ABSTRACT

Knitting is a popular activity in the twenty-first century, experienced by many practitioners as personally, socially and politically meaningful and transformative. This chapter, based on qualitative research with knitters in central Scotland, explores contemporary knitting as implicit religion and spirituality in terms of wider patterns in religion and society. First, there are echoes of religious community and identity found in the knitting subculture, which are discussed in reference to shifts in congregational modes of belonging. The chapter then considers knitting as an expressive-therapeutic practice, part of the rise of subjective wellbeing culture and the phenomenon of spirituality.