattern. This one went even worse somehow. The needles were size 11, creating an impossibly big gauge, and the yarn was made from old denim. After making the back piece, which had a heavy drape and left my needles and fingers blue, I gave up.

No surprise, this was a time in my life filled with change - at every turn. I ended up deciding to move from Portland to Saint Paul in September 2020. I found an apartment, no job, and packed all of my belongings into a POD (including my sweater WIP). I got a job at a Nordic import store (Ingebretsen’s in Minneapolis) and met my current partner, who also worked there. She taught knitting and told me I could join one of her online knitting classes. The excitement I felt because this new person I met was including me in a new community carried me through learning colorwork and working through her colorwork mitten pattern, the Arne Mitten!

We ended up falling in love, an essay for another time, and I am realizing now how intertwined knitting has been in that story. I fell so deeply for the craft and was learning at such a quick pace with her by my side.

Now, we own our knitting business together, and I knit every night. It helps to calm my hands and quell my anxiety. I love having a couple of different projects to choose from. Each new cast-on is a learning opportunity, and I’m currently making my sixth sweater (and still learning what I like best). I sold the Wool and the Gang sweater kit after frogging the piece I made. It was never going to work. And now in our own business, our goal is to connect knitters in person and online and help bring more knitters into the world through teaching.

For this month’s Fiber Book Club, we read the first two essays in Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting, edited by Ann Hood. Throughout the book, there are also original patterns that designers contributed.

The piece by Anne Bartlett, ‘Knitting Took me Halfway Round the World,’ did inspire me to put some of my own life experiences with knitting down in writing. She offers twelve lessons that knitting has taught her throughout her life and gives us snapshots of what she was experiencing. I related to her picking up the craft and putting it down until she was ready again. I have done that throughout my life with knitting and we often get students in our beginner classes who learned as a kid or in college but are only picking it up again now that they are retiring. She gives us this lesson, “Stick at it, small amounts are cumulative.”

That is part of the joy of knitting. Our hands make every stitch, piece by piece. I could have picked up that sweater project and kept going years later. Even if you only knit for a few minutes a day, your project is always there for you.

The other lesson I resonated with in her essay was Lesson 6, “It’s easy to get into a rut. Community input enhances creativity.” Community and crafting have been forever linked, especially historically in groups of women. And I really think there is power in that. Connecting can only make our art more interesting.

Steve Almond’s essay ‘Clothes for the Living,’ the opener of the book, sets a tone of writing that is about fiber on the surface, but really is about so much more. He writes about crochet, “I loved the numbing repetition of the ritual, the idea that you could create something without thinking about it at all.” His essay is brief, and recounts his time with his grandparents in the midst of his own revelations about death. I appreciated how much he conveyed in this short piece, but I did feel that fiber was not the focus of his revelations and merely a vehicle. But maybe that’s the point.

In both pieces, we find knitting and crocheting as a touchpoint for other things going on in the author’s lives. The physical stitches serving as memories and metaphors for parts of life and childhood.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments - did anyone make the Classic Cuffed Hat pattern?

• Which essay did you prefer?

• Did either piece inspire you to do some writing of your own?

• What are your own memories of knitting or crocheting and were there specific times when you picked the craft back up again?

• What are you knitting right now?

• Any future books to suggest?

For next month, we will be discussing the next three essays in Knitting Pearls: ‘Unraveling,’ ‘Casting Off a Spell,’ and ‘Big Maroon Sweater.’ I hope you’ll join us for that next “meeting” on April 9th!

Happy knitting,

Laila

Also quick note that fiber book club is being postponed to 3/12 - we will be reading Knitting Pearls in two essay chunks, edited by Ann Hood.

Fiber arts and politics are and have always been intertwined. This could be a whole series of essays about craft and protest. Over the past month those of us in the fiber world have seen the rollercoaster of the ‘Melt the Ice’ hat. To be honest, I waited about one week after its release to see how the pattern was going to land in the community. Being a Norwegian and knitter, people were sending the pattern my way right and left.

