INTRODUCTION

Our Knitting Roots

by Donna Druchunas

It may be difficult to look at a sock or mitten that you’ve made with your own hands and feel a connection to a group of people who seem strange or foreign to you. But as knitters and as humans, we owe it to ourselves and to each other to forge these unlikely connections. Making things by hand, after all, is an intimate human endeavor and we should use it not only to knit strings into socks or sweaters or shawls, but also to knit person to person, strangers into friends.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling wrote, “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”

Knitting is another.

This issue: Finding My Roots through Knitting

For most of my adult life, I have been on a journey of self remembrance. I call it “turning into myself.” When I started knitting as an adult in my thirties, I was returning to a craft that I had learned from my grandmother when I was a little girl. This column is about how I knit my way through the last twenty-five years of my life, and I discovered that knitting connects me to my own past, my family, and to people from around the world—past, present, and future—who share a passion for making stitches out of string.

I read the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron in the late 1990s. I expected it to open the way for me to write about science or science fiction. Instead, it opened the way for me to knit and explore my world and my own internal landscape through color and texture and pattern.

I started knitting sweaters because my grandmother had mostly knit sweaters. But I soon discovered a world of mittens, scarves, socks, and shawls in the books at my local yarn shop. Over the years, I’ve been obsessed with each of these types of projects, and each has led me into different explorations through research, travel, and hundreds of pages of writing recorded in my journals and thousands of stitches captured in my finished projects. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more a mitten, a sock, a sweater, or a shawl? In each project I’ve made or designed, I’ve captured a part of my life and a collection of the thoughts and feelings that flowed through me as I made the object.

This column will be about two things: knitting and roots. All of my inspiration for my projects and designs springs from my roots, bringing nutrients from the soil—the rich world around me—into my stem, leaves, flowers, and seeds. Knitting allows life and love, joy and sorrow, and inspiration to flow through me, and knitting lets me release those things into the world.

I hope my words and projects will entice you to will plant your own seed and begin to grow your own garden, sustained by the roots you discover through your own knitting.

What Roots?

If you’re cut off from your roots, you can’t grow. But that doesn't mean we need to have our original roots (our biological family, original home town, etc.). We can grow new roots or be grafted onto a new tree.

As a child, your taproot may be your family (by birth or adoption), but that seedling taproot may become less important or even shrivel up after it’s purpose is served and you can grow another set of roots that are more extensive, more nourishing, and longer lasting. Even more drastic, you may find yourself cut off from your genetic roots through adoption, death, or just not getting along with the people who share your DNA. But that isn’t what makes someone rootless.

Rootlessness is caused by disconnecting from the things you love, the things that interest you, and the things that bring you joy. Even if you never see your family again, even if you friends are far away and you rarely or never speak, these people are still part of who you are. But beyond the people that we know, or once knew, personally, there are other people, as well as places, things, and ideas that form our roots.

None of us need remain rootless, even if we are far away from our genetic relatives or if the people we have loved most are far away or dead and gone. We can claim and reclaim the things that we have loved. We can find joy in memories and hopes. We can delve into renewed and new interests. Groups of knitters—like the Knitty Community, Ravelry groups, and local Guilds—are places where we can grow new roots or be grafted onto an existing tree so we can begin to grow again.

Finding Knitting’s Roots

Knitting was brought to the USA by immigrants. To appreciate knitting is to appreciate the contributions of immigrants. When you knit a project, share information about the people, history, and culture represented in the techniques and patterns you make. Knitting was brought to the USA by immigrants. To appreciate knitting is to appreciate the contributions of immigrants. Talk about this when you teach or take knitting classes about traditional and ethnic knitting. Write about it in forums on Ravelry and in comments on blogs and social media. If you don’t know much about the culture or history of the people who originated the style of knitting you are exploring, do some research. It will make your knitting experience much richer.

We’ll start where knitting started—in the Middle East. And we’ll begin with socks, the oldest known knitted items.

To understand another person, it is said, you must walk a mile in their shoes. Well, what goes inside shoes if not socks?

As a knitter, I have begun taking this to heart, and every time I knit a pair of socks to warm my toes, I take the opportunity to learn more about the stitches, patterns, and techniques I am using. And I take it one step further, and learn about the people who originally created the beautiful socks that inspire me. In America, after all, all knitting came with immigrants. Some of those immigrants may have looked a lot like me. Some may have looked a lot like you. Others may have borne little resemblance to us. But they brought the craft that we love to our shores.

Every pair of socks or mittens, every shawl or scarf, and every sweater is a picture of history, culture, life, and politics. One small handmade item can hold the hopes and dreams of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, as we use traditional techniques and vintage patterns to create todays comforts to pass on to tomorrow’s knitters, researchers, and readers.

So, let’s get started. My Back to the Beginning socks will help you get started or continue on your own journey of discovery. Let’s use our knitting as a way to spread love and understanding among ourselves and  into the wider world. Every sock we knit can say, “I am with you!”

Socks featured are traditional socks from the Middle East. Private collection of Donna Druchunas.

Back to the Beginning a free knitting pattern from Knitty.com. Free knitting pattern for a Middle-East-inspired colorwork sock.

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