Knitting Stories – Sycamore Cove Knitting

Women’s History and the History of Fabric-Making (Spoiler Alert: It’s the Same Thing)

April 11, 2024Cynthia Coe

Did you know that if you lived just a couple of hundred years ago – and any time before that – and you’re a woman, you would have spent much of your life making fabric? Yes, we as women still do much of the cooking and cleaning in our families, though the men in our lives and households do much, much more than they did prior to the 1970’s. We still cook, and some of us even enjoy it.

Many of us still enjoy making fabrics by knitting, crocheting, or weaving. We might enjoy sewing, making quits, or even making our own clothes. But up until recently in human history, the making of fabric was no hobby. It was work and important work at that. And if you were a woman, it would have been one of your primary occupations.

As I’ve researched the history of knitting for my next book in The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, I’ve discovered these truths, and it’s changed the way I look at fabrics. In our current culture, we barely give a thought to the fabrics we wear, use to bathe, sit upon, or trod upon. Yet someone made these fabrics. The raw materials came from some place, somewhere in the world. Someone – likely other women, working in not great conditions and for low wages – worked at the factories that turn out the cotton, synthetic, wool, silk, and all other fabrics we likely take for granted.

In my novels, you’ll see characters knitting for solace, for quiet time, and as an aid to spirituality. Yet in real life, women also knitted to survive the cold, to keep themselves and their families warm. I hope to convey this reality in my next novels, and I hope you’ll take a moment to appreciate all those mechanized and digitized looms, yarn spinners, and dying machines that means we as 21^st century women get to simply knit…for fun.

Interested in the history of fabric making? Here are my go-to recommendations:

The History of Fabrics and Cloth Making

Women’s Work, The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1995).

Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay (Pegasus Books, 2022).

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel (Basic Books, 2020).

Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser (Vintage Books, 2022).

Happy Reading! Cindy

Follow this blog for impending news of a new novel in The Prayer Shawl Chronicles!

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, a collection of interrelated short stories about knitters and those they meet through knitting and sharing prayer shawls.

Be sure to check out my newly published A Prayer Shawl Handbook: Inspiration and Resources for Your Prayer Shawl Ministry, now available in paperback and e-book editions and included in Kindle Unlimited. Thanks for all the wonderful “thumbs up” of support for this new book!!!

How Did You Learn to Knit? There’s a Story There

April 3, 2024Cynthia Coe

My own story of learning to knit is a story of learning a few basics from my mother, then learning so much more on my own and from other women.

How did you learn to knit? You likely could tell the story of a fundamental relationship in your life in answering this question. You may have learned from your mother, your grandmother, or another relative who took the time to spend with you, teaching something that stick with you the rest of your life. Or if you’re younger, this may be a story of finding yourself bored during the pandemic and using tech tools, like an online course, to teach yourself an ancient craft. In any case, as a novelist, I can assure there’s a rich story there.

My own story of learning to knit begins in Kingsport, Tennessee, as a teenager. I learned to cast on, knit, and cast off. She told me the story of making one and only one knitted blanket while my father had surgery on his lung, to remove inhaled debris from his childhood. I imagine her knitting away during the long hours of his surgery and recovery.

My mother only knew the knit stitch, so I didn’t learn to purl until much later. My mother taught me what she knew, which she almost certainly learned from her own mother. I imagine this grandmother I never knew knitting to calm her fears while my grandfather, a doctor, served in a medical unit in Europe during World War II.

I continued learning to knit as an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee. I struggled with anxiety and figured out that knitted helped to calm me. I sought out more advanced knitting skills from a local knit shop in Knoxville, The Knit Wits. There, two elderly women taught me how to purl, increase and decrease, and eventually to make an actual sweater. I never looked back. This was a story of finding myself and learning to seek out guidance and knowledge from those outside my own family, as I did elsewhere in my life during those college years.