If you don’t know, the ‘Melt the Ice’ hat is a red knit hat inspired by the Norwegian resistance movement in WWII. Norwegians wore red knit caps, similar to those worn by the Norwegian nisse (a mischievous holiday creature), to symbolize their dissent of the Nazi occupation. This new version by local Minnesotan knitter Paul Neary was designed for the store Needle & Skein as a fundraiser for local organizations in support of those at risk of being detained by ICE.

This week marks over 70 days of ICE presence/”surge” in Minnesota. Families are still in hiding and unable to go to work or school. Our communities are coming together as best we can, but it is still bad here and will be bad wherever they go next.

On January 22nd, I shared the pattern link on facebook as a way for those who are out of state, or as it turns out - out of the country, to support Minnesota. The response from that post was absolutely overwhelming. Knitters from all over the world were commenting their support and even people who did not know how to knit bought the pattern or expressed that they were going to learn just so they could make this hat.

It made me feel like people really wanted to connect, help, and support in the ways they could.

The following week, Needle & Skein posted that they had been able to donate over $250,000 to Minnesotan organizations thanks to this pattern. Let that sink in.

This week, the donation number surpassed $650,000 and the story has been picked up by some of the biggest news outlets. Find stories here and here.

Now, I know the other side. I’m a chronic over thinker. Red hats, really? In 2026? I know. And to those who wouldn’t wear a red hat in public right now, that is OK! So many people commented to say they were going to make the hat in a different color. And if buying and making this pattern doesn’t appeal to you, then don’t make it. Another pressure point for some was that the pattern was not free (it’s $5). I think the numbers really do speak for themselves on this point. The financial impact has been able to help so many more people than raising awareness alone.

Find the Melt the Ice hat pattern here.

Art of all mediums is crucial to where we are right now. Movements like this hat really can help bring people together and also start a conversation. Yarn stores across the country have hosted nights where people are gathering to make this pattern. Community is the strongest defense we have against fascism.

Some people are going to take the popularity of this hat and move in the wrong direction. Every good thing has an opposite side of the coin. But seeing so much beautiful textile art has been a small ray of light during this time.

Let’s all continue showing up as much as we can. Two organizations that we have donated to this year are Community Aid Network MN, a grassroots neighborhood organization that works to distribute resources, and Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, an organization that dedicates its time to fighting deportation and anti-immigration laws. If you have extra funds, we recommend donating here.

Looking for an even easier way to donate? We are donating 100% of proceeds from the sale of our Pride Bandana knitting pattern through Valentine’s Day to MIRAC. Find the pattern here.

Please continue to talk and share about what’s happening in Minnesota! Take care of each other.

Laila

I’ve had this idea for a bit of time now, but I’ve been wanting to create a fun way to encourage people to discover new fiber designers (knitting, crochet, sewing etc.). In the knitting world, it can get so monotonous seeing people knit from the same big five designers - a lot of those designers have great designs and have worked hard to be where they are at, but I do believe there is room for all of us at the table. Especially those of us who value inclusivity!

If you didn’t know, Knit & Gather is a queer owned business, and we would love to shine a spotlight on other lgbtqia+ and bipoc fiber designers. I started designing in 2023, right around the very start of our business. My partner Kate has been designing since 2016 and she inspired me to give it a try. My first pattern was the Harvest Moon Mushroom Mittens, and I had so much fun making them. I made it on the Ravelry debut board and felt very proud.

Now, I want to connect with other people who are designing cool patterns that maybe aren’t being seen or do not have the visibility of some of the bigger names. So I made the Indie Fiber Bingo card! I created it with a knitting lens, because that is my primary craft, but it could be used for any fiber art. It generally rewards diversifying your designer pool.

The card is for the whole year 2026, and there will be prizes for those who enter on Instagram or in our Ravelry group with either “bingos” or “blackouts.” It’s on the honor system of the individual to check off their own accomplishments.

I’ll include the card below, but here is a link to our website where you can download the file. We also made a Ravelry group if that appeals to you, we would love to have you join!

Thanks for being a part of our community. It is the most important part of what we do.

