To the uninitiated, knitting can seem like a sort of silly hobby, or at least like something that's not incredibly useful (those people are not on our list for getting knit socks this year). But those of us who knit know that there are many benefits to knitting, not only for ourselves but for the people who receive the work of our hands, regardless of whether we know them.
The myriad benefits of knitting are explored in detail in Betsy Greer's Knitting for Good!: A Guide to Creating Personal, Social, and Political Change Stitch by Stitch.
Knitting Saves
The book begins by describing how knitting is good on an individual level, by keeping traditions alive and connecting women with their pasts, giving them a feminist perspective on craft and the homemade, allowing for individual expression and creativity and providing a place for stillness and the expression of emotions.
It goes on to explore various ways that knitting can benefit the wider community, through personal connections formed by knitting in public or joining a knitting group, charitable knitting and knitting as a form of social protest or a means for supporting a cause you are passionate about.
The book provides a lot of fodder for thought about why we knit and what it means. While the book focuses on knitting, the discussion applies to many other crafts as well, and the book includes short profiles of artists and crafters using a range of media talking about how they use their craft to relate to and influence the world.
Greer is the founder of Craftivism, a website looking at how craft can be used in activism, so that is a big focus of the book, but it also speaks to people who might not want to change the world with their knits, and shows them how they just might be anyway, even if they never thought about it that way.
The Patterns
Knitting for Good! also includes a handful of patterns that are great choices for charity knitting, including a scarf, a hat, a baby blanket, a dog bed, a cushion cover, a stuffed animal, socks, a vest and a baby-sized jacket.
The patterns are pretty straightforward and easy to knit, as most patterns designed for charity knitting are, but they're not plain and boring as many such patterns are. They often use multiple colors or textured stitch patterns to make the work more enjoyable for the knitter and perhaps the wearing a bit nicer for the recipient as well.
But the patterns are not really the focus of the book; instead, it's about what knitting does for us as crafters and what we as knitters do for the world. Even if you don't consider your own knitting to be revolutionary, you'll leave this book feeling like a part of something much bigger than yourself -- a long chain of crafters that stretches far into the past and will continue well into the future as well.
And that is definitely a good thing.
Publication date: November 2008.