By my mid-twenties, I became fully autodidactic. I learned to learn all kinds of things all by myself. That’s one thing I learned in law school – if you’re trying a case on something you know nothing about (medical procedures, auto parts, you name it), you hit the books and figure it out. Knitting was no different. While snowed in from law school one winter, I figured out how to knit cables. I became a self-learning student for life.

What’s your knitting story? What does your story tell you about yourself?

Stay tuned for my next book in The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, Knitting Through Time: Stories of How We Learned to Knit. In this novel, I imagine how we as a civilization learned to knit over the centuries. This is my first foray into historical fiction, and I’ve had a ball with it. I hope you’ll enjoy it, too!

Blessings, Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, interrelated short stories woven around those who make and receive handmade, prayerfully crafted gifts of prayer shawls. Click this link to order or for more information.

Write Your Own Knitting Patterns? Yes, You Can!

November 16, 2023Cynthia Coe

Inside: My story of how I wrote my first knitting patterns

You’ve made lovely hand-knitted sweaters and scarves. You have a go-to blanket pattern etched in your head. You constantly hear, “what pattern is that?” and you sheepishly say, “uh…I just made it up.” Then you hear, “no kidding? You should publish that!”

Yes, you should. And with a plethora of self-publishing and crafty platforms available to everyone, you absolutely can publish anything you want, including your own knitting patterns.

But how to get started?

Reader, I faced this problem just a couple of months ago. In writing my upcoming new book, “A Prayer Shawl Handbook,” I knew I had to provide some basic prayer shawl patterns for my readers to truly call this book a comprehensive handbook for this crafting ministry.

A Sneak Preview of Cindy’s Upcoming New Book, “A Prayer Shawl Handbook”

I have several “go-to” prayer shawl patterns in my head – patterns I don’t even think about and can simply cast-on and knit. But write these down???? Gasp. I’m not a technical writer by any stretch of the imagination. Fiction writing and knitting pattern writing are not, in my poor little mind, in the same skill set.

How to get started? Try. Sit yourself down, pull out a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, and take your first stab at it.

What about formatting your pattern?

Fortunately, a new book called “The Knitting Pattern Handbook: How to Write Great Patterns That Knitters Will Love to Make” by Kristina McGrath and Sarah Walworth has just been published, and I was fortunate enough to be given an advance copy for review by the publisher. What timing! I gulped down this little book and decided, yes, I could do this.

I cast on my favorite memorized patterns and took notes as I went along. I ripped out, re-figured, crumbled up and tossed some early drafts in the trash can. But I persevered until I got some basic prayer shawl patterns knocked out, along with three prayer patch patterns.

Yes, there are formats you need to use and abbreviations you need to adhere to. You probably recognized them from your own knitting projects you’ve made from other people’s patterns. You just need to focus on these things and make sure you’re consistent.

My tip: don’t skip steps or assume the reader of the pattern knows everything there is to know about knitting. Especially if your patterns are geared towards beginners (which mine are), something you think is obvious may not be.

Get friends to help proof and test your draft patterns

This is where it gets really terrifying, in my experience. You hand off your draft pattern to a trusted fellow knitter and see if they come up with what you came up with. They may say, “this makes no sense whatsoever.” They may say, “I just don’t understand what you mean by a yarn-over. What is that?” You go back to the drawing board and explain the details you thought you included but didn’t.

The authors of the new Knitting Pattern Handbook suggest that you hire technical editors and pay them for proofing and revising your patterns. Did I do this? No. I’m just starting out, and I can’t justify shelling out a lot of money for some basic patterns. Friends who knit told me what I needed to know. If I get the notion to start designing intricate sweaters in five different sizes, I’ll certainly re-think and probably get professional help. But as a newbie knitting designer, that’s not where I am.

Everybody starts with the basics

Where I am as a knitting designer is at the beginning. I have some basic patterns that are great for beginners and for simple “meditative” knitting. These are patterns I’d like to share with my readers, so I will.

