Ms Steel Maths

Knitting and what it means to me

For as long as I can remember I’ve made things. My Gran and Nanna taught me to knit, crochet, sew and make lace. It’s always just been something I’ve done but I’ve noticed recently how much it actually means to me. Whenever I make things I think about them both and I’m grateful for everything they taught me.

I struggle to sit still and concentrate when listening to or watching things so I tend to knit. I knit socks, hats, scarves and other things that don’t take a lot of concentration. Most of it I knit without ever really looking at what I’m doing. Doing it makes me much better at focusing on what it going on. I’ll have a little bag of knitting pretty much everywhere I go and love that the things I end up with tell stories. There’s a lot to be said about the value of things that are traditionally seen as womens work and I have a lot to say about that but not today, today is about the memories and emotions woven into my knitting.

This scarf is my favourite because it is lovely but also for the stories it tells. At my Nannas funeral there were some wonderful women some of whom I knew from the lace group but others including a relative I’d not met before. Susan designs knitting patterns so we talked about knitting a lot and she sent me some patterns she designed. If you want to see the thing she makes have a look of ravelry https://www.ravelry.com/people/stitchnerd. I’d already knitted one boomerang scarf and wanted another in a darker colour so when my roller derby team was going to Vienna I packed needles and yarn to start one. I started it on the plane out and then carried it on when I got back. Along the way it came with me to the pub, a couple of gigs and friends houses. The pattern is really simple so every time someone said they used to knit or wanted to learn I gave them it to knit a few rows. It’s been knitted by and in the company of so many people I care about. There’s a couple of row with mistakes that remind me of a lovely night in the pub down the road which always makes me smile.

Today is a hard day I’ve got a meeting about redundancies at work and a chance to put forward my worries about changes that will affect the two year course I’ve put so much into this year. I feel a bit braver for having the support of some amazing women knitted into my scarf though.