Fiber Book Club

Next month I would love to have you join us to read together! This will be a very low commitment ‘book club’ right here on substack. For the first installment, we will be reading Knitting Pearls, edited by Ann Hood. If you want to join, I will be discussing the first two essays (Clothes for the Living & Knitting Took Me Halfway Around the World) in the next newsletter on 2/12. Read along and bring your thoughts and comments!

(Work in progress. A project I am currently working on)

We just wrapped up our first sweater class on Tuesday with a great group of students. (We are hoping to schedule another one soon!) I chose to make the Doppio Sweater. I’m using Laines du Nord Merino Yak held with the Suri Silk lace weight from Fiber MacGyver in Roasted Pecan! I’m on sleeve island, but I know it will finish up quickly. Then I will finally be able to start my vest!

(A project that is coming up soon or pattern I just love)

I think I have found the vest pattern that I plan to start! It is the POIMU vest by Camille Romano. She had a pattern sale last week, so I nabbed this on Ravelry to try. I will be using an oatmeal yarn and might try to add buttons to this project.

(A peek into what we are working on in our home studio)

Following up on last week’s Studio View, we have finished a new product offering - leather scarf ties! We made these to slip the ends of your scarf into to secure it while out and about and added a laser engraved quilt star design. We currently are offering a 4” cuff but are also about to add in a 3” option for skinnier scarves or fabric neck coverings! Find them here!

(A knitting pattern I came across that is free)

Pool Beanie

I thought this version of the Pool Beanie by Shinysuperhero was so fun. She added a striped ribbing effect to the original design. Find it on Ravelry here.

(A little extra this and that)

Yesterday, we had a wonderful Small Business Saturday in our neighborhood. We vended some finished knitwear and debuted a fun collaboration with our good friend Stonefruit Creative! She made the cutest quilt patches for our knit hats. We just want to say thank you to everyone who stopped by and supported us. We got to see so many friendly faces, former students, and neighbors!

I’d love to hear from you - what project are you working on? Anything you’d like to see in a future Monthly Gathering?

While it does lean heavily on researched source materials (with almost 30 pages of notes and citations!), I think Nehrig’s care for this community is what shines through. She references her own craft and the years she spent interviewing women around the world who work with textiles and fiber.

My biggest realization from this book is that fiber craft practices are literally interwoven with the cultural and political history of women and women’s rights. There are so many parallel examples in this book to what is happening in the United States right now - from waves of women being defined as “spinsters” when not subscribing to the traditional family structure to sewing protest banners out of cloth. I also appreciate Nehrig’s discussion surrounding fine art. She references specific instances when fiber art was included in museums and exhibitions as well as the challenges of getting included for female artists of all kinds.

It feels so poignant in our current time when birth rates are crashing and women and artists are at the forefront of national protests. I saw so many reshares of the incredible Portland crochet artist Vincent Green-Hit offering free crochet lessons and supplies in front of the Portland ICE facility. Read more about that here. After reading With her Own Hands, I was left with a feeling of, “this matters now, and always has mattered.”

Here are some of the main points that I related to from this book:

Fiber practices have traditionally been places where women can gather alone, without their spouses and family.

This allows for private discussion, community building, and a chance to have fun away from the pressures of life and away from the male gaze. Different crafts do have an almost secret language, and this can make participants feel special and included. These types of gatherings are also great for different types of people; with a craft in hand, introverts can attend but are not required to go beyond their social capacities. Nehrig points out that these get-togethers often led to more ornate designs that took much longer than what was practical. Women wanted the projects to last because then they could continue to gather. It’s a chance for women to learn from each other, share materials, and get inspired.

When actually making or mending something, we are connected to something tangible but also something metaphorical.