If you, too, have some basic knitting patterns you’d like to at least share with friends, go for it! If you’d like to get into the knitting design business and make a few bucks (or a lot!), go for that, too! Every knitting designer starts somewhere, likely with a nice, basic design. And you can, too!

Blessings on your knitting designs, no matter how intricate or basic! Cindy

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Confessions of a Hand Knitter: I Still Wear Store-Bought Sweaters

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023Cynthia Coe

“Did you make that?” Someone asked me recently, admiring a new cardigan with intricate cable work, made of tiny laceweight yarn. “Uh, no,” I replied sheepishly. My admirer gasped. “YOU bought a sweater at a STORE?!”

Yes. I, an avid knitter and maker of pullover and cardigan sweaters, still buy sweaters at stores.

It all goes down to eyesight. I’ve worn glasses since I was seven years old, moving from nearsightedness as a nerdy child with her head in a book, to a middle-aged woman needing “progressives” to see up close. Knitting with the fine weight yarns I prefer to wear has never been a good fit for me.

Then there’s the time factor. In my experience, knitting a large garment using fingerling or lace weight yarn takes FOREVER. Between the frustration of squinting to see stitches and the difficulty of correcting mistakes while using threadlike yarn, I’m usually done with dealing with such yarns as the project extends beyond several weeks.

But I do admire fine weight knitted fabrics, intricate patterns, and complicated cable work. I admire buttons sewn on just-so with an abundance of sturdy thread, ribbon backings on the button bands and perfect pockets. Could I make these garments with such advanced techniques myself? Maybe not. There’s a reason people started manufacturing sweaters, right?

Just last week, I bought a cardigan sweater at a well-known retailer while traveling to New Haven, Connecticut for my son’s wedding. I spied a cream-colored cardigan with abundant bobbles along the sides of the button bands, crisp ribbon facings, elegant gold buttons, and cables that would make me pull my hair out if I attempted to knit them myself. It fit perfectly and felt oh-so-luscious on my arms. So heck yeah, I bought it!

As a knitter, I confess I am primarily a meditative knitter. I knit to zone out, to find a place and space of calm and peacefulness. I knit to keep my fingers from fidgeting when I want to think or pray or just take a break from the busy-ness of real life.

And I also confess to buying great knit pieces at the store…especially when they’re on sale and look terrific on me!

Peace, Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, interrelated stories about knitters and those for whom they knit and love. The sequel to this book, The Knitting Guild of All Saints, has been released! Available in paperback and on Kindle, included in Kindle Unlimited.

That Liberating Feeling of Ripping Out Your Knitting Project

September 6, 2023Cynthia Coe

We’ve all been there. You start a knitting or crochet project. You’re well underway with it. And you hate it. What do you do? Soldier on, or rip it out and start over?

I found myself in this place with a knitted sweater recently. I had designed it myself, using expensive alpaca and wool yarn, in a deep red color. Since the yarn was a delicate fingerling weight using tiny needles, I had put hours upon hours of work into it. But I could tell it would be way, way too small for me. What to do?

Reader, I ripped out the entire project. All of it. And I felt liberated. Instead of keeping myself in a rut I couldn’t get out of, I got to re-think and start an entirely new project.

When I ripped out my former sweater, I honestly did not regret the time I spent on it. As with all knitting projects, I enjoyed pleasant, restorative quiet time while making this sweater. I enjoyed knitting along while watching and listening to my favorite shows. Was this wasted time? Absolutely not. In fact, I considered the ripping out process as getting double the value for the money spent on this particular yarn.

My former knitted sweater is now in the process of becoming a crocheted prayer shawl I’m making as a prototype for a new book. I have no regrets. Instead of suffering through a project I would never wear, I’m making something that will wrap around someone’s shoulders and fit perfectly, no matter the size of the person.

