Do I need knitting anymore?

A troubling thought occurred to me today. I still like knitting. But do I need it anymore?

I needed it while I was in school. I needed it to de-stress, I needed it to get through three hour lectures on metadata* standards, I needed it as an excuse to connect with my friends so we could kvetch in an environment where we were also being creative. I am not in school anymore. My life is better. I still have stress, but I also have time to deal with that stress. I don’t have three hour periods of time where I need something to do with my hands anymore: my hands are usually busy at the computer, merrily working away at developing repetitive stress injuries.

It’s not a matter of having enough time. I sit at a computer all day, and in the evenings I swim or do yoga, read, and play with Metadata** Futurecat. On weekends I volunteer at a zine library, go to the farmer’s market, wander around the city, watch movies and hang out with the boy. If I had more time, I might knit more. Or I might write more letters, clean the house, cook more meals, read even more, or watch even more movies. I could just as easily spend my evening time listening to podcasts or audiobooks and knitting instead of reading, but lately I haven’t been. The point is, without a compelling need, I won’t necessarily incorporate knitting into my life.

But then I remembered an episode of Spark that I listened to a few months ago (when I was still knitting). Spark is a CBC radio show about the intersections between people and technology. It often touches on issues of interest to information professionals, such as information overload, social media, and copyright reform. This episode was about bringing meaning back to your work life. Norah Young interviewed the author of a book called Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, about abandoning academic, knowledge-based work in favour of working with your hands in a skilled manual trade. The author points to things like the rise in DIY culture, and his own motorcycle repair business to argue that many people are happier doing manual work, and a real need for it has risen in our culture.

It struck a chord with me. I like my work, but I have one of those jobs where it’s easy to wonder what it is I actually do. What does my 7 hours of work a day amount to? I can answer that question if you’re my boss (I took the seminar), but when I really start thinking about it, it makes me feel disconnected. Knitting allows me to produce something tangible, and see my efforts translated into something useful and/or beautiful almost immediately. I can hold the yarn in my hand and think about the person who wound it into a ball, the person who spun it, the person who sheared the sheep, the sheep who grew it. When I hold my apple wireless mouse in my hand, I think about factory workers committing suicide in another country. Or rather, I try not to think about that.

As I go further down this career path, the production of something tangible, is something I’m going to need more and more. So yes, I still need knitting in my life, even though the reasons I need it have shifted. And that’s a good thing. Because otherwise thinking about the amount of money I invested in my yarn stash is going to seem even more depressing.

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*Metadata is the go-to term that librarians use when we want to cloak our profession in an air of mystique, in an effort to gain reverence and justify funding for our positions.

**I came up with her name after attending an advanced seminar called Ensuring Job Security in the New Economy Part 1: Catalyst For Success.***

***Never trust advanced seminars with puns in the title.

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