Knitting ... That's not why we do it

Over the last couple of weeks, knitting has really taken a beating in summer television programming. People make derogatory jokes about knitters all the time on t.v. and that’s not new. Writers make it into some lame activity that only lonely women take up because they don’t have a man in their life, or something that a woman could only resort to once she’s acquired nine cats and has completely let herself go. I’m accustomed to those ridiculous comments and usually just ignore them. But a little something inside me snapped on Saturday. I won’t mention the name of the show because I don’t want to give it more attention than it’s worth, but let’s just say it’s one of those cookie cutter “quirky female FBI agent who is tough as nails and always speaks her mind no matter what others think” kinds of shows. Gee, do you think that’s a stereotype? Just for the record, this was the first and last time I will watch this particular piece of crap.

So during the show, the FBI agent is trying to keep a newly relocated Amish witness busy by finding a knitting group for her to join. She takes the girl to a local yarn store where there is a circle of women sitting and knitting. Not a single one of the women looks to be under the age of 60. The young girl takes out her knitted piece and one of the women seems to know exactly that the piece—which is barely big enough to be distinguishable— is some kind of special cable cardigan. The young girl says that she is knitting it for her husband. Then all the women snicker. The young girl asks why, and one of the women responds that women only knit because they’re sexually frustrated. Mind you, I was sitting there with my parents and I could only imagine what was running through their heads. Probably something like “oh, so that’s why she keeps buying all that yarn.” It’s not, I swear.

So it got me thinking about what I would want to tell all the non-knitters in the world who think knitting is just some easy target ripe for the picking. Here’s what I say to them …

• Female knitters are not all sexually frustrated. We don’t view the needles as some penis substitute.
• We don’t all share our homes with nine cats. Some of us only have two cats or one dog or an iguana named Izzie.
• We are not all sad spinsters. Some of us lead perfectly rich dating lives, some of us are married or engaged, and some of us choose to live independently because that’s what makes us happy.
• We haven’t all let ourselves go. In fact, we come in all shapes and sizes.
• We are not all senior citizens (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Some of us are as young as grade school age, some of us are twenty-something hipsters and some of us live active lives in retirement villages.
• We don’t all knit reindeer sweaters that you don’t want to wear. The number of fashion-forward knitwear designers and patterns grows by the day.
• And finally … knitting isn’t something that you resort to just because you were jilted by some man and now life has no meaning. That’s perhaps the dumbest one of all.