Abstract
Adult women are often considered to be technologically challenged and not playful, traits that make them less interesting for game designers and scholars. They are commonly expected to have quiet and productive hobbies, engage in gender-stereotypically feminine pursuits such as knitting and not participate in competitions or fan culture play. This article discusses and explores how knitters engage in play and competition, within environments that demand a high level of technical ability and expertise. Comparing play on Ravelry.com and r/knitting on Reddit.com with play discussed in game studies, this article highlights the appearance of recognizable play genres and activities through yarn-based crafting. This has implications for how we think about women and games, while it serves as a reminder of the technical abilities and skills women develop when they feel it is useful, and of how the leisure of women is still prescribed and limited by societal expectations.
Introduction
This is a study of online play in crafting communities dedicated to knitting and other yarn-based hobbies. Knitting is often considered productive relaxation or well-being, a craft performed by women in their spare time (MacDonald, 2010, pp. xvi, xxi). We rarely think we are looking at an active, creative, playful and competitive player. In literature on creativity and play, we see knitting discussed as a flow activity (Lampitt Adey, 2018, p. 8), as a way to connect with our environment and with others (Gauntlett, 2018), as activism (Black, 2017), or as therapy (Corkhill et al., 2014) rather than as a ludic practice. There are some mentions of knitting and play with food (Kouhia & Janhonen, 2019), or knitting as play and performance (Gilson, 2022), but the latter is about activism rather than play.
Before writing this article, I have been part of knitting communities on Ravelry.com, a social media, marketplace and pattern archive for yarn crafts with 9 million members, and on Reddit.com, specifically r/knitting with 488 000 members (summer 2024).
On r/knitting there is not a lot of obvious playfulness, as it is mainly used by new knitters to ask for support, but there is a certain level of performativity in how finished projects are being presented for appreciation. The Reddit upvote system brings an inherent sense of competition as it lifts some projects into the “hot” category and hides or ignores other projects.
On Ravelry, there is a lot more direct play. Sullivan, Salter and Smith have previously described several typical games for crafters (2018), but in this paper I will specifically focus on the playfulness of groups on Ravelry, and how digital media facilitate their playful behavior, integrating their crafting with digital play.
Playful categories are cosplay, role-play, competition in teams, competitive progress play, cooperative play, random or surprise play and different types of absurd, counter- and carnivalesque play. Among the massive number of objects that are designed, promoted, sold (mainly patterns) and created on this website, there are also transgressive events, understood as problematic statements and behavior, such as provocations, cheating and sabotage (Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020)
Knitters, predominantly women, who regularly use and communicate through Ravelry are digitally literate, and they continuously reference popular online culture, including games, but they are an under-represented group when we talk about play as leisure. Looking at how playfulness is expressed in crafting communities reveals how women play with skill and material that they are comfortable with, playing with others who understand the level of competency necessary for the quality of their creations.
I am using digital ethnographic methods (Boellstorff et al., 2013; Pink et al., 2016) for the study, participating and crafting alongside crafters over time to understand the skill level and the community codes and cultures facilitating playfulness. Digital ethnography is a method with strong roots in game studies, utilized early in the study of virtual worlds, and later developed further to study the use of digital platforms and to participate in online or digitalized communities. Due to the sensitivity of participatory observations, reflexivity is a vital part of analysis.
While most of the data is based solely on observation, I have participated with comments in a few forums (four mystery knit-alongs or MKALs, one Harry Potter play and one discussion group). Only in the one discussion group have I participated with comments beyond posting my progress, showing pictures of my work to document it according to the rules, and joining in with generic encouragement, where examples are: “this looks good, great work, wonderful colors.” Still, my observations will be biased by my engagement and my background. I am Norwegian, more than 60 years old, woman, mother and grandmother. My ethnicity is more complex, as I am both Norwegian and Sami, but grew up distanced from the culture and language of the Sami. This still matters because one of the things that did follow us into the Norwegian culture, mixing well with protestant frugality, was the heavy emphasis on hand crafts, known in sami as duodji.
While this was not initially designed as a gender study, the overwhelming number of female participants in the groups engaged in this study ensure that the paper will document a very gendered type of playfulness and leisure activity, and the gender aspect makes the findings stand out. It documents the play of women who may not be visible in other play studies, as their playful engagement is otherwise registered as leisure production and well-being, masking the play. The study also reveals how women conform to the societal and cultural expectations of women's play, even online (Chess, 2018). And while Ravelry is a queer-friendly community, the romantic or sexual preferences of the participants are very rarely visible, so there may be observations here which are also relevant for queer play and queer identity, but difficult bordering on impossible to isolate and pursue.
