The Threads Between Us

I've spent a lot of time knitting while waiting for flights. I settle into a chair at the gate, pull whatever project I've tucked into my bag onto my lap, and before long I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that hours can feel like minutes. Knitting gives my hands something to do, helps me relax, and brings me back into myself amid all the noise and movement of traveling. I'm not trying to make a statement or attract attention. I'm just knitting.

“We've spent years hearing that we should leave work at the office. If that's the case, then maybe we should take our making out with us.”

Sometimes they're a knitter, or maybe they crochet. Sometimes they haven't picked up needles in years, but seeing mine reminds them that they used to. Other times, they tell me about someone who made things for them: a grandmother who knitted socks, a mom who crocheted the cutest baby sweaters, an aunt who made cozy blankets. Suddenly I'm having a conversation with someone who, a few moments earlier, was simply another stranger waiting for a flight.

I've been thinking about those conversations lately and how easily making can travel with us into the ordinary places of our lives. We've spent years hearing that we should leave work at the office. If that's the case, then maybe we should take our making out with us—to the DMV or the coffee shop.

Fiber crafts make that surprisingly easy. A knitting project can slip into a bag and come along to a coffee shop. A drop spindle can travel on a hike. Crochet can join us on a park bench, in a waiting room, at a campground, or anywhere else we happen to find ourselves with a little time and something we enjoy making.

“The knitting didn't create those things. It simply gave us a reason to notice them.”

There is a difference, though, between performing a craft in public and simply allowing our making to be public. It feels like much of modern creative life happens online. We photograph what we're making, film the process, and share it with other people. Don't get me wrong, there is real value in that. I've learned so much from tutorials and from simply watching videos of other people making. Sharing our work can inspire someone, teach a new skill, introduce a person to a craft they've never encountered, or simply remind another maker that there are people in the world who love the same things they do. I share my own work this way, too, and I think there is room for both.

Knitting at an airport feels different. I'm not knitting because anyone is watching; I'm knitting because I want to knit. If someone happens to notice, the visibility is simply a byproduct of bringing something I enjoy into a place where other people happen to be.

And when we do that, something quietly interesting happens: people get to see the work of human hands again.

So many of the textiles we use every day arrive already finished, neatly wrapped and labeled, often inexpensive enough that replacing them can feel easier than repairing them. We see sweaters hanging on racks and blankets folded on shelves, but we rarely see the hundreds or thousands of small movements required to make them. We don't see yarn becoming cloth one stitch at a time or loose fiber becoming yarn as a spindle turns. Making in public brings a little of that process back into ordinary life.

But I think it can make something else visible, too: the people around us.

Airports are particularly good at turning people into an overwhelming, blurry crowd. Everyone is moving toward a destination. We're watching boarding groups, scanning departure screens, maneuvering around luggage, all while trying to get where we need to go. It becomes easy for the people around us to fade into the machinery of travel rather than remain individual human beings.

Then someone asks about my knitting.

A person who was anonymous a moment ago suddenly has a grandmother who knitted. Someone else has a half-finished crochet project at home and wishes they had brought it along to pass the time. Another remembers a sweater their mother made when they were young. There are histories walking around us. There are memories tucked quietly into all those people rushing toward different gates.

“There are histories walking around us. There are memories tucked quietly into all those people rushing toward different gates.”

The knitting didn't create those things. It simply gave us a reason to notice them.

Maybe that's why fiber crafts seem particularly good at opening these little doors between strangers. Even people who don't knit or spin often have some connection to making. Someone in their family sewed, quilted, crocheted, knitted, embroidered, or simply made things with their hands. Seeing someone make can tug gently on that thread.

Of course, sometimes nobody says anything. I can knit for an entire flight or sit somewhere spinning while everyone around me goes happily about their business. That's fine, too, because I'm lost in my little wooly world. Making in public doesn't need an audience to justify itself. I'm still doing something I enjoy in a place I happened to be.

But occasionally someone walks through the little opening that making creates. A question becomes a conversation. A stranger becomes a knitter, or someone's daughter, someone's grandson, or someone who remembers sitting beside a grandmother while she crocheted. For a few minutes, the people around us stop being quite so faceless.

I've always loved that fiber arts connect us to the people who made before us. The techniques in our hands are older than we are, passed from one person to another across generations. Those connections feel a little like the warp of a weaving, threads running through time from one generation to the next. Perhaps taking our crafts outside our homes and studios creates the weft, allowing those threads to move sideways, too, connecting us briefly with the people sharing the world around us right now.

We don't have to perform our creativity for that to happen. We can simply let it be seen: a spindle turning beside a trail, needles clicking quietly in a coffee shop, a half-finished sock resting in someone's lap at an airport gate. Small evidence that somewhere among all the rushing and getting from one place to another, human hands are still making things.

And sometimes, those hands make the humans around them visible again.