Un/Ravel (2026)

a personal creative non-fiction essay

Whenever I see something knitted I always pause and look and spend some time analyzing it, figuring out the spacing, how the cables could ebb and flow and duck or hop over, how a line of stitches could squeeze and expand. I have now learned to differentiate between something hand knitted and something machine-knitted, even with very neat craftsmanship. I’ve learned to look at the turn of cables and the spacing of the tension of the increasing and decreasing stitches. I search for the human touch, the evidence that a person’s hands had pulled the yarn’s loops together, had made every stitch. Perhaps I am looking for the connection, looking for clothes made with care, someone choosing to spend hours hand crafting something instead of using a machine.

The cardigan is green and white, a mix of ivory angora and olive merino wool, double-knitted together in intricate motifs. My grandmother’s touch shaped every stitch, holding two strings of yarn in one hand, the other hand undulating in a steady rhythm to form each knot. She knitted each row twice, so that it was reversible, and that the white and the green replaced each other when I turned the fabric inside out. On the back of the garment, between my shoulder blades, the white angora is replaced slightly unevenly with a slightly duller color, almost a grey, compared to the warm ivory of the angora rabbit. This is my grandmother going back to this cardigan and reknitting that portion, as while the cardigan sat waiting in my grandmother’s closet, moths had sucked at the yarn, tearing apart the knots, unweaving and pulling at my grandmother’s careful stitches.

I folded the cardigan neatly, buttoning each wooden button, tucking the arms underneath the body, and gently placed it into my suitcase. I was packing for my trip to visit a college I wanted to attend. Other clothes were strewn around me, tried on in different combinations and haphazardly flung onto the ground. The linen overalls I bought in Hua Hin inspired by the art on Thai rice sacks, jeans bought in New York with embroidery on the back, a weaved shirt made of Chiang Mai cotton dyed with flowers and roots found in the wet forests, all crumpled around me as I put them together in different outfits, trying to imagine what could be my future college best friend’s reaction to them. The cardigan was the first piece of clothing I knew I wanted to wear, the one I treated tenderly, took off carefully, folded instead of tossed into the growing heap of fabric on my bed. It was beautiful, and I wanted people to ask me about it, so I could tell them about my grandmother; how she made it herself, how she taught me how to knit as a young child along with all my cousins. I wanted to talk about where I came from.

My grandmother had heaps of wool, twisted together into skeins. She would untwist them and wind them up once more, into organized balls of yarn; they looked like the balls of yarn I saw on the television that cartoon cats played with. We started with these circular plastic looms that looked like the fences around a house, with jutting semi circles on top holding yarn. My grandmother told us to lift the bottom piece of yarn and carry it over the other yarn, and move on to the next semi circle. As we slowly picked at the yarn, what I later realized were individual stitches, wove together into a tube of fabric. When we got good at the looms, we’d graduate to needles, long wooden needles with balls at the end, and she would cast on, and knit the first few lines, then give it to us. She showed me how to poke and pull over, that was what I later realized was knit stitch.

So we’d sit, the younger ones with the blue looms, and the older ones with the needles, absentmindedly knitting while watching Thai-dubbed Tarzan on a fat TV. As we got older, we would start taking needles and yarn with us back home. And my cousins would knit a couple lines and give up; my grandmother always said they were too impatient. I was always called impatient too. My mother blamed it on the mobile games, the small fast-paced worlds created by phones. You can harvest a whole feed of rice with just a tap on that thing, that is not how the world works. You must slow down, she’d say. But with knitting with my grandmother, somehow I wasn’t too impatient, and somehow I was completing projects, and she was always there to fix all my mistakes. I could bring her yarn and her needles back to my house and come back with inches more of work and show it to her proudly. She would take my lopsided stitches, my holes and my loose ends and tie them all up, picking up dropped stitches, and finishing off each piece for me, tucking in strands, until I had in my hand, my very first scarf, then my very first beanie, then my very first gift.

It was a grey scarf knitted in the most basic way: garter stitch. And though the stitches were uneven, and the scarf unintentionally slowly expanded the longer it got, I remember folding it as neatly as I could, and placing it into a pink box. I remember placing stickers all over the box, writing little messages in lopsided childish writing. I was so proud to present the scarf to my father.

The gift is from me, I remember saying with pride. I made it all on my own, papa. Back then, the gift was a finished project, an object. But that scarf didn’t just hold my uneven stitches. It wasn’t only made by my clumsy little hands. It was made with my grandmother’s, too. Her hands picked up the dropped stitches, and held mine to teach me how.

And the same way I waved goodbye to my grandmother once we finished the scarf, her casting off my stitches, I waved to her again, but now at the airport. I remember our move to the US feeling like I was just scooped up one day and plopped onto this unfamiliar land. I remember it as being told the day before, and the next day, finding bags packed, and we were off. And now suddenly, my grandmother was an ocean away. At least two plane rides away, a whole day of flying away instead of a short car ride.

I could not find the herbal candy she would give me here, didn’t ever see any candy wrapped in iridescent plastic and twisted on both sides. The driveways here are asphalt, not tiles, and floors weren’t marble, and the trees weren’t fragrant all year round. The sky was bluer, so blue, but the days were cold. I remember seeing sunshine and expecting warmth but going outside and being slapped by the cold wind. The blue sky casted blue shadows onto the white snow, blue strips that echoed the shape of the leafless trees. The shadows were cool, not like the warm purple shadows casting on the orange-red terracotta tiles I grew up running on. I remember having to get used to wearing all these layers, and layers; leggings and then pants, and heat tech and then a sweater and then a coat. I remember unwrapping myself like a present when I got to class, taking off these clothes just to sit down.

