1 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021 // The Statement
BY MELANIE TAYLOR, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
A stitch in time: Fiber artistry during the pandemic
The World Is Ending, and All I Got Was This
Dumb Sweater
I picked up crochet a few months before the
world shut down. I’d been dabbling with sewing
and embroidery in fall 2019, a few of the many
crafts that had come and gone from my list of hob-
bies, when I saw a crochet TikTok that seemed
doable. That’s how they get you.
I was trying (and failing) to crochet one of my
first ever projects — a mask, inspired by Billie Eil-
ish at the January 2020 Grammys — when the
University of Michigan sent students home. How
fortuitous, right?
As the world collapsed inward, gatherings
dwindled and commutes were eliminated. Many
of us found ourselves trapped inside with a lot of
time on our hands. Some replaced that time with
baking, Animal Crossing or binging Tiger King.
Some replaced that time with a ball of yarn.
When Information junior Julia Kaplan was
sent home from school, she and her roommates
tried out a few different activities to fill their
empty schedules before landing on crochet. Most
notably, Kaplan wanted to teach herself Adobe
Photoshop. She quickly realized that a digital
hobby was only exacerbating her online fatigue
from Zoom.
“In the beginning of quarantine, I started pick-
ing up a couple of new hobbies, but they were still
on my computer,” Kaplan said. “I realized that I
just needed something tangible because staring at
a screen all day is honestly exhausting.”
So Kaplan ventured into Kerrytown to grab
two skeins and two hooks for her and her room-
mate from the local yarn barn, Spun. Kaplan
brought the haul home and began to weave the
yarn together into whatever she could manage.
“We just searched up YouTube videos of how
to crochet, and we both sat in our beds for like two
hours just trying to start it out,” Kaplan said.
The widespread accessibility and digital com-
munity surrounding the fiber arts flourished dur-
ing COVID-19. There were hundreds of YouTube
tutorials and TikTok videos catering to beginners,
encouraging people to think creatively about the
possibilities these art forms offer.
LSA sophomore Nandini Arya credits this
modern textiles Renaissance as the reason that
she got into the craft. Arya never saw herself as a
crochet artist. Her only association with knitting
was the chunky sweaters Molly Weasley knits for
her kids in Harry Potter. But when she saw a Tik-
Tok of a Perry the Platypus amigurumi, inspira-
tion struck.
“I looked at like four YouTube tutorials and
decided it was achievable,” Arya said.
From then on, Arya would take to crochet in
“bursts,” a few days on and then a few days off,
following tutorials and churning out projects. She
started with beginner videos and worked her way
up the levels of difficulty. Arya still calls herself a
beginner. When I argued that she must be at least
intermediate at this point, she insisted that she
thought her friends would disagree.
Regardless, Arya continued to drill the differ-
ent techniques for hours at a time. Sometimes,
she would spend all day on a project — and she
wasn’t alone.
“I remember our friends forced us to leave (our
bedroom) because we got so into it so quickly,”
Kaplan said.
This sudden, all-encompassing obsession was
a common theme among lockdown fiber artists.
There were days when I would spend hours toil-
ing over a needle and yarn. The sun would set
before I realized how much time had passed.
LSA senior Reagan White also found her foray
into crochet devolving into obsession. White start-
ed a private Snapchat story with her best friend for
the sole purpose of swapping crocheting tips and
tricks. They were both novice crocheters but soon
became enamored with the craft.
“I definitely did it every day during lockdown,
24/7, even in times I maybe shouldn’t have,”
White said.
Fiber arts are a great hobby because they can be
done with only part of your attention. Many craft-
ers, myself included, would use this time to catch
up on their favorite TV shows, chat with friends
or even attend online class. White found that the
practice actually helped her focus on whatever
else she was doing.
“I have ADHD, so it’s really helpful for me to be
doing something with my hands while I’m listen-
ing or watching something,” White said. “It helps
me digest the information that I’m consuming.”
As a member of the community service frater-
nity Alpha Pi Omega, Engineering senior Ryan
DaCosta learned to knit by making scarves and
hats which were donated to shelters around Ann
Arbor. DaCosta began knitting recreationally
when lockdown went into effect and spent a good
amount of time practicing when in isolation with
COVID-19 early on in the pandemic.
“At the beginning of quarantine, I was knitting
probably every day because being at home and
being online for a while, there’s not much to do,”
DaCosta said. “It’s also kind of a stress-reliever.”
DaCosta also found himself splitting his atten-
tion between knitting and other tasks. He enjoyed
having something simple and repetitive to occupy
the part of his mind insistent on wandering.
“It’s a great way to divide your attention while
still staying engaged,” DaCosta said. “Being able to
get that energy out while still focusing was really
helpful.”
Kinesiology sophomore Sage Feldbruegge,
who learned to crochet from her mother at a
young age, was inspired to take it back up after her
sister came home during lockdown and gifted her
a new handmade cardigan. She wanted to be able
to someday return the favor.
