I learned to knit as a wee girl – though despite my mother’s mantra of “in, over, through and out” my efforts didn’t have the same uniform beauty of her tiny cardigans and elaborate knitted versions of household items.
Being a more freeform, anarchic type of knitting, in the early days at least, holes abounded, as did unexpected increases and decreases, and I mind the hair-raising squeak of plastic needle on tightly-pulled acrylic yarn as I battled to create each new loop. One dropped stitch too many and the 8 year old me swore off knitting as altogether too harrowing a pastime. I took it back up when I went to university, producing a series of scarves and hats for a series of undeserving boyfriends.
I got back into it in a big way while living in Colombia – although the name conjures up images of tropical beaches and Caribbean sunshine I spent two years in Bogota, a city with a climate very similar to Scotland. So the occasional woolly hat did come in useful, living 8,600 feet up in the Andes. There’s a strong culture of knitting, crochet and textile-making among many of the indigenous communities in Colombia, with mochilas Arhuacas (a finely crocheted bag, usually in un-dyed natural colours) seen on the shoulders of people all over the country, while the mola of the Kuna indigenous people from North West Colombia is a bright, geometric appliqued fabric which is worn as part of the traditional clothing. I visited some villages in the Arhuaco territories of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and saw women and small children walking around the villages, dressed in snow-white traditional robes, working on half-completed mochilas without looking at the work, chatting away to each other. As someone who’s hard pressed to knit and listen to music at the same time let alone move around I’ve always felt a deep admiration (and sometimes jealousy) towards those who can do these types of activities while gaily wandering about, or reading a book.
I remember being in a poky yarn shop with a great friend, being shown how to crochet rather jaunty shrugs by an enthusiastic band of impeccably dressed Colombian women in their 70s. “Look at the way you knit!” said one to me. “You must be from Argentina, they all hold the wool like that down there.” “Nonsense Maria!” said another. “That’s the Japanese way of knitting, I’m sure of it.” 100% Glaswegian, I assure them, but they seem unconvinced.
These encounters made me think about the range and diversity of knitting, about the millions of people who love what I love, who sit on buses creating tiny works of art and who all hold the wool a different way. For me knitting reflects a way of looking at the world – through hundreds and thousands of small actions, over a (sometimes very!) long time we can create something new and beautiful and joyful. As a knitter you have to be in it for the long haul. You have to be able to imagine that pile of balls of wool as a fine Fair Isle jumper, the colour of the hills and the trees, you have to see the delight that your dad will take in wearing that scarf every cold day. And you also have to love the process, to value the time spent meditatively stacking up different coloured stitches like Tetris to make a pattern of waves across the sea. Like the Zapatistas in Mexico say, you make the road by walking it.
I don’t see the making of lovely things as a solitary activity, making music or making socks or making bread seem like the most social things you could do. But knitting Scotland collaboratively makes this a more communal experience than I’ve been involved in before – everyone, wherever they are, sitting warm in their homes creating their squares, without necessarily meeting any of the other knitters in person. And I think that whatever folks politics might be, we are all interested in the future of the country, in the things that we want to make happen in our world. Making a new Scotland is just the same as knitting a map of Scotland – one wee loop at a time, with good company (be it virtual or otherwise) and good craic, and though the end result may be too far off for us to see we can take great joy yet in the process.
More information on the Arhuaca mochila: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arhuaca_mochila
More information on the Kuna molas: http://natural-history.uoregon.edu/collections/web-galleries/kuna-molas