Other crafters – woodworkers, painters, metal workers – may have to throw away or destroy projects that don’t work. I imagine that must hurt and be costly. As knitters and crocheters, we get to do something most people can’t do. We get a do-over. If a project isn’t working for us – for whatever reason – all we have to do is pull that piece of yarn and keep pulling until the project literally doesn’t exist anymore. Our flexible yarns give us the possibility of release from our mistakes and the possibility of a brand new start.

Blessing for all the do-overs in your life, Cindy

What Knitting Taught Me About Writing

April 4, 2023Cynthia Coe

When I tell people I write about knitting, they tend to giggle or smirk. Yes, I’m a writer, and I’m a knitter. For me, knitting and writing involve similar processes. Both take a long time and can’t be rushed. Both can produce something intricate or something simple. Most importantly, both are crafts. You practice, you continually get better. You learn new skills and develop your own personal style and ways of doing things.

Here’s what I’ve learned about Writing from my Knitting:

Projects take a long time to complete. You handle them one stitch at a time. You pick up the needles every day and do some work on your project. Same with writing – you sit down and write a page or two every day. Eventually, you have a book length manuscript.
Ripping out is sometimes necessary. Ripping out a piece of knitting is not fun. You can lose stitches and lose your mind. You might have to rip your work out several times before you get it right. Same with writing. If you have a problem in your work and know it, you’re going to have to stop, make some cuts, and revise. None of this is fun, but you know in your heart you’ll feel better about the final product once you do it.
It’s the intricate work that makes your work shine. Plain stockinette is fine, but it’s the fancy cables or other intricate stitchery that grab people’s attention and show what you’re made of. Same with writing. My work involves interrelated short stories and lots of characters whose stories weave in and out of each other. Would it be easier to tell one straightforward story? Sure, but it’s this intricate interweaving of stories that add a richness and depth to my writing.
Crafting skills count. All of them. To make a sweater or a pair of socks, you need lots of skills – casting on, picking up stitches, mattress stitching a sleeve together, casting off. You need to master ALL of these skills; you don’t sub them out to somebody else. I’ve come to believe that writing should be the same process. After saying “enough” to the soul-crushing rejections of the New York publishing industry, I learned to publish my own work. I do it all – choose the font, design the book covers, character development, revisions – just like I do with a large knitting project. For me, it’s all part of the craft of producing a book. I don’t sub out tying up loose ends, do I? Virginia Woolf typeset her own manuscripts, after all, and self-published.
Sometimes you need to set your work aside. We’ve all gotten sick and tired of knitting projects. You get frustrated by difficult patterns or just plain bored or exasperated. The same thing happens with large writing projects. You think you’re going nowhere, you’re out of ideas, the project looks too big and unwieldy for you to possibly complete. Sometimes you just need to take a break. And then, when you’re ready, you pick up that work-in-progress again, settle into well-honed skills, and you think, “I’m so glad to be back.” You move forward, and you’re so glad you did. You’re doing what you do best.

Happy Knitting (or Writing! Or Both!), Cindy

Learning to Knit – What’s Your Story?

February 17, 2023Cynthia Coe

I learned to knit from my mother in the late 1970’s, as a teenager. My mother did not knit on a regular basis. She made one big project that I know of – a garter stitch blanket for my dad. She made this one project back in the 1950’s, when my dad had lung surgery to remove a piece of debris stuck in his lung since childhood, and my mother had many anxious hours spent at the hospital, knitting to pass the time. My mother only knew how to cast on, make the knit stitch, and cast off. She never learned to purl. But she passed on what little she knew to me, and knitting soon became a beloved craft for me.

There’s a story behind each and every person who learns to knit. Maybe you learned to knit from a favorite aunt or a grandmother. Maybe you learned at summer camp, or at church, or from videos online, stuck at home during the pandemic. Many of the stories in my books, The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, feature someone going through a difficult time and learns to knit, finding healing along the way. A washed-up ballerina goes back to her hometown, learns to knit from a female lawyer, and starts a new career as a paralegal. A young girl coming out of the foster care system sits on the curb of a food pantry, trying to figure out what to do with two sticks and a ball of string. A woman walking her dog in a church garden gets caught in the rain, ducks into a church service for shelter, and stumbles on a Blessing of the Prayer Shawls service.

