When people ask me if I’m creative, I always hesitate. My mind flashes back to schooldays — to the art room, to the sharp smell of paint and pencils — and to the teacher who told me, bluntly, that I wasn’t good enough at art.
It was such a contrast to my primary school years, where art was all joy and play. I remember splashing colours on paper, experimenting, laughing as we mixed paints that ran into each other in unexpected ways. There, art was about curiosity and freedom. At secondary school, though, the tone shifted. Suddenly, art had rules. There was a right way and a wrong way, and I seemed to fall squarely into the wrong camp.
Then there were the sewing lessons. Our teacher, an ex-nun with a formidable presence, seemed to have one mission: to make at least one of us cry each lesson. Every stitch was scrutinised, every crooked seam an opportunity for humiliation. The joy I might have felt working with cloth was buried under a weight of fear and shame.
For years, I believed I wasn’t creative — that art wasn’t for me.
And then, I found knitting.
Knitting crept up on me quietly, a craft that didn’t ask for perfection but invited patience, rhythm, and flow. A craft where mistakes could be unpicked, reworked, or even transformed into design features. As I knitted, I realised something profound: knitting is art. Not the kind of art that hangs on white walls in a gallery, but living, breathing art. Art you can wear, touch, and wrap yourself in. Art made not to be preserved behind glass, but to be part of daily life.
Knitting has taught me that art doesn’t have to look like a painting or a drawing to “count.” It can be wool sliding through fingers, stitches stacking up like brushstrokes, colours flowing across fabric. It can be deeply personal, deeply human, and deeply healing.
So now, when I sit with my knitting, I reclaim all those years of being told I wasn’t good enough. Because I know, with certainty, that creativity is not about meeting someone else’s standard. It’s about making, expressing, and allowing beauty to unfold in your own way.
Knitting is art. My art. And maybe, if you’ve ever been told you’re not creative, it can be yours too.
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