Knitting
The focus here is hand knitting, the creation of a fabric using needles and yarn. Knitted fabric was historically first observed to create socks in the Middle East in approximately the year 1000 (Courtney, 2012), and in Norwegian history, the first documented case of there being a knitter is when Lisbeth Pedersdatter was accused of witchcraft in 1634. She was an itinerant worker who lived from knitting socks in service to another woman who sold them for her (Klepp, 2022). In contemporary culture knitting is used to create varied clothing, as well as toys and home decorations. Commercially, knitting is mostly used to create fabric that is cut and sewn like woven fabrics: the jersey of t-shirts is a prime example. Knitting closely resembles other textile crafts such as crochet, Tunisian crochet and nalbinding, but the tools used are different. Knitting is more flexible and elastic in wear, making it the craft of choice for making clothing. A significant difference from these other arts is the way knitting can at any time unravel if even one of the many loops is not secured. Knitting requires significant planning and, since it is used for clothing, it requires scaling to different sizes. To support this, both yarn and tools answer to standardized sizes, which help calculate the final outcome of any object. In discussions about object production, knitters keep doing mathematics that include the number of stitches in play, the thickness of needles and of yarn and the tension of the individual knitter, compared to the desired length, width or depth of the final object (Riede, 2017). This leads to knitting being a craft of many affordances, but also of clear restrictions. Where crochet easily lends itself to three-dimensional shapes created freehand, which we can for instance see in the many amigurumi 1 of Japanese crochet, developing knitted objects demands a combination of test knitting and mathematics. The development of patterns is highly specialized and professionalized, involving tech editors and test knitters. Simultaneously, it is a completely free craft, as any person who can knit can also sit down and by trial and error alone produce a usable object or reproduce something they have seen.
Play
Play is a practice of exploration of the potential of one's available objects, spaces, situations and actors used to change the mood or emotions of participants. It alleviates boredom, brings joy or anger, sparks motivation and releases creativity. While we often think of play as fun or pleasant, this is the fallacy of play (Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020, pp. 101–102). As argued in The Paradox of Transgression, play can as easily be tense, scary, dark, transgressive or serious as it can be light-hearted and fun. The core of play is not a safe, protected space, but one where something is at risk, and it is this risk that creates the play.
Knitting as Play
When we let go of our preconceptions of play as something childish and expressive connected to mirth but instead consider it as a practice defined by the potential for failure, knitting becomes a practice that can invite play. Failure is inherent and important in hand crafting (Stalp & Winge, 2017). In Reddit's r/knitting, the first advice given to any inexperienced knitter is to embrace the act of unravelling their work. Internet culture has even embraced as a meme a term for unravelling, based on word play: to frog, based on rip it, ribbit–frog. We find the direct parallel to this understanding of the importance of failure in Jesper Juul's book on The Art of Failure, where he underlines that while we try to avoid the responsibility for failure, to improve skills we need to accept failure and see it as our fault (2013, p. 116). Most games are designed not for winning, but for loss. Only one person or one team can win, all others will lose, and for them it is back to the grind, to practice, to try again.
Hand knitting is surrounded by very strict rules. No matter what you plan to make, you start out with a minimum of two knitting pins or needles, and a thread or yarn. These are your play objects. They are like goal and ball in football, or the dot and lines in Tennis for Two (Higinbotham, 1958). Now it all depends on what you want to create. This is where knitting is like a sandbox or open-world game, and can go in any direction. If you choose to follow a pattern, you will, however, get very strict instructions. There will be a starting point, different steps towards the finished object, challenges and rewards. At any point, there is the risk of failure. Experienced knitters even make sure to save their game by adding a lifeline that runs through all the stitches of one row, after they have completed something very complex. If they have to unravel, the process will stop at this point, and they can easily pick up all the stitches and resume knitting. The pattern is like a walkthrough that ensures the desired play experience in our knitting sandbox, but it does not guarantee success, nor entirely bind you. A pattern can be, and is, frequently modified. A simple modification is to adjust for length depending on the body of the person who is to wear it. With more practice knitters add textures and materials, sweaters get altered sleeves, shoulders, necklines and collars, shaping to fit the body, and new openings entirely as patterns are adjusted from pullovers to cardigans, from winter to summer garments, or to fit medical equipment.
