During the early months of 2018, I started following Trysten Molina on Instagram. Molina owns the independent (indie) yarn dyeing and knitwear design brand Dragon Hoard Yarn Co. I was enamored with her yarn from the get-go — lots of speckles, and color themes that played right into my fantasy fiction-loving heart! I bought her “Christmas at Hogwarts” yarn advent for myself last Christmas and delighted each day in December as I opened a tiny new skein of yarn. I was gifted a gift certificate to use in her shop by one of my closest friends, and within a few days of 2019 I knew precisely what color I wanted.

Necromancy is a mottle of greens and grays that bring to mind lying down on a moss-coated forest floor next to a bubbling brook, listening for the faint sounds of Tom Bombadil’s singing to come over a hillside. Or perhaps that’s just my mind. Regardless, I fell in absolute lust with the colorway! There are lime greens and emerald, Kelly and hunter and nearly hidden flecks of bright red. It’s part of Molina’s yarns inspired by the Netflix original show “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” which is an excellent show, although far more macabre than the Melissa Joan Hart version of my childhood. 

Spellman Pullover is a cropped sweater with cables and bobbles (think little knitted balls) on the shoulders and sleeves. I had an excuse to get my Necromancy!
 
>> falling short of the cohort
 
As excited as I was to cast on my sweater {knit in a mohair and fingering weight yarn, both in Necromancy}, I was already way behind. I committed to starting the sweater Jan. 11 and finishing it by Feb. 11, and I ordered my yarn on Jan. 9. Then the USPS held it hostage for an extra day or two, and due to some other things going on I didn’t prioritize casting on right away when I got a moment.
Being in a group chat with all the other test knitters, that was hard. I was constantly getting notifications on Facebook Messenger with other knitters speeding along: showing off their yarn a week before I’d even ordered mine; two sets of bobbles done on the shoulders the day I sat down to review the pattern; tossing out edits and suggestions about design terms that were completely new to me.

I almost didn’t start.

I saw all these knitters doing so much better and so much faster and yada yada yada than me and I was embarrassed. There was actually no way on God’s green Earth that I was going to finish a sweater in the given timeframe with how much else I had happening. I was ashamed that I didn’t know some of these terms and I’d never knit a bobble before in my life, and truth be told that I didn’t have much to offer in test knitting this pattern other than helping confirm stitch counts. I sat on my yarn once it came for at least a week going through all this in my mind, continuing to watch the group chat and sitting quietly.

I knew I had the skills to knit this. Like y’all, I design my own patterns all the time and don’t think a second thought about it. It takes me less than a week to knit an entire pair of socks. This is not actually hard to someone who’s got 11 years’ experience putting yarn to needle.

I knew I wantedto knit this. These two yarns held together are so squishy and soft and I already planned out the outfit I would wear in my post-bind-off photo shoot.

I had skills. I had vision. I had passion. Heck, y’all, I even had a deadline! All of the key things one allegedly requires to reach a goal!

So what was my hold-up? The comparison trap. 
 
>> stitching through 
 
What’s the comparison trap? It’s a thing that a lot of people today find themselves falling into, or digging themselves out of, usually thanks to social media. For whatever reason, we have this idea of what we should look like or should be, or the level we should be at, and we beat ourselves up for not being “that.” In my case with the Spellman Pullover, I was comparing my skeins of yarn to the half-completed sweaters on the group chat; and comparing myself to the knitters with said half-completed sweaters.

While stuck in this delightful life-sucking trap, I heard a training from Audrey MacDowell, who is a top director in my skincare + cosmetics business. Now, Audrey MacDowell doesn’t know me from Adam, and I doubt she knits, so this had nothing to do with anything … and yet wham! It had everything to do with everything. In this training she says that comparison is the thief of joy. And while we’re out here comparing ourselves … the people we’re comparing ourselves to are out
w-e-r-k-i-n-g. 

No wonder these women had half-finished sweaters. They weren’t sitting on the group chat lamenting how they hadn’t started yet. They picked up their dang needles, cast on and worked every spare second they had.
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After that gut-punch, I intentionally made a few changes in quite a few places in my life and business, and of course, my progress on the Spellman Pullover. What mattered wasn’t how fast I knit or how much I knew about negative vs. positive ease . Who cares what these complete strangers thought about my knitting skills? We were all knitting the exact same pattern. It wasn't any kind of competition. What matters is that I enjoyed what was being worked on and was pleased with the direction in which it went. What matters is that every day I could I picked up my yarn and needles and worked a few rows. 

>> weaving in the ends
 
By changing a couple habits — namely not checking the group chat every time I pulled up Facebook and choosing to knit nearly every night — I did finish the Spellman Pullover in about a month’s time. Molina extended the deadline to March 1, and at about 2 a.m. the next morning I bound off my last stitch on the final sleeve. 

