alt Hacker NewsConsider Knitting
Comments
>I got into knitting a few years after the pandemic.
So very recently?
I like crotcheting (tried it again for the first time since childhood during Covid). My main problem is that, unless you have already mastered it and can do it in your sleep, I have to fully concentrate on it to not fuck things up, which means I can't do something else at the same time, e.g. listen to an audiobook. And because I'm so slow it takes too much time for me to not think that it's a waste of time because I could have done something more meaningful instead. Objectively, I know it is wrong to think so because the whole point of it is to get away from other stuff and let your brain rest for a while, but it just doesn't work for me and creates extra stress, sadly.
Hardest possible concur with everything OP said.
Knitting and other fiber arts are the grandmother of computer programming, and I'd go so far as to say your CS education is incomplete without at least passing knowledge of fabric weaving and especially weaving machine history.
Ignorance is not your fault, unfortunately they can't teach you everything in college, and people tend to downplay the importance and history of "women's work", much to all our detriment.
https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stor...
Author here. You can thank nosecreek for prompting me to write this up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44137085
:)
The point about being disconnected with tactile sensation is very poignant. I've experimented with crafts before, but my go-to hobby has always been music - stringed instruments like the guitar. There's something very rewarding about the instant feedback you get when you fret down a string, and how much nuance you can get out of the smallest movements of your hands.
I feel like HN really wants me to knit ;-) I was already considering taking knitting lessons because of this comment thread[0] from a week ago.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44128576
p.s. Oh, I just realized that "munificent", who posted the top-level comment in that thread, is also the author of this article.
I find woodworking fun for basically all the same reasons. Plus there's still the math of adding up things to predict cut layouts, and you end up with a new shelf or box or table. I'm not sure I would use anything I knitted.
Programmers (and other full time computer users) should be careful with this and similar yarn-based hobbies. I gave myself an apparently permanent RSI issue in my shoulder from knitting with bad technique (had too much tension in my yarn I think). I learned from you tube videos, a human probably could have told me I was doing it wrong but I didn't ask anyone.
The injury does affect my computer use, when it gets real bad I have to switch my mouse pad to the other side of my desk. I haven't knitted in years and its still there.
I started making cosplay accessories and custom plushies for furries. There’s almost an unlimited range of stuff to make. 3D printed glasses, oversized beanies, custom bags, etc. Feels very satisfying to make a physical thing and hand it over to the buyer.
The thing knitting taught me is that you can have something beautiful and useful even tho literally every part of the piece is a single point of failure.
No redundancy, no backstop. If any of the stitches gets cut, the entire piece can unravel completely.
We're so used to redundancy, but sometimes you just need to get things done, and it's ok if it's all a deck of cards.
My girlfriend has been getting into crocheting recently, and I've been learning a lot about it and craft stuff in general.
I've always been a computer guy... I'm bad with my hands. Could never do origami. Part of the reason I dropped out of Boy Scouts was I didn't want to learn how to make knots. I was terrible in art class, I can't draw and I honestly have trouble just visualizing things (I was not great in geometry either). It's difficult for me to be creative like that. So that's my background, lol.
I could play music (and that's a hobby I still want to pursue), but lately I've been wondering if there was a craft that was better for people like me. Like, I got these cute handmade plushies as a gift recently, and I want to do something like that.
(honestly it seems like crocheting and knitting might not be bad options, but just wondering what else is out there!)
e; one thing I've considered is making something with electronics (I know enough about circuits to be dangerous), but the thing you run into quickly is you don't really want to just give somebody a circuit board, lol. At some point, it seems like all the interesting projects move towards 3D printing which I find intimidating.
In the same vein, I've been enjoying making plushies recently, when my body allows me to. You end up with something you made yourself, even if it sometimes looks a bit skrunkly, and they're great gifts (for my friend group anyway, which mostly consists of trans girls that need more plushies in their lives)
Yep! Any type of desk/knowledge work job tends to be more cerebral and less... Sensory. If you have this type of job, any sort of hobby that unlocks the senses can be very rewarding and add balance to your life. For me it's lifting weights and singing.
Related:
Why is everybody knitting chickens?
172 points, 122 comments (5 days ago)
Shameful plug, made an app to learn knitting called Knitting Genius https://apps.apple.com/us/app/knitting-genius-knit-easy/id13...
Indeed knitting is not so much different from programming and you have the whole touch aspect that is very pleasing.
Read to the end and did a double-take: that's the game programming patterns guy!
He has a voice I enjoy and I'm glad I got the chance to read this.
This is much less complex but I'm a 40 year old guy who recently took up sock darning. I'm not very good at it yet but the repairs are good enough and it's nice not to throw out otherwise good socks.
I'm more of a cross-stitch person myself, but the feelings really resonated, especially that craving for tactile, analog creation after spending all day in the digital ether. There's something incredibly grounding about watching a piece come together, stitch by stitch, knowing your hands made it real.
