How much knitting, is too much knitting?

The internet has answers

I admit, since starting my new Instagram account with the intention of building a personal brand, my screen time has increased dramatically. The exact number of hours, we will never know, because I don’t have the damned metric thing turned on. I measure the increase by the amount of repetitive reels I see.

After seeing video after video of knitting influencers doing yearly knitting round ups, showing off dozens of jumpers they had made in a year, I started to wonder, how much is too much?

I spent some time wallowing in my thoughts and the feelings I had about my reactions to these videos before I decided to do the unthinkable… I would pose the question to the Wild Wild West which is Instagram. I prepared my armour, ready for battle, but the even more unthinkable happened. People responded with genuine curiosity, with many different opinions but not malice. This confirmed what I should have known from the get go. The people who make up the knitting community are exactly who I thought they would be: kind, self reflective (you have to be to spend so much time on your own and a pair of needles!), and conscious of themselves and their environment.

The question was seemingly simple:

“Are we sure knitting 12,13,14 plus jumpers a year is ok?”

And I suppose before I dive into the responses, I should make my stance on the matter clear. If you know me irl, you already know I don’t believe in a one size fits all, and so even on this topic I don’t believe there is a right or wrong answer. Everyone is on a different journey, battling differently challenges, walking a different road. The one universal consensus is that knitting is more than a hobby, it’s a sanctuary. This been said, I do think that its our personal responsibility to self evaluate our motives for creating (anything).

It’s no secret that knitting is having a well deserved moment in the limelight. There’s a huge uptick in knitting influencers, people taking on the craft, and even a knitting TV show (cough, cough which came with its own set of issues). Because of its rise in popularity, I really do think self reflection becomes even more important. As one instagram user said: “It’s a fine line between creation and compulsion”.

What follows are the most interesting points I took from this conversation.

• The impact of knitting on our mental but also physical health.

The through line of the comment section was clear: knitting is a lifeline for our mental health. Period. There’s no discussion on the positive impact that working with your hands has on our well-being, but I was impressed by the nuances that were brought forward. Some mentioned that knitting got them through years of depression, which meant they were creating in large amounts but that naturally tapered off as they started to feel better. Others were adamant that no matter the positive mental health implications, knitting at this rate (generally agreeing that yearly double digits seemed excessive) was not sustainable. Something I had admittedly never thought about was the physical impact, with many users retelling how they had overdone it and how their joints had suffered from what one user calls “hyper knitting”. I myself have noticed how my grip strength has decreased, but also most importantly my eye sight! Although the jury is not out on whether its the knitting or the excessive screen time…

blaming knitting for what I very well know is my phone.

• Pressure to perform

We have gently touched upon the rise of knitting influencers, and I have a personal story to tell you. I’ve been trying to take up space on the old Insta for some time now, but it’s taken me a while to work out in what capacity. Earlier this year I accidentally started going "viral”, I double my following in a month and started making more and more content, in order to ride that wave of virality. After all, this is what I had been wanting! except because none of this was intentional (not really) I had no idea what I was doing and started putting a lot of pressure on myself to show up, and constantly show new things I had been making. I started knitting things I didn’t really care about, compromising on the quality yarn just to get content, and I found myself really unhappy and apathetic even though my efforts were paying off. So after all that growth, I quit and deleted that account letting go of all the thousands of followers I had gained, just to start again from scratch 6 months later. Moral of the story is that with the increase of people growing their social media around knitting, it takes a lot of conscious effort to not fall for the pressure of having to churn things out for the algorithm. It was interesting to me how many people commented that they felt pressure by proxy. By engaging with various knitting accounts and seeing new trendy patterns come out every other week many users felt that they were missing out or couldn’t keep up!

• Slow Fashion is not exempt from capitalism.

These users really eloquently expressed my feelings when they said this

Just because something takes time, or is done by hand, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s automatically ethical or sustainable. And I know this might piss some people off, I think mostly because people feel like Im making knitting into a problem (this is my hobby too remember, I love this as much as everyone else!). One person pointed out that Im obviously self reflective, which I agree with and its both a blessing and a curse as sometimes I would love to just blindly engage with stuff without raising questions for myself! However, self reflection has pretty much been my life’s work and bettering myself sometimes requires to ask uncomfortable questions. Perhaps if the question of whether you’re knitting too much is emotionally charged, there’s something for you to look at. I don’t feel triggered by the subject, Im merely curious enough to have the conversation.

As I type this, the comments are still rolling in and more and more people are chiming in with their thoughts, which I honestly think is just so blinking wonderful. My sister has a rather large following in the wellness space and I have watched her battle some really horrible, abusive comments, which at points even turned into threats delivered by email, and whilst I never thought that something like my post would trigger any kind of outraged I guess I was primed to deal with some negative comments. However I was proved so wrong as at least 98% of people engaged in such a thoughtful and interesting way, which really just reminded me of what a fucking awesome community the knitting community is!

Anytime I have a question about a pattern, or need a recommendation, some advice on how to do something, Im always met with solidarity and friendship even from complete strangers. I hope it’s clear that the aim of this was to talk about things and not discourage anyone from doing the thing they love!

Keep knitting folks, I think after all we’re doing just fine. thank you for restoring my faith in the internet.