I missed the deadline to be featured in her pattern and on the Ravelry pattern page. That kind of stunk. But it taught me an important lesson: if I’d spent the time I spent comparing knitting, I’d already be finished and wearing the sweater instead of wondering how many musicals it would take to finish the second sleeve. In case you were wondering, it took me the entirety of the TV versions of “Grease” and “Footloose.”

I love how the sweater turned out, and the first day it was sunny enough to get photos, my boyfriend and I went in the woods and he got some great shots that show off the color variation in Necromancy and the details in the Spellman Pullover sleeves. I felt so accomplished and like I could conquer the world — er, OK, maybe more like conquer my goals for the rest of March. It’s a great feeling, and I know that feeling came about because of the action I took!

Whether I’m knitting a sweater actually or metaphorically, these things I learned through this process will be so instrumental, and I hope they are for you, too:

• Avoid the comparison trap! Instead, look how far you’ve come. Eleven years ago I could barely pull of a wonky-arse scarf, and here I am making bobbles like I’ve done it all my life.
• Remember what Audrey MacDowell said — those people you’re comparing yourself to are working while you’re not. So whatever it is you’re not doing to get to where those folks are, do it. And if you’re working, you won’t have time to compare {see above J}.
• Daily consistent habits are more valuable than a burst of sudden action that’s never backed up. If your goal is to finish a sweater, set aside some time to knit each night or morning or lunch break daily instead of working for 16 hours straight on it, then putting it aside for something else, and suddenly it’s 2020 and you realized you never finished it.
• Empower yourself! If you don’t understand something, don’t sit there and complain about how you don’t get it. Ask someone. Research. Watch 17 tutorials on bobble knitting. 

You can do anything you set your mind to, ladies and gents. But first, you have to set your mind to it. And second … you have to do it. 

In a recent issue of Vogue Knitting, there’s a story about how expressing beliefs through art is “as old as civilization,” said Atlanta, Georgia, resident and knitter Jill Vogin. In the US, it’s older than the country itself. According to the story, during the American Revolution British wool was taxed — and the American handspun yarn industry began.

“The American women, what they decided to do was stop using the fine wool that was coming out and using handspuns. There was a whole cottage industry during the Revolution of what women were making out of these scratchy fleeces that they were getting locally. … The American flag? It’s a quilt. Betsy Ross sewed it to express a baby country’s yearning for independence and its own identity,” Vogin said. “To me this is not a new phenomenon. This is as old as the hills. It’s just the materials we have are more sophisticated in some ways.”
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For Vogin, those materials are a pair of knitting needles and a skein or 17 of yarn. Though she’s been knitting on behalf of causes she supports for several years, in late 2018 she debuted the next phase of her creativity.

“I said, ‘Find a knitter and buy the pattern,’” Vogin said. “We’ve sold a handful of them, a few hats and a few patterns. My goal is to just keep developing that over time. It really seemed to me that there is a niche there for people who want to be able to express themselves in these ways because so many women are going to the Capitol now to protest or to lobby. I can take that same basic hat pattern and put a powerful message on it.”

She’s developing a follow-up pattern in time for the 2019 Women’s Marches, inspired by people who share her political views being called snowflakes. Though she wouldn’t share all the details yet, Vogin did say that the phrase will be “I am the storm.”
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“I think about this whole concept of ‘liberal snowflakes’ and feeling like yeah, one snowflake is pretty weak, but a bunch of snowflakes together? Watch out. Winter is coming,” she said. 

>> color speaks

One of the first memories I have of Vogin is seeing her stand at the front of the room during the “show and tell” portion of an Atlanta Knitting Guild meeting and talk about her Elvis sweater. She knitted his portrait on a sweater in one of the most fabulous displays of colorwork I’ve ever seen, and it was followed by her John Lennon sweater. That one featured not only a portrait, but song lyrics as well. The techniques she learned making these pieces springboarded her craftivism — colorwork displays of motifs and words pertaining to causes and candidates she’s passionate about. 

When Jon Ossoff ran for Georgia’s 6th Congressional district, her sweater encouraged Georgians to “vote your Ossoff.” She knitted an abstract Statue of Liberty with “persist” emblazoned on it in day-glo neons, and recently finished a “speak truth to power” top that was featured in Atlanta Senior Life magazine.

“That’s kind of where I’ve been evolving to instead of, ‘hey, vote for this person,’ and more showing my love of the country and distain for some of the things that are going on,” Vogin said.
Much of her colorwork touches on hotbed topics, but Vogin hesitates to call her patterns and finished apparel political.
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“It’s beyond that, it’s more of who I am as a person. What I believe is so challenged right now by what’s going on with the government that it looks political, but it’s deeper than that,” Vogin said. “I’m using color and I’m using design to basically express what I’m feeling about what’s going on.”