I am a knitter: hand-knitting in a digitally-mediated society

Hand-knitting continues to be a popular past-time for many people. It underwent a resurgence in the latter part of the 1990s, which was around the same time as the development of the World Wide Web. Knitting went on to become more widespread around 2007, alongside the time social media and smartphones combined to ensure digital technology came to dominate interpersonal communications. By 2017, hand-knitting continued to be popular, but the media and public focus waned. Also, by this date, concerns began to increase about the psycho-social effects of high levels of social media, internet, and smartphone use.

This research seeks to address the position of hand-knitting in a society that has become increasingly mediated through digital communication technology. It establishes the concept of the knitter self, an identity that develops through practicing knitting, that encapsulates the effects of knitting on an individual and sits in contrast to identities developed online. Key to this contrast are two themes: firstly, the control the knitter has over their knitting; secondly, the importance of the objects they make in being useful and conferring this usefulness on the maker due to the embodiment of time and feelings through the making process.

The research method developed combines hand-knitting practice, contextual investigation, and personal testimony, creating a mixed methodology drawing on concepts from practice as research, oral history, modified grounded theory and autoethnography.

There are several contributions to knowledge emerging from this research. It establishes hand-knitting as an interpretative research tool that exploits the slow, embodied nature of knitting to examine the craft itself, within a broad methodological framework. Secondly, it positions hand-knitting as a way of developing skills to negotiate a digitally-mediated society and articulates the importance of sustaining knitting culture in contemporary society through the emerging concept of the knitter self.