VALENTINA ACAVA

Knitting the Blues is a relaxed space to unwind and inhabit your inner time. Just like you would do by reading a good book, you are transported by Yewande's warm, soothing voice, which invites the listener/viewer to feel a sense of home, timelessness, and an unfathomable sense of connection that Yewande herself finds in this special space she created. For Yewande, knitting is not just making things, but really how to move through life, a radical act to slow down time from a schizofrenic world that never turns off. 

Even though I'm not a knitter, the podcast offers a great chance to learn new things and enjoy easygoing conversations about writing, books, memories, colors, social awareness, parenting, tarot, leisure, and much more. I was inspired and watched all the podcasts, some even more than once, and considered the exciting kinship between knitting and writing. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the words "textile" and "text" share the same Latin root textum, which comes from the verb textere (to weave). Textile comes before text; weaving, knitting, and embroidery are older than writing; nevertheless, they have been for centuries not only ways to create clothes but also to tell stories, keep, and transmit memory, speak up.

I interviewed Yewande for the first time in 2014 for Warscapes, on the occasion of the launch of her first novel, Bom Boy, published by Modjaji Books. This time around, I met her through a different path, the knitting one, and here is my conversation with her.

YEWANDE -  I remember knitting as a young girl growing up in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Maybe I was about 7 or 8. My mother sewed, and she made all my clothes. She also made me a lot of cloth dolls, so I was in a community where making things with your hands was habitual and celebrated. I remember doing a lot of crafty things as a young child. Much later, I remember knitting as a 12/13 year old, now living in South Africa. It must have fallen away, though, for decades! And then when I was trying to have kids and then pregnant, I got back into knitting and making. The garments I knit now only became a thing when my kids were 3 or so years old, and I wanted something meditative to do while with them; reading and writing (my usual go-tos) were not child-friendly, companionable activities. 

YEWANDE -  I don’t recall specifically knitting, but making things with hands runs right through my family. My mother’s father was a shoemaker, which was the trade he learnt as a young person coming up in the world. In his old age, he got heavily into weaving, using recycled materials, including the cardboard centres of toilet rolls to make bags! His sister was a gifted sewist. 

VALENTINA -  That’s lovely. My mum too used to make all the dresses I wore as a child, and grew up in an all-women’s household of creatives where fabric and yarn have always been around. I’m sure you’ve already been asked this, but I would really like to draw a parallel between knitting and writing. Interestingly enough, the words text and textile share the same Latin root. What spaces do they occupy in your life, and how do they do it differently? 

YEWANDE - A friend joked recently and said I was knitting obsessively as a way of avoiding my writing, but it’s so far from the truth. The two are intertwined for me, appropriately and poetically so. The knitting is a metaphor for how I write, weaving things, connecting threads, pacing. My writing has always been slow work – most of my books get written over an average of 5 years, sometimes a bit shorter, sometimes even longer. I’m always open to these comparisons.

YEWANDE -  It’s easier to ask what they haven’t taught me! Or maybe the “teaching” metaphor is not quite right for this context because it’s so much more than that. I feel revealed by them, to the world but also to myself. Both crafts feel fused to my sense of who I am and what matters to me. 

YEWANDE - Humility more than ever, writing delivers this constantly. And then the value of constancy, which I think both writing and knitting reward. Time pours away regardless, these small obsessions are ways to mark that flow of which we can do little else. 

YEWANDE -  It is a beautiful piece of textile history, this recording. I too find it evocative and hard to resist. Fabric feels to have been a big part of my childhood, being at the market with my Mom, looking for prints, and then her sewing them up. We had a long-standing and meaningful relationship with a man whose name I now can’t recall, even though I see his face clearly. He dyed adire, and my mother regularly bought his indigo fabrics. Significantly, I own pieces of clothing and fabric that connect me to my Mom and her mom, both of whom are no longer living. And now that I’m knitting so much, I often wonder if my sons will hold onto anything, either to wear or simply as an object of meaning for them after I’m not around. 

YEWANDE -  It is true what you say – the cliché exists – and yet it was my father who bought me a “French loom” and I learnt to make long woven strings – I was about 7 or 8. And now, especially on the social platforms, there are male knitters, talking about their love for the craft. I think the stigma still exists, and there are other stereotypes that go along with it, such as the notion that knitting, especially in South Africa, equals “old white lady”. And it’s true in the very local community I’m a part of, I have to look hard for people of colour doing this work, but of course, they are there in multitudes. So, I must assume the same for male knitters; the stereotype dominates and skews the picture. An interesting enquiry is whether knitting is inherently “feminine” in nature, is there some reason that stereotype exists, a generative reason versus a repulsive one? I don’t have the answer. I understand the war between arts and crafts in terms of prestige, respect, and funding, and absolutely agree that this is nonsense, these separations. It’s about power and status. But I’m also curious whether the conflation of knitting with the feminine allows for subversion. Or, told differently, for sure because it was relegated and ignored and side-swiped, knitting spaces and circles and knitted fabrics could carry code and subversions – women capitalized on the folly of society that dismissed this genius-artform, to make bold statements and contest norms. 

YEWANDE - It’s rest. I would be unlikely to stop without the “excuse” of knitting. And even that was hard won since, initially, when I started knitting, I felt embarrassed to sit and do it. I would startle if my partner walked in on me while I was knitting (like a crime!), even though he was 100% supportive of me doing something I enjoyed. I had to learn and allow myself to enjoy. It’s meditative. It is instructive for my children to see me making the same way growing up with a making-mother was instructive for me, in more ways than I can list.

YEWANDE - I certainly don’t feel guilt as a writer, I think, because I gave myself that permission a long time ago. But with knitting, somehow I had a hang-up; the perception is “you’re just knitting a scarf or whatever,” and of course it’s not “just” at all! It’s amazing and tremendous and so brilliant! I feel very proud of my knitting, but I’m shy about how I think society places knitting – think of my friend saying I’m knitting as a way of avoiding my writing – it’s a distraction, it’s a thing to do to while away time. So, I think that was the shyness. But I couldn’t stop myself from knitting if I tried. It wasn’t guilt at knitting, it was shyness at being discovered. Luckily, I don’t feel compelled to knit in secret anymore. Do women who write feel that guilt? I can’t say. I do think, sadly, knitting and writing hold different spaces in general societal perception – I think in certain perceptions writing is much more elevated, even though I think that’s a fiction. 

YEWANDE -  Thank you. Yes, I wanted the name of the podcast to have multiple meanings. The obvious, as you say, is my love of that colour. But knitting is also profoundly connected to navigating my emotions, my grief, my frustrations, my joy, and stillness. So “the blues” as in the parts of ourselves that are complicated, messy, even unregulated. 

YEWANDE - Blood’s Inner Rhyme by Antjie Krog, Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy, and then Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. I’m looking for my next threesome! I’m working on a piece on the journey to motherhood and lineage. 

Thank you, Yewande, for this!