“I want to be able to make things for myself
and not have to rely on my sister to ship it to me
from her apartment when she moves back,” Feld-
bruegge said.
As a self-proclaimed “multitasking kind of
person,” Feldbruegge shared that she rarely cro-
chets without some secondary source of enter-
tainment to accompany the task. That being said,
Feldbruegge was doubtful of her ability to crochet
during a movie she’d never seen before, much less
while attending Zoom classes.
“I don’t think I could be one of the people that
crochet in class,” Feldbruegge said. “I would learn
things, but I would forget them. Because I would
start counting my stitches, and I would forget to
listen.”
That was certainly the case in my few failed
attempts to crochet during class. And that’s okay.
Crochet patterns get complicated fast, and it can
be difficult to focus on something new in the back-
ground when you’re still building up expertise.
Feldbruegge said there were often times dur-
ing class where she would yearn to pick up the
project. The half-completed sweater would taunt
her, sitting there unchanged as the moments
ticked by. It could be done, if only she could devote
her full attention to it.
But eventually, Feldbruegge would find respite
in a nightly Netflix binge, roommate hangout
or dog sitting job. She would use the hobby as a
stress-reliever at the end of her day, or simply a
way to occupy the passing hours.
“I did a lot of crocheting before I went to bed,”
Feldbruegge said. “I’d be like, I just want to finish
this one part, and then I’d end up getting so into it
that I’d crochet until the middle of the night.”
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
When I was younger, my Bubbie armed me
with all the knowledge of a good Jewish grand-
mother. I listened to her advice — learned to
play Canasta and got pretty good at knitting
(for a nine-year-old). But Bubbie told me I was
spectacular, so rather than discard the needles,
I tucked them away in my coterie of craft sup-
plies, never to be seen again. That is, until lock-
down.
Knitting, much like riding a bike or learning
a language, is something that you never really
forget how to do. This is especially true if you
learn at a young age. It’s the kind of skill that’s
all about muscle memory. Once you practice it
enough, it becomes second nature.
The very essence of fiber arts is repeti-
tive. It requires the maker to stack stitch upon
stitch upon identical stitch until suddenly, they
coalesce into something entirely new.
“Watching the project grow while it’s in your
hands, you can see your progress so clearly,”
White said. “And even though some projects
will take a lot of repetition of the same thing,
you can see the whole bigger picture of it being
built in your hands.”
This makes fiber artistry a particularly
valuable skill to have during a months-long
lockdown. Even though you’re not necessarily
accountable to anyone for creating or complet-
ing projects, it’s nice to have physical evidence
of your productivity — to be able to point to
something and say, I made that!
“Especially with the last part of quarantine
… it got harder to perceive time passing at the
end there, so it was nice to know it actually hap-
pened,” Arya said. “To have proof that it did in
fact occur.”
In the beginning, progress isn’t going to
amount to entire blankets produced in a single
day. Still, any change is good change when your
daily routines are shattered and conventions of
life are forgotten.
“One of the reasons that I love crochet is
because you can see the little bits and pieces of
progress so even if you just got one row, it’s one
more row than you used to have,” Kaplan said.
“It’s a very rewarding craft.”
And those rewards are certainly hard-
earned. It takes time to build up the muscle
memory to be able to knit or crochet — typically
up to three months. You must reap before you
are able to sew (pun intended).
“It can be super overwhelming when you
first get started,” White said. “It can be really
foreign to hold the yarn in the ways that they
suggest you do for crocheting and knitting as
well. I think the best advice would be to just
keep trying the same very simple tasks.”
Every single person I interviewed said some-
thing to this effect, and I completely agree. For
beginners, there is a huge learning curve asso-
ciated with mastering the stitches and getting
comfortable with the tools.
Arya advises newcomers to take things bit by
bit. She recommends finding a pattern involv-
ing only one or two simple stitches to start out,
because when you finally do make something
successfully — even something simple — the
ego-boost you receive is unrivaled.
“Once I made my first successful circle, I
was so happy that I was like, ‘I can crochet any-
thing,’” Arya said. “And that was really the rea-
son why I kept up with it instead of quitting.”
Feldbruegge did quit after her mom taught
her to crochet when she was younger. But hav-
ing started it back up again, she was determined
to master the skill. A few months in, after prac-
ticing for countless hours, Feldbruegge started
a new project: a hat. She was anticipating anoth-
er bout of days laboring over hook and skein, but
after just an hour and a half, the hat was com-
plete. Feldbruegge went to show it to her dad,
who joined her in shock over just how quickly
she was able to produce the garment.
“The fact that I was not very good at crochet-
ing when I was younger and I just got back into
it this year and was already going fast enough to
get things done, like finish a project in one day,
was just really cool to see,” Feldbruegge said.
Feldbruegge said that people new to the
fiber arts should try out different methods of
learning before becoming discouraged. Unlike
almost everyone I talked to, Feldbruegge pre-
ferred written patterns to YouTube tutorials.
Once she figured that out, though, she was
able to explore the archive of patterns shared
across the global digital crochet community.
Design by
Cara Jhang
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