By understanding the rules, like other expert players, knitters start breaking or changing them. A decorative pattern is appropriated from a throw pillow, or a sweater is created like Frankenstein's monster, from bits of other sweater patterns. The practice goes from being bound by rules to having transcended them to the point where you are free—your practice is unbound, the creations voluntary; you knit as Huizinga describes play (1955, p. 8), as freedom.
At this point, you can bring Caillois in and claim that no, knitting is not play, because knitting is productive, while play is unproductive (2001, p. 8). This is how we have learned to think about knitting, as a practice leading to useful garments. This was true when knitters were part of a fiber craft practice that started with sheep and became garments by way of fleece, carded wool and yarn. Here knitting was the last step in a chain necessary to make useful objects. Even today, if you can card and spin, you can feed your knitting habit for free by using surplus wool from sheep farms. But in general, knitting is not economically beneficial: it does not even make garments cheaper than if they were bought in a store. To knit one sweater, I need about 400 grams of my favorite yarn, about 40 euros. On top of that comes 50–60 h of knitting, and another 10 h of preparation, calculations and finishing work. Even at local minimum pay in 2024, this is about 1800 euros. There is no real home-market for handknit objects. Instead, most knitters knit for the sake of knitting. Nobody needs a new hand-knitted shawl every month, or even every year. Still knitters keep knitting, and it is superfluous and unproductive, voluntary and free.
Who are the Knitters?
The traditional images of knitters are aging women (Stalp & Winge, 2017, p. 97) or crazy cat ladies (Sullivan et al., 2020), a demographic that is often expected to be digitally unsophisticated and in different manners not entirely adjusted to current society. The knitters I have encountered in the participatory observations on Ravelry.com and Reddit.com's r/knitting are often the stereotypical gender and age, even if their presence online shows that they are digitally literate. They are however not the only knitters. In 2016 43% of all Norwegian women knitted (Klepp et al., 2016). This was before the pandemic, in 2020 the sale of tools and yarn increased dramatically. Norwegian knitting stores reported increased sales, and new and younger groups that wanted to learn to knit (Darrud, 2020). The New York Times discussed how knitting was beneficial to handle pandemic stress (Klass, 2020), the BBC reported from Australia that 2021 was the year of knitting (Silver, 2021), while in 2022 The Guardian reported one million more knitters in the UK since the pandemic, many of whom were men (Guardian community team, 2022). Both the last two articles mentioned the Olympic diver Tom Daley, who knitted on the stands throughout the Japan Olympic games in 2021, and later in Paris in 2024. A popular, athletic, queer and successful man, Daley is perhaps as far from knitter stereotype as it is possible to get, and his public knitting combined with the very accessible patterns and objects he makes brought fiber crafts to a whole new audience. If you looked at Instagram and YouTube in 2024, it was not hard to find men who knit. Some fit the Daley-demographic by being established and out-queer men. Others are very rugged, appear straight and have traditionally masculine occupations, such as the author of Hardbarka strikk and fisherman by profession Robert Torrissen from the northern Norwegian coast (Torrissen, 2022). He describes how he started knitting to handle grief after the illness and loss of his son. His designs reference fishing, the sea, and life as a fisherman with practical, useful, but often humorous garments 2 , a world apart from the colorful and frivolous designs of Tom Daley. Torrissen and Daley represent two sides of caring and creative masculinity that appear to be opposite ends of a spectrum, but they meet in their playful approach to knitting.
Online it is not easy to know who is behind the screens, so I do not have a comprehensive overview of who the knitters are. On Ravelry, it is possible to check profiles, but not everybody fills them out, or not correctly. The pictures can be anything from completely missing, to pictures of projects, pets, children or random, unrelated people, like on all social media. On Reddit, most users make an effort to reveal less, but here knitters often post pictures either of their works and pets, or themselves. Even fractional pictures can reveal quite a bit about the demographic, so here we know more about the knitters who post. The Reddit.com r/knitting demographic has a fairly high degree of younger people, both women and men. There is also a sizeable darker-skinned demographic. As knitting is a practice very closely related to the treatment and use of wool, the majority of knitters come from colder countries. With migration, refugee movement and trade, we cannot assume that all people living in the temperate and colder zones are pale. For many darker-skinned knitters, having their hands and skin visible in pictures of knitted work is a deliberate choice. They want others to see that they are represented in this hobby, and they express a desire to normalize a more diverse knitting community (Williams-Johnson, 2023, p. 87). Even so, we rarely find online knitters from the Andes region or Latin America in general. While this group of knitters produce a significant part of handmade knitwear for sale, they do not show up online as hobbyists or in knitting communities where professionals mix with amateurs. This underlines the cost still required to participate online, both in time, literacy, technology and infrastructure. Other minorities like native Americans are represented, but these are more commonly represented on Ravelry as designers rather than in the discussions on both Ravelry and Reddit. They may be there, but they are not as deliberately visible.