Nehrig covers many crafts, but does go back to needlepoint and embroidery again and again. Historically, it became a way for women to earn a living. But it also has such a clear cathartic element with stabbing a cloth repeatedly to create something beautiful. To create an item from nothing gives the brain satisfaction and the process can be meditative. The process connects us to our physical bodies. Nehrig puts it perfectly,

“We touch every bit of yarn as we warp a loom and weave fabric. The process of creating textiles facilitates mindful attention to the present moment and bodily sensation - the feel of the materials and the motion of our bodies. Its outward focus can move us beyond internal preoccupations. Counting stitches or holding a complex pattern in mind may distract a knitter, crocheter, or weaver from worries. We lose self-consciousness through absorption in the activity. The repetition involved can lead to hypnotic, calm state, a kind of meditation through motion. Textile work confers a sense of control and mastery that counterbalances the lack of control we may experience over what is happening in our larger world. When we make, repair, or create things, we feel vital and effective.”

I could write about this forever, but I appreciate Nehrig diving into the physical and the mental benefits of crafts, such as entering flow state and having an outlet for creative expression.

Fiber art and textile practice connects us to each other and to much larger cultural traditions.

Many fiber arts have been passed down within families and also in different cultures. As society has changed and evolved, this has become less of a cultural norm. I found this quote fascinating,

“Portuguese knitting designer and historian Rosa Pomar explained that the generational gap in learning how to knit and sew is largely due to a feminist revolt against these practices in her mother’s generation. But among young Portuguese women, there has been a resurgence of interest in learning these skills, now that they are further removed from the compulsory gender-based connotations that once were held.”

There is definitely a cultural resurgence in the interest in craft and making clothing. The internet has become a way for fiber folks to connect with each other and find community. I know from personal experience how charming and fun ‘Knitstagram’ can be. I feel lucky to also have such a great local knitting community. Building community and creating spaces where all people feel included and safe within fiber arts is the main mission of our business, Knit & Gather. This book felt so aligned with a lot of thoughts I’ve had over the past year.

I’ll end on this note -

I was enchanted to learn the phrase ‘woolgathering,’ which I hadn’t seen defined before. “Woolgathering was an old English term for gathering loose tufts of wool that caught on fences or branches as sheep passed by and came to be used colloquially to mean daydreaming.” This is because it was common for kids to plod around and collect these pieces of wool to run through their fingers for the sensory feeling. Queen of knitting, Elizabeth Zimmerman had a physical print newsletter that she called Wool Gathering, in which she offered different methods for knitting techniques and encouraged experimentation. I guess I am channeling her more than I knew! I would love to create a little corner of the internet where we can share, learn and discuss all things fiber.

If you connect with any of the above, I highly encourage you to read With Her Own Hands - because there is so much more in there. I felt like Nehrig really understood how relevant fiber is to our world and she offered a personal perspective that is so genuine. Find it here.

Happy crafting,

Laila

(Work in progress. A project I am currently working on)

A close friend of mine commissioned a set of knit Christmas stockings for her family. I’ve self drafted these and am so happy with how they are turning out! I might have to make these into a pattern - what do you think? I’m using Icelandic Alafosslopi.

(A project that is coming up soon or pattern I just love)

I wanted to cast on something cozy that would become a wardrobe staple and go along with a super fun knit-along, Oktobervest hosted by Botanical Knitter (@botanicalknitter on Instagram). I missed that boat - I ended up getting a nasty virus so I haven’t started this yet, but I just got the perfect oatmeal yarn at the Minnesota Fiber Festival from The Layzee Farmer! So I’m still on the hunt for the perfect vest pattern. Recommendations welcome! Hoping to make a single color pullover.

(A peek into what we are working on in our home studio)

Very excited to share more, but for now just a sneak peek into a new leather project! Kate and I used Kickstarter to start our business and help us purchase a laser engraving/cutting machine. It was successfully funded and we use our machine to make our original knitting tools in wood, and have recently expanded into cutting and engraving leather. There’s so much to learn! Kate is even inspired to make some videos about this soon.

(Something I came across that is free)

Minas Sweater

This punchy sweater really caught my eye and I downloaded the pattern immediately once I saw it was free! Designed by Cecilia Lalanne & Gabriella Calderini for Manos del Uruguay - a nonprofit employing craftspeople in rural Uruguay. Find it on Ravelry here.

