Bringing Magick into Hobbies: Knitting and Crochet

A Witch without a hobby is a dull Witch. Sometimes hobbies are easy to incorporate magick into or use in spells in rituals. But others may seem impossible to be magick carriers. But every hobby can be infused with magick. It just needs some creativity to get done. Knitting and crochet may seem like old-fashioned hobbies where what you see is what you get. But, they’re time-consuming hobbies that take dedication to start and master. And once mastered, they can be used to create many wonders, not just a scarf. Knitting and crochet can also have magick infused into them. To see how it is done, let’s take a look at what you can do to bring magick into your knitted craft.

Make Your Yarn

If the first thing that comes to mind when spinning yarn is a large spinning wheel, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear you do not need the big bulky wheel to spin. All you need to do is master a drop spindle. A drop spindle is a rod of wood with a flat wooden disk at the top or bottom of the shaft called a whorl. You can spin fibers with the spindle with the comfort of sitting where you please and spinning when you please. When you figure out how to spin on a drop spindle, you will be one step closer to making your yarn.

The final step is deciding on what kind of fibers to use to make your yarn. Some craft stores sell starting batts or rovings, which is a fiber that has been processed for spinning by a machine. You can purchase these rovings and spin the fibers to make your yarn easily. You can decide to make your rovings by collecting plant or animal fibers, but if you cannot get the right tools to properly separate the fibers, you’ll end up with messy yarn.

Aside from the drop spindle and the type of fiber you are going to use, you will also need a niddy-noddy. A niddy-noddy is used for wrapping your spun yarn around it so you can boil the yarn to set it. You want to be able to completely submerge the niddy-noddy in boiling water for about ten minutes, wring it out, and then let it air dry. But once these steps are complete, you will have your yarn containing your unique energy.

Die the Yarn Yourself

While you could buy already colored yarns, being able to make the colors yourself adds a different thrill of fun. You can avoid any chemicals used in commercial dyes by dyeing with natural items that you can all collect outside! You can research what plant objects can be used as dyes and where to collect them before starting.

When it comes to dyeing yarn, you want to be sure that you are using cotton or wool since acrylic yarns do not absorb colors as well. And, of course, you want to choose a white-colored yarn. But before you can even start dying your yarn, you need to go through a process where minerals are infused into the yarn. In this process, you will need to boil the yarn in water that has been treated with a mordant or fixative that will allow the yarn to absorb color better. You do not need to do this step, but the yarn will not absorb the colors as easily.

Of course, the most fun part is creating the dyes to use. For this, you will need to boil the natural items you are using for color until you see them start to stain out the colors. The longer you boil them, the darker the color will be for your yarn. Allow your mixture to cool completely before submerging your yarn. As with making the color dip, the longer you submerge the yarn in the dye, the darker the color will be. Allow the yarn to dry thoroughly before deciding to dunk it again in the color mix if the color is not what you need. You can experiment with many different items to create various shades of colors for your yarn collection.

Create Crochet and Knitting Needles

Creating your own knitting needles allows you to enchant them with your energy so that with every stitch you make, a little bit of your energy is put into your knitted work.

You can use sticks, pieces of wood, and even metal to create your knitting needles. You need to be careful, though, of how thick you make the needles. If you have them, you can use already made knitting needles as a guide to how thick you will need to make your needles. Keep a note of what their labels are so that you can label your handmade ones the same. Patterns can easily be messed up by using the wrong needles, so labeling is critical to ensure your handmade needles will work properly.

You also want to be sure that the knitting needles are as smooth as possible. Yarn can fray, especially when being worked with a lot. If the knitting needles are bumpy or have ridges where yarn can get caught on, it will start to fray the yarn and make it impossible to hold its shape, much less be used. So, you want to be sure that you have the tools to smooth out the material you are using to make the needles, like if you are using sticks or small pieces of wood. So long as the needles are smooth, you should have little to no issues with them causing the yarn to lose its shape.

Crochet needles fall in the same concept as knitting needles, but they have the addition of a hook that will need to be made. For the hook, it does not need to be a big one, but big enough for yarn to be caught in it without it being able to slip out.

Enchant Your Crochet and Knitting Needles

If you do not have the ability or tools to make your crochet and knitting needles, you can still infuse store-bought needles with your energy. You only need to do a ritual to share some of your magickal energy with the needles.

Before sharing your energy with the needles, the first step is to cleanse the needles of any energy they may have absorbed. You never know how long the needles have been sitting on the store shelves or where they were brought in from, so they could have picked up a large amount of energy, both good and bad. As with any of your tools, you need to cleanse them of any energy so they can be a clean slate. You can do this by submerging your needles in consecrated salt. It is better to use salt instead of water as the water can cause damage depending on what the needles are made from. Leave the needles submerged in the salt for a full day to ensure that all the energy has been absorbed. If there happens to be a full moon, leave the bowl of salt and needles outside so the moon can give it an extra cleansing.

Once the needles have been cleansed, you can perform a ritual to charge them with your energy. The easiest way to do so is to have a gemstone already filled with your energy. Place it and the needles on your altar to perform an energy transfer ritual. You can also similarly charge them as a gemstone or one of your other tools. You do have to keep in mind the material your crochet or knitting needles are made of. Some of the materials can absorb energy easier than others, which means less of a strain on you to transfer energy, but also more of a risk of other energies being absorbed should someone else touch your needles.

But, once your needles are charged, you need only charge them monthly. If you are using them heavily, you may need to recharge them weekly instead.

Crocheting and knitting are old skills, but they’re skills that Witches should nonetheless have plenty of fun learning to use to create handmade objects packed with their energy. If you haven’t made objects out of yarn before, then now is as good a time as ever to experiment. Start with easy patterns so you can learn the stitches and their names. Do not get discouraged if you have a hard time starting out with crocheting and knitting, especially if you end up getting a few hand cramps here and there. Your hands will get used to the position of holding the yarn and needles in no time. With practice, you will have the skills to create pouches, bags, placemats, and more, so you can use needlework crafts in your everyday Witchy life. And with the abundance of free patterns online, you can make many items for fun!