The queer demographic of online knitting communities is not insignificant, but again hard to count. They are present on r/knitting, which we see in pictures of “me and my wife/husband in the last two finished projects” showing a same-gender couple, or in posts discussing how to facilitate body changes during gender transition. There are also a lot of questions for non-binary patterns, which indicates that there is a desire for knitting inspiration that is not traditionally gendered. This is a request that goes hand in hand with the fairly constant complaint of the lack of well-designed patterns for men. The overwhelming presence of women in this practice has created an imbalance in available designs, and while most traditional Nordic patterns come in his, hers or theirs designs with a small change of size or colors, more fashion oriented knitting is strictly gendered and disproportionally aimed at women. Despite the recent influx of men, designers have not caught up–the opposite problem of representation in gaming.
Due to the history and choices of its original founders, Ravelry.com is welcoming to people in gender transition, which colors decisions at times of conflict. For the most part this is not visible to the regular “raveler.” The opening page celebrates Pride Month and offers ways to express support, with a few special posts that highlight queer or queer-friendly designs. However, during the presidency of the 45th president of the USA, Ravelry forbid the discussion of his politics on the platform (Mervosh, 2019; Ravelry.com, 2019). This led to an exodus in 2019 of crafters who felt they were limited by this rule. There was a later exodus when the colors and design of Ravelry were changed in June 2020. This was a controversial change where several crafters with disabilities that could be triggered by light and contrast reported seizures, and the subsequent discussion became contentious. On r/knitting there is still a warning on all automatically generated links to Ravelry.com that the design may trigger discomfort.
During my observations, I have not noted negative reactions to this outspoken support for queer knitters and designers. Among the majority, this is simply not a topic, as they are on Ravelry to look for patterns, pattern support and knitter communities. Ravelry also does not split their community into genders. While you can let others know what your pronouns are, the profiles do not contain a slot for gender. Instead, Ravelry asks about children or pets, your location, favorite color and curse words. If you search through the community page looking for other crafters, you can find other people who are interested in the same patterns as you, or who are geographically close. The “people” page also has a function where you can see the finished objects (FO) from random people, further underlining the focus on the practice of crafting. I wrote the Ravelry administrators and asked if there are ways to search for gender, but did not get an answer. Based on the design of the platform this is clearly not something they want to highlight or publish. Instead, they have for some years posted a community recap, which contains which nationality has posted the most finished objects per capita (Iceland is the clear winner every time).
Checking profiles on Ravelry confirms that ravelers are likely to be white and female. On June 27th, 2024, 870 people had joined at the time when I checked (one random day). Most of these had not taken the time to make an avatar or fill in anything about themselves—which is normal if you are just logging in to search through patterns—but the ones who did were four white women, one dog (a Shiba Inu), and one exploding head smiley. Even assuming the dog and the smiley did not hide women, this indicates a majority of white women. Then I looked through the “hot right now” patterns and looked at who had used them. The crafters of the ten top patterns showed a majority of white women, although the age was diverse. These women were both older and younger than the ones who had recently registered. Next, I looked at the “hot right now” designers. Among these, there was one man, Stephen West, a very well-known and openly queer knit designer, and Midori Hirose, a Japanese designer. Otherwise, it was all white and female presenting designers among the patterns on my first page. Then I looked further into some of the patterns presented as “hot right now.” One was the exceptionally popular Ranunculus, a pullover with a lace yoke, that had been cast on 3 more than 24 000 times. This is designed by Midori Hirose, so it is a step towards more diversity, but at the same time she lives in Germany, which places her within northern European knitting culture. The Ranunculus is however an interesting emblem of diversity. The pattern is designed to be easy to adjust for any body type, and it contains descriptions of how to alter it to fit. This also means it is easy to adjust to different materials, making it interesting for people knitting for warmer climates, and several of the finished objects have short sleeves, again good for use during the summer or somewhere warm. This is possibly the reason for its popularity with a very diverse group of knitters.