This weekend, I’m hosting a Knitting Social at my local church. I’ve invited anyone who knits or wants to learn to knit. I’ve got a plan for teaching knitting from scratch, balls of yarn lined up, and several pairs of size 9 needles ready to offer. Who will show up? What will their story be? Will they stick with knitting for the rest of their lives, or will they find it a passing thing they may pick up again years from now? Will they, like my mother, pass on these knitting lessons to young girls or boys born far into the future? It’s exciting to think of the possibilities!

What’s your story of learning to knit? Who taught you? Where were you, both in time and in your emotional state? Did knitting help you heal in some way, or was it something fun or creative to do? I bet there’s a story there!

Blessings on your knitting journey,

Cindy

Yarn – It’s Fundamental to Human Culture

February 8, 2023Cynthia Coe

We’ve all seen the memes. “My other hobby is buying yarn.” “My yarn stash exceeds my expected lifespan.” “Yarn is like chocolate; you can never have too much.”

We treat yarn as if there’s an abundant worldwide stash ready for us to buy, in any amount. Craft stores literally stock enough yarn to reach the ceiling. You can obtain yarn for any project you have in mind with a couple of clicks on your phone.

This wasn’t always the case. In researching for my next book in The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, I’ve been shocked to learn how much time women have spent over the centuries making yarn and thread. Before industrialization, if you were a human being and a woman, you would spend a good part of your waking hours making yarn or thread. If you were a Neanderthal woman, you would have used fibers from the inner bark of conifer trees to make string for fishing lines and nets, to hang food to dry, to set traps for small animals, and to sew together animal hides for clothes and shelter. If you lived in Europe up until the industrial revolution, you would carry around a spindle and a fist full of wool, and you would make yarn while you watched the kids, walked, talked, and generally while you kept an eye on whatever else went on in your life. You would know how to work a spinning wheel as well as you knew how to cook. It’s what your family needed to survive.

Why don’t we study this in history class? Why don’t we see remnants of these time-consuming tasks featured in museums? Think about it – yarns, threads, and cloths eventually deteriorate and rot. These cushy, soft products don’t survive as long as items made of metal, stone, or even wood. So our foremothers’ efforts put into anything woven, knitted, or sewn have largely faded (or rotted) away from the saved artifacts of human culture.

The next time you pick up a skein of yarn to knit your next project, consider yourself blessed. Thanks to human ingenuity, all you had to do to get that yarn was click buttons on your phone or make a craft store run, which you probably enjoyed. Appreciate that you, as a 21^st century woman, have the leisure to simply sit and knit for the sheer pleasure of it.

Blessings, Cindy

Knitting Hasn’t Always Been “Just a Hobby”

January 18, 2023January 18, 2023Cynthia Coe

Knitting is just a hobby, right? A way to pass the time. Maybe a reason to get together with other crafty friends. Perhaps just a harmless and inexpensive thing you do while watching television.

Knitting hasn’t always held such a frivolous place in human lives. At many points in human history, knitting was serious business. If you were poor and needed money to feed yourself, you knitted. And you knitted socks, lots of them. You might knit every night until you couldn’t see the wool in front of you. You might knit every spare moment you found in your difficult and dreary life. Because you had to. Knitting was how you got by.

This past month, I’ve done a deep dive into the history of knitting. In preparing to write a new novel in the Prayer Shawl Chronicles series, I’m looking at why people – mostly women – knitted over the last decades and centuries. What exactly did they knit? How did they learn to knit? What did they use for needles? How did they get access to patterns? And my big question has been, what place did knitting have in the average woman’s life?

Several of the answers surprised me. Knitting used to be all about socks. The oldest found knitted garment was an ancient Egyptian sock. Up until the 1920’s, knitting continued to be a way to provide high quality socks to the aristocracy and others who could afford them. In more recent years, soldiers fighting one war or another (with wet, dirty, sore, and blistered feet) went through socks like there was no tomorrow. They needed the womenfolk back home to keep them supplied.

