I Love Yarn Day - Real Men Work Yarn

Is working with yarn manly? I think so. And as a future surgeon and gentleman farmer, with a lot of adventure and travel thrown in, I see many hours of knot-tying and fiber-working in sight.

“As Katie pointed out to me, knitting is all about taking the fleece from a wild animal and using nothing but your bare hands and two sticks to create things for keeping yourself warm. What could be more ‘manly’ than that?” (www.houseofhumble.com/on-being-a-man-who-knits)

Tying knots, handling fibre, is a quintessential male skill. Men were the first to knit for an occupation (Wikipedia.org). By the 17^th and 18^th centuries, entire families on the Scottish Isles were involved in making socks, sweaters, and other outdoor clothing.  Top quality hand woven Harris Tweed, “hand-spun, hand-woven, and dyed by the crofters and cottars in the Outer Hebrides” (www.harristweed.org, worth a look) is also a top dollar product.

Dr. Barron says, “There’s something so gratifying about taking strings and pieces and making them whole. There’s something primitive and innate about that. The fragments of the mind also come together in the process. It’s a parallel process between the mind and the hands.”

 

Every boy needs a source of inspiration. I learned knot-tying from books I took out of the library as a 10-year old, and then one of my mother’s closest friends, Kendra Fletcher (her blog at www.preschoolersandpeace.com) , convinced us by her example with her own sons that knitting and crocheting were skills to know. 

In some cases, a good knot can mean the difference between life and death, such as for rock climbers and search-and-rescue teams.

Yet tying knots isn’t just a high testosterone skill for wilderness explorers, for fishermen or for businessmen with sailboats. Tying knots or working with yarn builds the kind of manual dexterity that surgeons need.

 

(www.fitsweb.uchc.edu Suturing 101 Two Hand Square Knot)

Dr. Alton Barron, orthopedic surgeon and president of the New York Society for Surgery of the Hand, is traveling America with his wife (also a physician) promoting the health of knitting:  prevents arthritis and tendinitis, lowers anxiety, keeps the mind sharp, settles boys with ADHD, frequently cures depression -working with fiber keeps the fingers and the spirit limber.

These doctors advocate “choosing needles over Netflix”.

“It’s such a shame that so many things can be put out of reach to whole groups of people…I’m so grateful that my parents never felt the need to perpetuate these ideas with me, and that my pa was such a great example. He cooks, he sews, he builds, he invents, he gardens. To him, it wasn’t about men’s work or women’s work, it was about the achievement of doing something for yourself, and the satisfaction of saying, “I made this!” (comment to knitting article above on www.houseofhumble.com) .

And this from Rueben, “My Nanna taught me to knit when I was just a kid and I’m thankful that she got to teach me those skills before I became too self conscious about doing something that others might not think appropriate for ‘a big strong man.’ I’m also really glad that Katie [Rueben’s wife] has always thought it was awesome…”

“Sometimes you will encounter people who just don’t get it. They won’t understand your knitting. They won’t see the time and effort that goes into every stitch. They won’t see the difference between garter and moss stitch. They won’t see your winding stretches of cables and understand that hanging, breathless moment when you crossed those stitches without a cable needle for the first time. They don’t understand that you couldn’t just sell your knitting, or see the difference between what you spent days, months, years learning to do, practicing, refining, and what someone programmed a machine to do.” (Raynor writing on www.theshylion.com) .

At the Adams Outpost, we all work with knots and yarn. We have for years. We sprawl out on the big rug while someone reads adventure tales aloud and we keep mindful, earnestly listening while whittling, drawing, punching leather, working knots or crocheting something useful. 

It’s the guy without a hobby that parents need to watch out for, and the young woman hoping to marry an ambitious man with the ability to share conversation over handcrafts should consider that a guy who intentionally engages in artistic crafts as one means of relaxation will make a fine companion for life.

- Isaac