Have you ever had to admit defeat on something that really, really mattered to you?
I did, with knitting.
Since I was seven years old, knitting has been a huge part of my identity. I became known as the girl who knit in the grocery store, in the movie theatre, while sitting on the couch and reading a book that I propped open with my toes. (I’m not that flexible any more.) Eventually, I became known as the girl who was actually making a career out of knitting and kind of actually succeeding? (See catalogue of almost 70 patterns.)
Looking back, I realize that that was all part of the problem.
I didn’t know how to take on life without knitting in my hands; but it turns out that wasn’t great for said hands. I don’t remember when exactly I started having numbness, tingling, and pain in my fingers and wrists, but it was when I was way too young for anything of the sort.
But I kept right on. Knitting was my job, I needed the work—and to be frank, I knew my stress levels would go haywire without the good old repetitive motion of forming stitches.
I think I knew even then that I was on borrowed time, and that I’d have to pay the interest later. The crash came in fits and spurts. I’d make a deadline and find that I couldn’t open and close my left hand properly, leading me to take a few days off and maybe avail myself of an ice pack before plunging headlong into the next cast-on. I cut back on my personal knitting and stuck to work projects only. Eventually, I had to stop taking on new collaborations or submitting to new publications. I even made a few “break” announcements, explaining my frequent absences from knitting spaces and proclaiming my hopes of getting back to normal soon with hilarious levels of optimism.
Around this time last year, my last published design, the Bedwyr Poncho, barely squeaked into existence. The pain was spreading into my forearm, my focus was split between birthing the pattern and a novel (more on that below), and I was so exhausted I didn’t even bother blogging about it here. At some point during the launch process, I realized that knitting wasn’t making me happy any more. I didn’t know what to do with myself without yarn between my fingers, but the act of creating things with it was taking more energy and physical strength than I had. And my favorite stress management tool was making me, well, stressed.
So, as much as it hurt, I quit.
I withdrew from my final outstanding collab, told my Instagram community that I didn’t know when I’d be back to knitting, and packed up my needles. And that was it.
This past year was so strange. It’s not that I was without a creative outlet—my knitting business had helped fund me through trade school for authors over the previous couple of years, and I spent much of 2025 graduating and then working on a novel that landed me a literary agent this fall. To read more about all that, see my other website here. And I was reading voraciously to fill up any extra time that would normally have been filled up with knitting.
But there was a twinge every time I wanted a specific handmade garment and then remembered I physically couldn’t make it; and I still don’t quite know what to do with my hands while watching a movie. The worst part is that I was too burnt out to have any spare brain cells for casting something on, even if my wrists would allow for that.
However, as I spent my year outlining, drafting, editing, and re-editing my novel, I realized something.
I didn’t need to knit any more.
I wanted to, but it was okay that I couldn’t. The sky didn’t fall on my head. My world didn’t stop spinning. It took being forced to stop completely for me to realize I will be fine without knitting. But I was fine.
Which makes it all the more amusing for me to get to announce that I’ve started knitting again.
Every holiday season for the past several, I’ve participated in the Indie Design Gift-A-Long on Ravelry (Ravelry link here)—it’s always one of the best parts of fall/winter. This year I really was thinking about passing, though, because I didn’t know if I’d be able to make anything and the temptation to cast on would just be too strong. But the moderators talked me into doing it—just come hang out, they said.
True to form, after a day or two in the forums, I couldn’t resist trying to knit.
I was good and didn’t cast on a whole new project—I merely set out to finish a project I’d had to set aside from the 2023 Gift-A-Long, when my wrist first started making its displeasure known. There was only the border left to do. Maybe I could get away with it, maybe not. All I could do was try.
And I did finish it.
This is the Bright Night Shawl by Gabrielle Vézina (Ravelry link for the pattern here). Two years in the making—and it was so worth it. Not just for the final shawl, which I plan to wear with great glee, but for how much I grew in that time.
I learned that knitting is there to serve me, not the other way round. That life is bigger and better than any one activity, even an awesome one. And that with that knowledge, knitting can bring me joy again.
(I’ve also taken to simultaneously knitting and reading again. I prop books open with my phone instead of my toes, though. So expect to see more books pop up here in the future…)
Who knows how much my hands will allow going forward, or if I’ll ever design professionally again. I’ve also realized I need to remember this experience and not repeat it with my new, equally creative career. (I am currently on writing break for the rest of the year. Let’s not do Burnout 2.0.)
For now, though, it is enough to have made stuff again.
