Many knitters say, “Why knit for kids? They grow so fast and they don’t value our time!”
My kid leans in for a hug and I take a quick eyeball measurement of his torso against the pullover I’m knitting. “Should I make another stripe here?” I ask the “stripe kid,” who insists all sweaters look like rugby shirts: they must have stripes. He shops with me for the perfect yarn colours, discusses every aspect of lice stitch in the middle of a stripe versus the “plain” look. Despite his involvement when I knit him sweaters, I can never predict which ones will end up being loved and worn frequently.
At about this moment, my other twin will swoop in to claim the sweater. Both brothers will literally cry and brawl over who gets one of Mommy’s creations. They deeply value wool for warmth. My kids can identify which yarns are Manitoban and from which farm, which ones I spun, and which skeins are from farther afield. They’re both fledgling, occasional knitters, both invested personally in every stitch I make.
Yes, some of the sweaters are less popular or outgrown more quickly. I’ve also knit “extension” ribbing onto cuffs of their favourite knits as they hit growth spurts, too. One sweater, an Elizabeth Zimmerman Tomten knit with Briggs & Little Tuffy yarn when my twins were two, has only this year grown absolutely too small. It lasted for seven years of wear, as both kids played their way through long winters in Winnipeg.
Commitments
Many Canadians decided to avoid fast fashion after a textile factory collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013. For others, the decision to think about textile workers and our obligation to value their work began long before. I couldn’t think of the tragedy in Dhaka as a first. Studying the firsthand accounts of the deadly 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in a labour union history class seared the memories of those women’s experiences into my mind forever. There are many more stories about dangerous work conditions.
However, our choice to reuse, to make, and to value textiles is older than industrial-age tragedies. We’ve got a link, a connection, to every foremother who sewed clothing for her children. Our DNA connects us to those moms, who also stayed up late spinning and knitting to keep families warm in winter.
We have choices when it comes to modern “me made” capsule wardrobes, too. Are good quality, hardwearing, handmade clothes only for folks who have the privilege to purchase or make them? In my house, kids count too. We are so privileged to make our clothes these days—fabric and yarn often cost more here in Canada than ready-to-wear items. When we make the privileged decision to craft clothing for ourselves, I think our kids deserve that too.
Living on the prairies means that my family is in touch with the cold. We wear wool socks and sweaters from sometime in October until early May, every year. My kids each get hand-knitted (and often hand-spun) clothing every single year. It’s not completely equal. One twin might need new mitts, while the other has outgrown a sweater. I crank out wool hats, mittens, and sweaters according to each need, in turn.
Passing Them On
People ask me why I “waste” my time knitting sweaters for my twins, since children grow so fast, or how I could bear to part with anything I’d knitted, or see it felted at recess in the schoolyard. While those felted mitts were a hard lesson (for me and the kid!), I make clothes so they can be worn and loved, not saved as heirlooms. When everyone here outgrows these knits, we wash them and gift them onwards. Over the years, I’ve sent some to younger cousins, but when government-sponsored Syrian refugees came to live in Winnipeg, I donated an entire bag of those handmade baby knits, along with kid parkas and snow pants.
I moved to Canada from another country. I know what it’s like to feel this cold for the first time. Our families have had their share of refugees from war. These New Canadians also deserve to have that warmth, to clothe their babies, too.
Those who know me smile when they hear me answer the “why knit for kids” questions. Pregnancy and our twins were hard-fought, long treks for us. We struggled with fertility, and nothing came easy—not pregnancy, birth, or the health issues that happened afterwards. The question shouldn’t be, “Why would I knit clothes for my children?” It should be, “How could I not want to clothe every one of these precious, wanted, valued humans in warm, one-of-a-kind garments, made to fit?”
All images by Joanne Seiff.
