I was rather impressed by how many of you wrote to me after last week’s email to say that you, too, had climbed St Paul’s Cathedral.
Even more impressive: not one of you had taken your knitting.
Honestly. All those steps and not a single row. A missed opportunity.
Thank you, too, for your lovely messages about me facing my fear of heights. I had been expecting sympathy, smelling salts and possibly a small commemorative plaque: “James came. James saw. James clung to the railing.”
Instead, you sent encouragement. It meant a great deal.
Facing something frightening can begin with a very small step. In my case, preferably one with a handrail. And much of what has helped me move forward in life has begun with something smaller still: a stitch.
One Stitch, One Breath
A stitch is a breath. A breath gives me space to notice a feeling. The next might bring an emotion.
When I knit, I try to acknowledge what comes up rather than push it away. A dropped stitch needs attention. Ignoring it and hoping for the best rarely improves the situation, particularly in dark yarn at 11.47pm.
I have found that feelings need attention, too.
At McIntosh, we call this knittitation. Developed together with Doctor Thomas, it is our approach to knitting and mindfulness, drawing on mindfulness-based stress reduction. It sits behind everything I do.
It also explains why knitting in front of the television qualifies as personal development, even when it looks suspiciously like me muttering at a sleeve.
The Glamour Of Socktober
This week has mostly involved fulfilling orders and adding new things to the website.
The life of a one-person online yarn shop is a heady mixture of cardboard boxes, postage labels, cold tea and asking, “Where’s the tape?” while holding the tape.
Still, there are new sock yarns to enjoy, and it is Socktober. Our feet deserve a little attention before winter starts making demands.
Sock yarn has been very popular this season, as has yarn for baby projects. The babies themselves have contributed very little to the discussion. They seem happy to let someone else choose the colours and handle the ends.
Thank you, too, to everyone buying yarn for jumpers. Your orders suggest that winter knitting preparations are well underway, even while the weather continues to deliberate over whether autumn is something it wishes to participate in.
The All-Important Squidge
My spring and summer yarn samples for next year have arrived, ahead of their launch in early January. That means I need to get knitting so I can write my reviews.
Yes, while everyone else is preparing woolly jumpers, I am considering spring. Retail does strange things to your calendar.
I like to knit with every yarn I sell. When you shop online, you cannot reach through the screen and give a ball that all-important squidge. Until technology addresses this glaring omission, you have me.
I want to tell you how a yarn feels in my hands, how it behaves on the needles and what sort of fabric it makes. Is it bouncy? Silky? Sturdy? Does it split? Does it make you say, “Oh, go on then,” shortly before a cardigan enters your life?
Those things matter, especially when you are choosing yarn for a project that will keep you company for weeks.
Blue Lights And Home
My sample knitting has been keeping me company while I watch Blue Lights, the BBC police drama set in Belfast.
I grew up about 28 miles away, in County Armagh, between Portadown and Tandragee. My childhood was in the countryside, with plenty of fields, hedges and cows. I retain a surprising amount of knowledge about hedge cutting. It has yet to prove essential to running a yarn shop, but I remain available.
Watching a programme set close to home brings back familiar voices and memories. I particularly notice mentions of Garnerville, where my mum trained to become a home economics teacher at the Belfast College of Domestic Science, before its later association with police training.
Mum and I had the same degree. I studied at the University of Dundee in Scotland, and my early career took me around the world with an AGA cooker under my arm, figuratively speaking. Excess baggage would have been ruinous.
I also presented food television in China.
It was a wonderful, rather unusual career. Then homophobia brought me to a point where I collapsed, and depression followed. I spent a year in bed.
Doctor Thomas supported me through that time. It was during my recovery that I learned to knit.
Knitting saved my life.
Finding My Way Back
Knitting gave my hands something to do when so much else felt impossible. One stitch was manageable. Then another.
That experience led Doctor Thomas and me to develop knittitation. I have since spoken about it many times, including in a TEDx talk at King’s College London, which you can find on my website.
Today, sitting with my needles, knitting round and round while watching a favourite programme, brings me peace, comfort and joy. Sometimes I am assessing a sample so I can tell you about it. Sometimes I simply need to sit and knit.
As the nights draw in, I think about the people we love and those we miss.
My mum died from cancer just as COVID was beginning. Doctor Thomas’s mum had died nine months to the day before her. I had come through depression, and then we faced grief.
Life was hard. My knitting kept me going.
I had £20 left. Doctor Thomas kept the lights on and food in my tummy, and I started McIntosh with that £20.
When I look at the business today, I think about where those stitches have brought me. They have clothed me, steadied me and helped me find my confidence again.
I am back. And every order, message and project you share has become part of that story.
Six Steps To Work
McIntosh has grown considerably since those early days, although headquarters remains our spare bedroom.
My commute is six steps. Traffic is generally light, unless a delivery has arrived.
There are moments when it feels like an international yarn business. There are others when it feels like a cupboard that should only be opened by someone prepared to catch several balls of DK.
I need to start looking for premises. In central London, that is a considerable next step, with considerable rent attached.
But we will work towards it as we have worked towards everything else: one stitch at a time, one breath at a time, with faith and a willingness to keep going.
Thank you for helping this little business grow.
A Knit-Along To Look Forward To
There is also something lovely to put on the needles: The Knitter magazine’s knit-along, using LANGYARNS Naturalis.
The design is by the talented and beautifully kind Kath Andrews, who has become a dear friend.
Yarn kits have already been heading out to their new homes, and more are available. There is something especially cheering about a knit-along: people in different places, making their own versions of a shared project.
You can explore the LANGYARNS Naturalis kits and our new sock yarns on the McIntosh website.
Whether you choose socks, a jumper or the knit-along, I hope your project brings you a little company and comfort as the evenings grow darker.
Your stitches may not solve the world’s problems. Mine have certainly failed to lower London rents. But they can give you a moment to breathe, notice how you feel and decide what comes next.
There is joy in that. There is hope in it, too.
With love from McIntosh HQ, where I am knitting and Doctor Thomas is on call at the hospital this weekend.
Keep knitting. Keep shining. And should you climb a cathedral, do take your project bag.
James McIntosh