When you think of “handknitted garments,” the first items to come to the 21^st century mind might be “scarves” or “sweaters.” Socks are difficult and advanced projects for most of us. We’re just knitting to pass the time, remember. Up until Coco Chanel introduced us all to “sportswear” in the early part of the 20^th century, people generally did not wear sweaters – with the noted exceptions of British fishermen. Hard to imagine, right?

Enjoy your knitting. You’re very blessed to live in a time when you probably don’t have to knit. You don’t have to crank out a zillion pairs of socks just to put food in your children’s tummy. You probably aren’t knitting essential items for the military. You can afford to just knit because you want to. Sure, you may knit to economize and make an all-wool sweater that would cost a lot at your local department store. But you have that option. (And I bet you thoroughly enjoy making that sweater, too.)

But give a thought to those women who don’t have the option of “free time.” Give a thought to women who are working very hard, doing something with their hands, for the same reasons our foremothers knitted long into the night by candlelight to keep the soup bowl filled. Because, but for the grace of God, we all could have lived in a place and time when we knitted not for fun, but for survival.

Here’s my recommended books on the history of knitting in Britain and the United States. Both are beautifully researched and a pleasure to read.

This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain’s Knitted History by Esther Rutter (2021)

No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne L. Macdonald (1990)

Happy Knitting, Cindy

A Year in Knitting – Back to a New and Exciting “Normal”

December 28, 2022Cynthia Coe

Greetings, Knitters and Knit-Fiction Followers! Today, I’m taking a look back at my own year in knitting, and I imagine you might, too. Maybe you’re just starting out or even just thinking about taking up knitting, and this might be a year of new beginnings. Maybe you’ve knit for years and years, and knitting has been the constant that has kept you sane during these turbulent times.

For me, this has been year of “Getting Back to Something Called Normal.” As some of you may or may not know, 2020 and 2021 were years of immense change for me. My beloved husband, Tom, was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in May of 2020 and passed away in December of 2020. Throughout 2021, I sold my farm, moved and downscaled into a house in the suburbs, and bought a rental condo in Florida. My knitting (and writing) reflected all that change. I knitted just to have a few moments of Calm and get through the day. I scribbled a few lines in my journal and got back to packing, moving, and settling in.

This year, I’m fully settled into a new life. My new house is exactly the way I want it. My Florida Airbnb home is re-decorated and exactly how I want it, too. I’m writing again on a daily basis and recently published a new novel, “The Knitting Guild of All Saints.” I started a Prayer Shawl Ministry at my church and now share my love of knitting with all kinds of new people in my life. It’s a marvelous place to be – and a hard-won place to be as well. I’m glad to finally say, “this is my new normal.”

Looking ahead to 2023, I’ve got big plans. My stash of lovely yarns is bigger than ever, in a not-so-great way. Before the pandemic, I ordered kits from Kitterly, Bluprint, and Knitcrate. I learned lots with every kit and truly advanced my knitting skills by leaps and bounds. As of this month, all of those companies are out of business. Through their clearance sales, and I bought huge amounts of high-quality yarns and even complete kits for pennies on the dollar. That makes me sad. But I treasure the skills I learned and the introduction to “luxury” yarns I’d never even know about otherwise. Now, it’s time to take another big leap and design new sweaters, prayer shawls, and who-knows-what other garments and projects all by myself.

The new year looks a little scary, but exciting and full of possibilities. I’ve started a new novel in “The Prayer Shawl Chronicles,” and I hope to finish and publish it by this time next year. I’m also researching the history of knitting and trying my hand at designing knitwear for the first time. It will be exciting to see where my knitting journey takes me next, and I’m grateful for such a productive year in knitting and writing!

With hopes and dreams of wonderful knitting journeys for us all! Cindy