Yarn loops, slipknots honor Kwanzaa’s 6th day
For Stacy Blacknall, cinching a crochet stitch soothes her like a cigarette would.
With yarn looped on her fingers, her mind drifts.
“It goes to a very comfortable place,” Blacknall said. “My hands leave me.”
The 59-year-old spent her Saturday touching up on the hobby that’s sustained her for the past half-century.
Blacknall attended a workshop at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center in downtown Little Rock, taught by a young Arkansas artisan.
Mahala Kwanisai, the 23-year-old who led the tutorial, lives in Conway and has crocheted since her mother bought her an instructional book at age 15.
Kwanisai is one of the center’s “black crafters,” and the museum store stocks her crocheted coasters, hats and headbands.
In 2016, the museum debuted “Arkansas Made, Black Crafted,” an initiative meant to support black artists, designers, writers and makers.
The store curated work — including jewelry, cooking spices and shirts — from about 20 people all over Arkansas, said Rhonda Lewis, the assistant manager at the museum store.
“We’re always looking for more,” she added.
Selling goods produced by black Arkansans honors the history of Ninth Street, where the museum sits, Lewis said.
The Ninth Street business district, once an industry hotbed for black Arkansans, later was cleared of people and
storefronts, in part because of the construction of Interstate 630, according to the documentary Dream Land: Little Rock’s West 9th Street.
Because of this, the museum has a duty “to support entrepreneurship in the community,” Lewis said.
Saturday’s workshop also commemorated Kwanzaa, a holiday that’s “all about food and family and the spirit of African-American people,” Christina Shutt, the cultural center’s director, said.
Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa represents a different principle. Saturday celebrated “Nia,” which means purpose. Today, the sixth day, commemorates “Kuumba,” or creativity.
The crochet workshop supports this spirit of “making,” especially because during the holidays, people can “focus on a lot of commercially made items,” Shutt said.
At the workshop, Blacknall was the resident crochet expert. She’d crocheted hot pants, brassieres and halter tops while in high school in the 1970s.
“Girl, I was fine,” Blacknall said.
Those garments are probably “somewhere in my mama’s trunk, if she didn’t set them on fire,” she added.
Blacknall, a retired Little Rock art teacher, said she learned to crochet at age 9, then returned to the hobby while undergoing chemotherapy and dialysis between 2003 and 2013.
As a breast cancer survivor, fiddling with yarn was something to do while sitting in an endless number of doctors’ offices, Blacknall said. Plus, the practice keeps her dexterous.
“I want to always be able to use my hands,” she said.
Through some sighs of frustration, Kwanisai taught the other attendees how to loop a slipknot and form a chain, the foundation of any crocheted item.
“OK, this is kind of cool,” Amy Cole said.
“I’m turning yarn into a thingy,” Cole said, displaying a braided yarn rope in triumph.
Later, as the stitches became more complicated, Kwanisai explained that crocheters have a term for scrapping an entire project: frogging. To undo stitches, you just rip (ribbit) them out.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Cole said. “You just start over.”