On knitting

10 years ago I got into knitting. To encourage me, my husband's family all got me kits for Christmas. My first project was a scarf.

It was my first time, so I made tons of mistakes. The thing emerging on my sticks looked tumor-ridden and forlorn.

Starting over made me cry. But there was too much I hadn't known when I started. When I cast on the second time, I drew from experience. I created a tension swatch, then knit the scarf in earnest. A day later it was done.

I still have that scarf. It looks exactly as it should, and has followed me across space/time: I divorced, moved, had a child, got a masters, shed uncountable versions of Angela.

In the interim I made blankets—big heavy ones, tiny ones for babies—and gloves, bonnets, blouses.

Knitting changed my brain, like any skill that enters muscle memory. When Mathieu and I started Hurrah, it helped secure our first client: A Swedish esports firm that liked us, but hesitated to trust us with a sizable media budget.

Tension swatch.

“We can run a weekend-long campaign for 500€!” I declared. “They can decide based on those results. If it’s shit, it’s not much to lose.” The client agreed. They stayed with us until the end.

Hurrah rose, then fell. Covid shut us in and spat us out in a changed world.

Twitter is dead and my follower base, too; a giant era of my life washed away. A two-year-old clutches my leg. I live half-time in Friuli Italy, a place I didn't previously know existed. AI hypemen gnaw at the charred remains of my career.

I stuck my head under the couch and slid out the knitting box. My son's in his bandana era and I want to make him one for winter instead of spending, like, 85€ retail. So I found a free pattern and studied my assets.

It’s hard sliding into a skillset that belongs to a previous version of you. I feel haunted by dark questions: what can I still do, what is dead now? Knitting is like riding a bike, but not. It takes trial and error to remember how to cast on.

I spent days getting not even halfway through this project. Yesterday I spent hours undoing knots in a yarn ball. I had no time for this—then it obsessed me. I wasn’t just working the yarn; I was working my life, every synapses that got lost instead of snapping neatly to its next destination.

Today while assessing the work I realized it was too fucked up. So I undid it, never mind the sunk costs. (My son hates the knitting. He perceives it as his enemy.)

I’m older, I know about starting over. I did the new cast-on fast.

This is not about cultivating hobbies to be more creative for work. It's about how indulging myself, without strings, nourishes me in ways I can’t count.

I don’t need to make money knitting. I do it while listening to Kara Swisher and Trevor Noah talk shit. I remember skills and learn new ones. Ideas sit beside me while I squint into the yarn. And it's helping alchemise a grief into something beautiful for my son. This is work that merits doing. It is one good use of my life.