Gender, Play and Knitting
Since the eighties, there has been a gender gap in digital game play, with boys and men playing more frequently. This gap is still visible, even if it is somewhat closing, and it is particularly visible in the technology used. In a Norwegian study from 2020, Leonhardt and Overå show that when looking at play on specialized platforms such as PC and consoles, boys play significantly more than girls, and even if the amount of play drops from age 11 to age 19 at the same rate, at 19 approximately 50% of boys play for an hour or more, in contrast to less than 10% of the girls. If we look at smartphone or tablet play, more girls than boys play at age 11, but at age 19 this has swapped, and while the distinction is small, we see that 20% of girls play more than one hour a day, while approximately 22% of the boys play (Leonhardt & Overå, 2021, p. 5). The same study describes motivations for play, and the boys reveal a much stronger peer pressure and fear of missing out if they do not play with their friends regularly. Playing is social, and an expression of solidarity for this group. For girls, social media is the main platform for being sociable, and gaming is less important, although there is an overlap between keeping in touch and gaming (Leonhardt & Overå, 2021, p. 4). This is a pattern we see in related research, such as by Kuss, Kristensen, Williams and Lopez-Fernandez (2022). They claim that women's motivation for playing is to combat boredom and for enjoyment, autonomy and to foster connections, while men play for success and competition. In their study immersion, social connection and achievement are the main benefits for women who play.
This gap gains impact when we look at available time for leisure (Arnesen, 2023), and on the control of women's leisure (Tess, 2000). When talking about women and play, it is important to keep in mind that women’s—particularly heterosexual mothers’—free time is more scarce and more controlled than the time of others (Stalp, 2015, p. 265). Game scholar Jessica Enevold focuses on this conflict between time, responsibility and expectations in her study of mothers who also play video games, and how this shapes their play style and choices (Enevold, 2009).
In a recent study of older women and digital play, the women had very specific ideas about what it means to be an aging woman: Keeping up with the times, being socially active, and doing useful activities for others (beyond household members) represents what it means to be an older woman for our participants. They disregarded digital games that clashed with this identity. When the digital games projected it, or parts of it, their play was fun and productive, and they would recommend the games to others. (Sayago et al., 2020, p. 361)
The above studies all indicate important things about female play. Women play games that are social, increase connections, and are in some way considered useful and productive. They should also be aesthetically pleasing, as aesthetics is uniformly valued. How can this connect to knitting online?
Ravelry is designed to be a very social platform, with several communication and chat opportunities, and built-in options to link to regular social media. Knitting is considered productive, useful and to project a sense of care for others when knitting gifts or supportive items. Examples of playful, supportive and useful knitting are two volunteer knitting calls, Knitted Knockers (2024), an initiative to knit breast prostheses for women, and the Penguin Foundation's Penguin jumpers (Penguin Foundation, 2024), little jumpers knit to be used to keep penguins caught in oil spills warm. This latter drive was so successful that they still receive jumpers 20 years later, which they now use to dress up and sell plush penguins, with the proceeds going to preserving penguins. Both initiatives incorporate all the aspects of female play: they are social, helpful, funny, caring and display skill. It is important to note that men also knit these objects: one of the most avid penguin sweater knitters in 2015 was—at the time—the oldest man in Australia, Afred Date (ABC News, 2015). Just as women enjoy activities that align with traditionally more masculine roles, men enjoy activities, including play and play styles, that are more traditionally feminine.
Community Play
To understand more about Ravelry's community, I have been an active member since 2020. In this time I have finished approximately 120 projects. At first, I used Ravelry for pattern searches and to keep track of my knitting and easily share it with friends, but then I started discovering the kind of play that happened on the platform.
Knit-Alongs
Knit-alongs or KALs are instances of parallel play. This is when a group of people decide to knit the same item at the same time. These can be instigated by the designers to promote their designs or started by some friends or people who are specifically interested in one object, type of object or designer. Not all knit-alongs are limited to a specific design. One KAL brought not just attention to breast cancer, but also actual donations to cancer organizations. This was the “råååååååsa samstrikk”—the pink knit-along. Everybody who wanted to participate had to do three things during the month of October: knit an object that contained pink, upload the picture to the community thread, and donate to the cause. The organizer, a known YouTube knitter, would then draw a few numbers from the finished objects thread to win prizes, often donated by others in the knitting community.