(A little extra this and that)

We hosted a free fiber exchange in Minneapolis this past weekend! It was at The Toolbox Collective, a studio in Longfellow near our home. This event was also the “grand opening” of a little free craft library that we are sponsoring on the corner outside of the studio (34th street and 42nd avenue). This has been a dream project for a long time and we are so excited to have it up and running soon so we can swap free craft supplies in our neighborhood. Our main mission as a small business is to center everything we do around building community! So it feels extra good to achieve goals like this, with the help of friends.

I’d love to hear from you - what project are you working on? Anything you’d like to see in a future Monthly Gathering?

But not everyone wants to be placed into this bucket especially when the term is distilled into its very basic essence by lazy news outlets, a millennial trend for fall.

Queer nonbinary fiber-artist Louise (@lou-dangit on Instagram) recently made an extremely impactful reel talking about how Good Morning America used two of their videos in a segment about “the rise of Grandmacore.” They were offended because not only were the quotes from the videos taken out of context (GMA was given permission to use the videos), they were placed in a misguided bubble of a cutesy and quirky new “trend.”

This is not to say that grandmas aren’t amazing, admirable and incredibly skilled craftspeople. But what this does is strip any tradition, value, or skill from the fiber artists and expert crafters who have devoted time and effort in order to learn to knit, crochet, weave or sew. Louise says it perfectly in their takedown of this approach,

“We here in the fiber arts community are building a space that fights against individualism, capitalism, and the oppressive systems that are keeping everyone down.”

They go on to emphasize that they believe, “It is that deep.” And I agree.

So while many of us do aspire to be more like grandmas - thrifting our clothes, honing our craft skills, canning, gardening, etc - this is not the viewpoint that mainstream is coming from. Unfortunately it does look like GMA just willfully overlooked the messaging of most of Louise’s content. Even going as far as to pluck the quote, “I’m nothing if I don’t make sweater,” out of a video in which Louise is exploring the relationship between knitting and mental health. This struck a particularly recognizable cord with me as someone who has tied their worth to productivity for a long time - a sometimes inescapable symptom of late stage capitalism.

I want to be clear that I respect and revere grandparents of all kinds. I wish I had known at 14 to ask for a piece of my own grandma’s Princess Diana plate collection. But I think it’s an important distinction to make between respect and a different type of evaluation that comes from someone looking in from the outside, without the full picture.

I would love to hear your thoughts on grandma hobbies! Should we embrace and reclaim or shirk the “grandmacore” trend?

Next month, I’ll be reviewing the book, With Her Own Hands by Nicole Nehrig, which will be a follow up to this as she discusses these exact questions and many more.

Talk soon,

Laila

I wanted a spot where I could share my research on women who have defined fiber arts by innovating in the industry or writing about it. As a queer woman I am interested in the ways the fiber world plays into patriarchy and the ways in which it resists and empowers female crafters. That is something I intend to explore in this newsletter. This will be a non-male centered space!

Today is a very exciting day (aside from the launch of this newsletter!) because we are releasing a new knitting pattern, the Karine Hat.

The Karine Hat is the second pattern in a series that is based off a chart that I made from the photo below. I found this picture in my Norwegian grandmother’s photo album from the 1930s & 40s when I was attempting to save it from turning into dust. I do not know who the woman is, but I love her - her energy and vibe, her outfit! I used this photo of her incredible ski socks to chart the motif and named it the “Karine” chart, after my own Norwegian middle name. This year we will release three Karine patterns: the Karine Cowl (already available!), the Karine Hat (out today), and the Karine Legwarmers (which were actually the original design I made inspired by the photograph).

It feels vulnerable and soft to share these patterns with the world, but it also feels like the right place to be for me right now. Knitting has been a way to connect with my heritage on a deeper level and to find inspiration from my own family history makes today feel very cool.

Thank you for being here, I hope you will subscribe and follow along on this journey! I would love to hear from you in the comments if you’d like to tell me a bit about yourself and your connection or interest in the fiber arts world.

Some topics that you can expect coming up:

• Book reviews/excerpts

• Process of writing a knitting pattern

• Fiber arts history and deep dives

• Thoughts on current events in the fiber world (hot topics)

  

Talk soon,

Laila

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