I was in line for coffee when I heard the faint clicks of knitting needles clashing against each other. I looked up from my phone to see Anna Mayer ’29 across the cafe. Amid the smell of coffee and the calming melodies playing from the speakers, she sat focused on her newest knitting project. Blue and white yarn dangled from her needles as she worked row by row, slowly revealing a pattern. It was almost hard to believe that the balls of yarn that sat next to her coffee on the table were soon going to be transformed into a lovely scarf.
Anna started knitting when she was just seven years old. As a child, she was drawn to the arts: finger knitting, crafting, and just about anything she could do with her hands. It was her grandmother who guided her towards knitting, setting her on a lifelong artistic journey. Even as a child, she injected passion into each of her pieces.
“When I was in fifth grade, I knitted a shawl that I wore to school for six months. It was ridiculous. Every picture of me for like six months is wearing this shawl.”
From the moment she picked up her first set of knitting needles, the form became a fundamental part of Anna’s life. She knitted more and more, her pieces decorating her room as they left her hands. With each piece, Anna’s creativity became increasingly central to her work. Her favorite piece she has designed to date is her checkered blanket. It is composed of red and white checkered squares, with each square containing six patterns within it. The patterns are arranged with intention and assembled using techniques Anna learned from an Icelandic woman she met during her travels.
“I made this blanket the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. There are a lot of things that were especially valuable about it. One thing was that I designed it. I designed it with the help of some students that I was working with at a preschool. That was my summer job, and I would bring [the blanket] in and show [the children] pictures: ‘What do you think of this? What do you think of that?’ It felt like a collaborative project.”
Anna uses knitting to bridge her academic and artistic lives. As a prospective education and history double major, she focuses on integrating knitting into her work. While working at a summer camp this summer, she shared her love for knitting and her creativity with her students.
“It’s a Waldorf camp, so it is very focused on being with nature, working with materials and the process,” she shared. “Making things is fundamental to their ideology, or the way they live their lives.” By involving students in her knitting, bouncing ideas off of them, and getting them to learn about the process of artistic creation, she provides a hands-on learning experience.
Like any good artist, Anna derives some of her natural creativity from her environment. Pulling inspiration from the world around her, Anna weaves her life into her art. When she is knitting, she views the process as a collaboration. Whether it be the students and campers from her summer job or her friends, she always leaves a piece of herself in her work. Knitting is her favorite way to capture a time, a place, or a person.
“One of my favorite things to do is trying to get a vision from someone else of what they want, and then interpret it for myself. I really do like those conversations where it’s like ‘You want this?’ and ‘How do we make this actually possible?’”
Anna started collecting yarn from her travels to create hats inspired by the location. One of her pieces is a hat inspired by Mexico City, for which she took pictures of Mayan artifacts and compiled them into different patterns that could be knitted. In her hands, the yarn turns into a lasting physical memory of the experience, reminding her of travelling to the outskirts of the city to see Diego Rivera’s collection of artifacts.
“Something I love is when there are little bits of grass, hay, wood, or whatever material that somehow gets involved in the yarn-making process. When [those materials] get spun in with the yarn, it’s my favorite thing in the world, because for all I know that blade of dried grass was from the grass that this sheep was eating from.”
Spinning her own yarn allowed Anna to dive deeper into the artistic creation process. She was able to use the drop spindle from the summer camp she was working at. A drop spindle is a more basic version of the spinning wheel spindle where the roving (unspun yarn) is pulled apart and twisted into a string of yarn. She took the time to teach herself how to spin yarn in the hopes of becoming more involved with the process. The yarn that she spun was eventually used to knit a hat, which she then dyed, immersing herself in every step of the creation process.
At Swarthmore, Anna shares her love for knitting through the S.U.C.K (Sewing, Upcycling, Crocheting, and Knitting) club. She came together with Zoe Zuloaga ’29, Annabelle Buckley ’29, Ella Johnson ’29, and Angel Wright ’29 to host weekly yarn circles on Thursdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the second floor of the Gender & Sexuality Center (GSC). They are also planning on having monthly workshops for people who want to learn pattern reading, colorwork, and interpreting workshops.
S.U.C.K’s executive board is working on expanding their activities to include new and exciting crafting opportunities. Additionally, Anna will be selling her knit works at Lunch Break Vintage in the Ville.
“It’s only recently that I’ve kind of started considering myself an artist, and that knitting can actually be art. I can’t draw, I can’t paint, all the traditional artistic things I’ve never thought I’m good at. Having a space where people respect and understand what you’re making in general is a really valuable thing. What I want to help bring to this community is more unconventional kinds of art to be understood and respected.”