Like how parallel play is the basic type of play children start to engage in with other children, KALs are very popular, demand little investment from the participants, and are commonly used as a place to discuss complex designs, often with the actual designer. But sometimes a designer will start an MKAL, a mystery knit-along. MKALs are always run by designers, as they need somebody who can design a never-before-seen object. Stephen West is well known for MKALs; his annual October shawl MKAL has thousands participating. I first took part in 2021, the 11th MKAL shawl design. Stephen West designs a shawl and then splits the design into four parts. In advance of the MKAL he announces the thickness of the yarn, how many meters at this weight, and how many colors are good to use with the design. This is where he makes a significant profit, as the yarn and color advice come paired with kits for sale from his store. Due to the popularity, the kits are sold out very quickly. Nothing stops a knitter from buying other yarns though. The early yarn advice is followed by a rush of knitters posting their yarn choices, discussing how they fit the design based on very close analysis of posts and videos West makes describing the materials needed.
Once the first design is released, there is a race to knit and post the first finished picture of the first clue, and as people clearly compete for time, this is also where the “spoiler” feature at Ravelry is most frequently in use. People will carefully not post the actual design unless it is in a specific thread in the forum, and even then, it will be hidden behind a feature that ensures that you can't accidentally see the designs. Still, being early carries status, and often friendly envy from other knitters. There is a new clue every week through October, four clues in all until those who have knit along have finished shawls. These MKALs have a certain risk, because who knows if you will like the final design? If you don't, all the money and time appears wasted. There is an element of surprise, as you do not know what you will create. Often it has a significant skill challenge, as West is very good at including new elements that challenge the knitters and, since he is also an excellent teacher with good instructional videos, many participants end up learning new techniques despite decades of knitting experience. It is a very social experience, as people are constantly chatting in the different fora, sharing pictures and experiences and some make Zoom calls where they can meet to knit together. And while it may seem like blindly following the instructions of a guy online is not particularly creative, several of the participants adjust and alter the designs. This became particularly visible during the 2023 MKAL, Geogradient. The original shawl had a Celtic knot center design. This could also remind one of a fascist symbol, particularly when knit in black, grey and red, inadvertently engaging thousands of knitters in transgressive play. Due to this, clue one had to be quickly redesigned, and West had to redo all videos from this clue. While waiting, people started doing their own modifications. In the end this shawl ended up having crocheted granny squares, lace squares, brioche, tumbling infinity squares, Celtic knots turned in different directions—a very wide array of central patterns made up while the knitters waited for West to make a new pattern. The new official version is a simple repetition of squares with different colors in stripes going out from the center, a design that is reflected in all the following parts of the shawl. In the wild, the alternative shawls are more complex, unique and beautiful, a testament to the creative will and design skill of regular knitters.
Role Play and Competitions
Steeped in Internet culture, Ravelry knitters are familiar with versions of nerd culture, and you will find events to celebrate this. The Harry Potter franchise, started in 1997 (Rowling, 1997), is particularly powerful, and there are several events related to the different houses at Hogwarts, where the houses compete for points. All who sign up are sorted by a sorting hat, supposedly at random, and then the different houses get tasks where individuals get scored and their products count towards the house scores. Some of these are rather simple, with there being a topic for each month, and you have to finish an object that falls into this category for your house to gain points. Some are very complex, with not only different projects, but also different levels of projects, so you can plan something very large and complex and gain higher scores, but also have higher risk, as your house will be further behind if you do not finish. All projects need to be started within a certain time range in order to count, and then be finished in time, and there are extra points for design, use of your own stash, spinning your own yarn, etc., all encapsulated in language that indicates that this happens at Hogwarts, and what you do is to learn magic.
Cheating
Since this is a competition for points, people will cheat. One simple way to cheat is to start a project and take progress pictures, but not post them until after you have created a Ravelry project page for them. Project pages, with the time stamp for when they are created, work as proof of what you have done, as does the “finished” status of the project once it is done. By not registering them until the convenient time, you can manage to “finish” a project in the allotted time even if you have not been able to knit as fast as you claim.
There are other versions of cheating going on, some of which border on fraud. For a different competition several of the participants had contributed prizes for the winners and sent these to the organizer. When the time came for the prizes to be distributed, the organizer was gone and not to be heard from again, keeping the prizes.
