Consider Knitting

Summary

Let’s say that, like me, you are a person who stares at a computer and writes code for a living. As a straight male who grew up in a time where knitting was very strongly female coded, it for the most part never occurred to me that knitting was a thing I could do and might enjoy. Regardless of your demographic categories and background, it’s possible that you have also not really considered knitting. This article exists to get you to do so. Specifically, I’ll try to convince you, one software person to another, why it might be a good fit for your life and brain. This is a pitch for knitting, but—for better or worse—an extremely nerdily argued one. Before I start, note that when I say “knitting”, you can read that as any of the various fiber arts, including crochet, weaving, macramé, cross-stitch, etc. I talk about knitting here because that’s the one closest to my heart and I strive to speak from the heart. You can make stuff out of string however you want. We are all fiber friends. The sense of touch I love the aesthetics of programming. Sitting in a cool quiet room, techno thumping in my headphones, coffee mug next to me, while a neatly arranged field of glowing monospace glyphs stream across my screen. But there’s one sense unmentioned in that sentence: touch. The sense we devote more neurons to than any other is curiously underutilized while pumping out code. It’s no surprise that some programmers fetishize keyboards. It’s just about the only part of programming that has any physical sensation at all. I got into knitting a few years after the pandemic. While I have a variety of hobbies, most are still staring at a screen and maybe pushing some buttons and turning knobs. When I wasn’t doing those, I was staring at a screen for work, or staring at a screen for not-work. I don’t know if I have a good way to explain how much my body craved tactile experience by the end of that. It’s like my fingers ached. A deep hunger, but not for taste. I’d wander around the house...