I remember my mother tongue, the language that surrounded me, the language that expressed family love, the language that was sweet aunties at the market and my grandmother’s hugs and my father’s advice becoming almost secret. The language became confined to the four of us, no longer living all around me. It felt like a secret language no one else but me and my family could understand. My home was so foreign to everyone around me. Thailand? Don’t you mean Taiwan?

And I guess because knitting didn’t fit with the heat and the mangosteen and the warm wet air that came after rains and the big fat mosquitoes that I knew as Thailand, I was able to take it with me when I came to the US. I could bring it to class, and no one questioned me. I could start knitting, and they wouldn’t look at me perplexed, ask me again, what is that? The way they did with the steaming lunches my mother packed me everyday. It was one of the only things I could bring from home, from my family of shiny black hair and nasal Thai-Chinese voices, to this white elementary school that wasn’t questioned.

So I kept working on the project my grandmother started for me, like all the other projects she had started for me. I would knit before my cello lessons, on long car rides and sometimes as I read, pushing the needles into the pages so that my book would stay open as I repeated the same motion again and again. It was one of these times, before my cello lesson that an older white woman approached me. She had wispy white hair, and her eyes were light, and the veins on her white hands were blue. She smiled at me, and told me, “ you knit like I do, you know, they teach kids to knit differently now.” I felt prideful, to be noticed for the way I knit, for the way my grandmother knits.

My mother gave me an iPad for my birthday. I searched up knitting tutorials on that iPad and learned how to do the purl stitch, how to cast on, how to cast off. It took me time. I didn’t realize the way I had to hold the yarn was different for purl stitch, and my grandma’s soft hands were not there to mold mine into the correct position. Knitting shifted from the wordless language of my grandmother to typed out blogs written by strangers. The way my grandmother showed me the long-tail cast on without ever telling me its name, just telling me that you shaped the yarn into a heart, with your pointer and thumb, the time I spent looking at her hand, and back at mine, carefully mimicking her, was reduced to a 2D screen of a stranger with unfamiliar hands that moved too fast, and new terms flashing on the screen, shortened into a code I didn’t understand. The movements that were planted into my palms and my fingers with my grandma’s voice and motions were reduced to CO, K1, P1 RLI, LL1, M2. I read new terms, skein, gauge, intarsia and pronounced them all wrong in my head, skein as “skeen” instead of the correct “skine”, gauge as “godge” instead of “gage”. It was as if I was learning how to cook using recipe books with shiny pictures and words I couldn’t read, taught to measure with cups and ounces instead of my nose and how it smells. Somehow, knitting started to feel less personal, more clinical. Detached from my grandmother, and from me.

Though my grandmother was not there to knit with me, ironically, I could now connect with her now by wearing her work—hats and cardigans, scarves and sweaters. Each individual piece with each individual stitch had been touched by her fingers. The even knots turned something straight forward like a straight string into something more complicated, a fabric that wrapped my body, that kept my hands warm. These sweaters with their intricate designs, the scarves with the carefully tied ends and the cardigans with her hand-picked hand-stitched wooden buttons, too warm for the Thai air I shared with her, was perfect for the cold new country with the blue shadows that she had never cast. Over the next four years, I went back and forth between the United States and Thailand. I remember spending longer packing my carry-on bag. Shoving balls of yarns and half finished projects into my backpack even though my mother always said it was unnecessary. When are you going to have time to knit, she’d ask. And often, on these flights that stretched, I chose to keep my knitting in my bag, and opt to watch a movie without knitting through it. But I liked having the option under the seat in front of me. I liked knowing I could knit, that I had this constant weaving in my life between two worlds that felt so very different. I could now start my own projects, decide on how many stitches, even thousands of miles away from my grandmother. I no longer had to go to her when I wanted to start something new. So I started scarves and beanies and sweaters. I begged my mom for yarn and needles and I would bring my yarn proudly to school to show off to my friends my new projects. I found it hard, however, to finish projects. I would start them and get stuck. Leaving needles that held a half-finished bodice of a sweater, a too short scarf or a wrongly twisted beanie in a corner in my bedroom.

But every now and then, I’d pick up my wooden needles again, and during conversations and car rides and before cello lessons, I’d knit. I would join the knitting club, and I would teach my friends, the same way my grandmother taught me. One time, my friend made a mistake, and I fixed it with a swoop of the needle, and she looked at me, amazed. The same way I once looked at my own grandmother. The same wonder she gave me, I could now give to someone else.

My knitting is my grandmother’s knitting. The way I move my fingers are hers. My projects, they are her. And I don’t knit for the garment, I knit to knit, to connect, to craft. What makes knitting special is the time I or my grandmother spend making each individual stitch, the times someone approaches me curious or with recognition. The time my grandmother spent holding my little hands to teach me, and the time I spent holding my friends’ hands, and teaching them too. It is the time I spend with a ball of yarn and needles in my bag, expectant. The time I wear the finished piece and think about who made it, how every stitch, every loop, has been under careful fingers.