I would knit all the time and alternate with coding while working remotely. I found that doing something tactile was very helpful for giving my mind a break while working through problems or waiting for things to build/compile. Now I’m in office and kind of embarrassed to bring a knitting project.
If you live in a climate with at least somewhat cold winters, I'd highly recommend starting with a hat. It's a simple project, but you can already incorporate some patterns, there are millions guides online and if you use real wool, you end up with something really comfy, warm and most importantly practical.
My mom taught me how to crochet when I was a young boy and every now and then I still get out the yarn and pass some time. Even without attempting to make anything specific, it's quite engaging while simultaneously relaxing.
This is great. I picked up weaving right before the pandemic and it carried me through. I've fallen off the past few years but hope to get back to it. Like any hobby it has the "I could do X if only I had a Y!" feature/curse that can potentially eat your bank account.
> Because regardless of how good the object itself is, it is an inarguable testament to the fact that I chose to spend dozens of quiet hours making stitch after stitch, all the while thinking about her and how much she means to me. A fraction of my life’s wick that I burned for her and no one else.
That's lovely.
When I moved to Portland in 2004, we went to the bank (Umpqua) to open accounts and found out that they have a knitting group at the bank every week. It was so weird and felt very Portland.
Anyway, loved the post but I do have one question: how do you make coffee?
One I do occasionally that I feel like gets a great mid point between the passiveness of knitting and more thoroughly engaged effort of things like woodworking has been making pop up cards.
I seem to have an intuitive competency at it but the combination of figuring out the layout, getting the measurements down and preparing the materials (I'll usually use basic card and style the individual pieces of card to match what I need e.g. making a card of floor-boarding for the wooden floor base) gives a huge amount of repetitive work that can be done while watching something.
The obvious next step is to invest time getting into origami so I can do more complex layouts.
Fiber arts are great! Just finished crocheting an amigurumi Ferris (from rust), immensely satisfying.
I really enjoyed this article. I liked what the person had to say about “care” especially, and the sort of crappy scarf that his mother-in-law still loved.
This article misses a point that I really like knitting - that it is a lot like executing software.
There are a small number of knitting techniques - knit, purl, a few increases and decreases etc. Knitting patterns give you sequences to apply these primitives and at the end you have a complex, useful item, potentially in 3D.
You're doing a few simple things repeatedly and you end up with complex behaviour. That's a CPU!
The idea of sitting and quietly knitting is appealing but whenever I look at knitted goods I think there's no way I would spend hours making some rubbish tea towel/sweater etc
While I'm very open-minded to knitting, also consider picking up a musical instrument. Guitar, ukulele, keyboard. There are apps that'll teach you, and it's immensely gratifying -- if like me you obsess over certain songs -- to then be able to work towards playing those.
Just no, programmers need something categorically different. Trekking, bicycle riding, gardening, are all nice hobbies.
But I don't take my advice as well, my hobbies are reading(kindle), games etc. So both work and hobbies are in front of computer. Don't recommend it.
That post would really have benefitted from some photos. It is quite the challenge to talk about knitting, and patterns, and materials, so abstractly.
Consider climbing!
As an engineer you might also create your very own punch-card programmable Jacquard loom.
It kind of defeats the meditation thing though :-)
Knitting was a hipster thing in London (and elsewhere most likely) for about 6 months back in the dark days of peak hipsterism (2000-2010?). It takes rather a lot of time and effort, so I guess they got bored of it pretty quick.
[dead]
Back in the mid-90s, I asked my mother to teach me how to knit. Like many women of their time, both she and her mother were skilled at Aran knitting¹ and I was always impressed at the complex patterns that could be created from a length of yarn with two knitting needles – or three for the more complicated stitches. Even though this was the 90s and mindfulness wasn’t something anyone would have heard of in rural Ireland, it served the same function for me. I knitted an Aran scarf and a jumper (sweater in American) but didn’t actually wear either of them so I eventually gave it up as a hobby.
Regardless, I think it’s important for those of us who work using computers to have hobbies where you get away from the screens and use your hands in a tactile way – ideally to make something. Cooking, baking and bread-making are things that almost anyone can do. We all have to eat and it’s great to be able to share what you’ve made with others (I find the best hobbies also have some degree of social interaction).
When I cycled and mountain-biked, I used to do all my own bike maintenance and built my own wheels; I got a lot of satisfaction from building a perfectly balanced wheel. I also did a wood-work course and would have liked to have kept it up but I live in a small house without the space for a work-bench and tools.
More recently, during Covid, I started to learn guitar. Even though it doesn’t come naturally and progress happens at a very slow pace, I get a lot of enjoyment from it. My goal is to get good enough that I feel confident jamming/playing with other friends who are amateur musicians.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aran_knitting_patterns