Knitting is the perfect activity to calm the body and soothe the mind during a high-pressure event like the Winter Olympics. Once you internalize your stitch pattern, you can just zone out and focus on how the yarn feels between your fingers, and for those EMDR girlies among us, knitting also counts as bilateral stimulation. Since diver Tom Daley went viral in 2021 for knitting between events at the Tokyo Olympics, he's become something of a knitbassador for the craft,
Knitting was a childhood hobby of Mary Mwangi, a tall and talkative woman who runs a tailoring shop in Thika town in Kenya's Kiambu County. But it was only in 2017, when she was bedridden for 11 months after having cancer treatment, that she picked it up again. The first time Mwangi was diagnosed, it was with spine cancer. Housebound and wanting to pass the time, she decided to knit hats, which she ended up donating to cancer patients at Kenyatta National Hospital.
It's not so much what Hank Green said, but what the Hank Green-hosted SciShow on YouTube put forward. The video is framed as physicists using science to explain the art of knitting, which until now has been innovated simply "through trial and error," and that "how it all works was mostly a mystery." Recently, scientists used a computer model to determine how certain knit stitches will behave, thus being able to predictively pattern knit fabrics for the first time.
Knitting, once tied to blankets and scarves, now inspires furniture, lighting, and home accessories, showcasing its potential for creativity and function.