Ravellenics
During the summer of 2024, the Olympics were in Paris. This had a matching Ravelry-event, the Ravellenics. The Ravellenics are for crafting during the Olympics, preferably while watching. There are several different disciplines, again referencing the games, such as Sweater Triathlon, Hat Dash, Shawl Sailing and Cowl Jump, but the most popular was WiP Wrestling, where the participants could post projects started before the games but finished during. The Ravellenics take advantage of the project page features and tags, and when a participant posts to the finish line thread, a robot will check for the finished projects. There are again teams, but these are not compulsory and can be ignored, pre-planned or random.
Fan Culture and Transmediality
Despite the popularity of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars among ravelers, not all popular culture objects have their groups on Ravelry. Still, most nerd franchises that have an online following show up here, such as Our Flag Means Death (King & Palmer, 2022) and the long-cancelled but still-beloved series Firefly (Whedon & Edlund, 2002) which had an active community of Browncoats. Both Ravelry and r/knitting frequently reference works that demonstrate both fan culture play and transmediality. However r/knitting has more visibly recreated popular culture garments, with the “Handsome Chris” cabled sweater from Knives Out (Johnson, 2019) being an absolute favorite. Close follow-ups are cardigans referencing Taylor Smith outfits. Among Ravelry's patterns, we can find whole collections with items from the universe of Tolkien's books, pullovers mimicking elven armor and dwarf helmets. The fan groups among knitters not only copy the garments seen in movies or films, they also build on them, creating garments that the people in their fan universe could have worn, spinning further on the threads anchored in the fantasy universes of choice, through official pattern books or community efforts to create or recreate an object that makes sense within the reference of fandom.
Community Creation Through Play
Knitting is a slow activity, and so participating in the play on Ravelry means being present and active for a long period—a minimum of a month, but preferably a year or more to understand the recurring events. This meant that I soon found a stable social group. Like in other multi-player situations reported (Mortensen, 2003, 2008, 2015) this group informed my online play. In this case, it was a group of women, some younger, some older, with artists, scholars and housewives in a mix. One of them described her fight against a life-threatening illness, while another posted her watercolors along with her knitting. At Christmas, we sent cards to real-life addresses. This kind of closeness through a common interest is directly comparable to the friendships created in online guilds over many play sessions, rising from insight into each other's lives. In the group forum, we would see their children model knitwear and dogs and cats napping among hanks and skeins, or their homes and renovations as they described what had kept them from knitting. And then all encouraged each other, lent a helping hand to describe different items, and inspired through sharing ideas, patterns and tricks, just like a game guild will help each other to become better players.
The slowness of knitting creates a relaxed bond. There is no demand for constant participation, but it is possible to check in at intervals, ask how things are and exclaim over a finished object. And this is perhaps what makes knitting match a feminine way of life. Most large multi-player games are time consuming and enforce a certain regularity. This is well documented across several different works (ex: Pearce, 2009; Taylor, 2006), and is also one of the things that can make it hard for women to participate regularly, as they have more expectations binding their time than do men (Enevold, 2009; Winn & Heeter, 2009). Knitting is an activity that is productive, traditional and acceptable, and so it is used subversively to make room for women's leisure after the model of romance book reading groups (Radway, 2012). It is also an activity that is easy to pick up and put down. Like a casual game, a knitting project may be picked up for a few minutes of play, and for a lot of people that is how they get time: they bring an unfinished project to any situation where they will be waiting, stuffing it quickly into a handbag when it is time to pay attention to something else.
Casual and Hardcore Knitting
From descriptions on Ravelry and r/knitting, it is common for active knitters to have a casual knit project, a fidget knit project, and a hardcore knit project. The casual project is for those moments when you expect to be interrupted: small, portable, not too complex. The fidget project functions as a focus, to stay awake, or stim for neurodivergent people (Birch, 2024), and is often large and monotone, like knitting large pieces of a stitch which can be done while watching television or listening to a lecture. The hard-core project is exactly like a hardcore game. This is complex, and you have to follow clues carefully, paying attention to every part of the process. This is where knitters use the full range of their abilities as well as different tools: row counters, stitch markers, lifelines, stitch holders, needle stoppers and other items you will find in knitters’ notions bags. These are directly comparable to the support tools of any hardcore gamer, down to apps to register performance and track progress.
What Can We Learn About Play From How Women Knit?
One common game design mystery is: “what games do women like to play?” The answer has varied. Pink games was one trend to get girls to play, by designing for very traditional feminine roles: play with dolls, make-up, shopping and cooking (Carr et al., 2006; Waszkiewicz, 2019). Others have tried to alter the culture of more traditionally masculine games, have more options for women to identify with, and monitoring communities to alter misogynistic conduct (Ibrahim et al., 2010; Mozelius et al., 2022). So far the type of games that appear to be most successful when it comes to reaching a female audience are mobile games (Lynkova, 2024; Rees, 2023). If we compare to knitting, how does this overlap?
Mobile games are like casual knitting projects that can easily be stuffed into a purse. They have short rounds, you do not lose a lot of progress if you are interrupted, and you get relatively quick gratification. When you play on the phone or tablet you are available for others, as any texts or calls happen right at the object in your hand. It is also an object you carry with you and can pull out while you are waiting. Women's days are punctuated by waiting: for children, for appointments on behalf of others, for elderly parents, for partners. Women are also less likely to drive a car, and both knitting and mobile games are perfect for public transportation.
The more social, less competitive but still larger games, such as simulation games or story driven adventure games, are the large fidget projects. You focus elsewhere, either on social interaction or the story lines of the game, while you also play. The play activity itself is secondary to what is unfolding alongside: the fingers are busy but the mind is entertained by compelling developments or narratives.
Most knitters will never knit a Fair Isle cardigan (all over colorwork in intricate patterns), an Aran pullover (cables in complex braided patterns) or a Shetland lace shawl (delicate lace with the thinnest of yarn). These are the hardcore achievements of the most dedicated knitters, as they take time, skill and endurance to finish. These projects are for knitters who, if gaming, would choose Dark Souls (Miyazaki, 2011). 4
Another easily comparable genre is cozy games. This term was first used by game designers to describe a game feel, and defined in 2016 on the blog Lostgarden (Short et al., 2018). They are games of safety, abundance and softness, and it is easy to assume that knitting is a cozy game. However, knitting is often the opposite of abundance, instead taking advantage of scarce resources when making dedicated scrap projects, or repurposing old or second-hand clothing. There is often both intense focus and high risk. The softness of knitting is in the material, and this is not the softness described in cozy games, beyond a certain aesthetic similarity. The main similarity between cozy games (Waszkiewicz & Tymińska, 2024) and knitting might instead be political resistance, as knitting has had economical and political importance, particularly as a tool for women's liberation, for the last several hundred years.
What we do learn is that play in knitting is both ludic—through the rules, limitations, tools and techniques combined with opportunity for role-play and competitions—and paideic—through role-play and playful participation. Adult and older women are perfectly able to sustain the kind of dedication, skill and ability in their hobbies that are required to play hardcore, complex and competitive games, but they still don't. The answer lies in the responses from the women in Sayago, Blat and Neves’ study: Their play needs to be somehow productive, and knitting is undeniably productive.
Women and Technology
One last observation about gender and technology. Kuss et al. (2022) cite Dimitri Williams from 2005: “girls who do not play become women who do not use computing technology (…) and certainly do not aspire to make games.” While the sentiment of this may be correct, we tend to consistently underestimate women's technical skills, as they are often expressed within stereotypically feminine pursuits, which are invisible when considered relative to stereotypically male arenas like IT and technology. Knitting is one of those areas where women tend to eminently master very complex technology. Knitting machines need to be programmed, designs are tested out using software and digital tools, and the act of hand knitting is supported by a wealth of technological aids for designing, sharing, finding and using patterns, counting rows and tracking quantities of yarn. On Ravelry.com and r/knitting on Reddit.com, we see the knitters’ ability to use, share and teach the use of technologies in ways as complex as the theory-crafting of a raiding guild (Karlsen, 2011; Paul, 2018). Through the criticism of patterns, we also learn about whole specialized professions, such as tech editors for knitting, or specialists in scaling patterns for different sizes, not to mention the complexity of producing, choosing and treating materials all the way to the finished yarn. Complex technology appears accessible when it is related to an area women are not only interested in but where feminine expertise is acceptable in our society. The problem of women learning to design and program games or other software isn't inherent in the ability of women to master complex technology, instead it is up to society to appreciate this ability outside of narrow, acceptable areas. Game designers aiming at women audiences do not have to be afraid that their games are too complex. The real question is: How can digital play become as acceptable, convenient and useful to women as knitting?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
