Competition vs Community

I've always been keen to touch on this subject, but as someone who is naturally introverted and usually likes to avoid confrontation it has never been something I have talked much about, yet it was a huge part of my experience in launching and growing HappyBerry and I think quite an interesting part of the social sciences.

In the early years of founding HappyBerry my audience was very heavily American centric. I think in part this was due to the fact that back in 2009 crochet wasn't as popular as it is today in the UK. The British were much more attuned to knitting and other crafts, and crochet was almost this mystical craft that many mothers and grandmothers just didn't do much of, so it was never shared or talked about much until the onset of social media and the internet. The only reason I had an awareness of crochet as a child was from my mum making these simple crochet circles to use as rugs in my play houses. 

Yet in America, crochet was huge, with knitting taking much more of a back seat. I've never really understood why this was the case. I think it was just the way things were in different countries, but I do remember thinking back in the early days how I really wanted to make crochet more popular in the UK, and it definitely has become more popular so I like to think I had a small part to play in that. This is also why I first started using American terminology in my designs rather than British terms, but I've always had a head for both because I used to do a lot of UK magazine work back then and design for some British yarn companies who insisted on using UK terms for obvious reasons, but I never saw myself as an indie crochet designer or as a YouTuber. These were labels most definitely given to me as HappyBerry grew, but for the most part I ignored them as I've always been busy with other things... until they became a problem.

This was because HappyBerry was just a hobby to me, one of many and wow do I have a lot of hobbies and a lot of craft related hobbies too, which I have enjoyed since I was a child. I still have this beautiful book my parents gave me as a prize for doing well in school at the age of 16 all about Rope Braids as I was obsessed in those days with making friendship bracelets. The only way to learn how to do things in those days as well was through your peers. There was no internet back then so books and sharing knowledge in person was the only way you learnt anything and for me crafts became a way to escape the bullies at school.

We often talk about crafts as therapy, but we rarely talk about it in regards to children's mental health, but it can really help. This was especially true in my last primary school which was incredible tiny. So small was that school that every year group was in the same room, just on different tables and in my "year" there were 2 other girls and 2 boys who immediately took a dislike to my shy nature and quite frankly appalling sense of fashion. We have moved to a new area you see after my father had suffered a nervous breakdown so money was tight and because the school was so small there were no school uniforms so I had to wear these awful brown corduroy trousers, which I hated as did everyone else. I can laugh about it now, but back then I really stood out as a target for bullies.

I had always been bullied though, before and after this experience. I was too tall, I was too quiet, I was too pale, I was too smart, my accent was too posh from moving areas, I was this.. I was that.. kids will find anything, but one day in this tiny school we had the opportunity to use a sewing machine and these sewing machines were in another room. I began this project of making a craft bag for my mum. At first everyone was in this room learning, but over time the other kids finished their projects and moved back into the main school room, but I would find any excuse to stay in this room, not just because I loved using the sewing machine, which made me feel so grown up, but as a way to stay away from the mean kids on my table. So, I added poppers, I added zips, I added anything that would delay me returning to the main class room until the teacher got so fed up of me working on this bag that she finally told me to finish it. I was very sad, but to this day my mum still uses this ridiculously over the top craft bag. 

So, crafts became a way of entering a world away from my world. For my father it was the same, he was an artist and his art became his therapy to recovery and my crafts became my way of creating beauty in a world that scared me. Over the years I collected this huge bag of yarn that I carried with me everywhere and eventually lost around my twenties. We don't talk about that, it's a sore point, but the yarn colours really reflected the 80's period with neon greens and pinks. These memories are really happy for me even if they emerged through difficult periods of my life.

I also became an artist like my father. I won an art competition in school and went on to art college, also growing a passion for film and photography and have hosted art exhibitions for my work over the years. My mother too taught me embroidery and knitting and I also have a passion for science and writing and have self-published 4 novels. So crochet, was really just a tiny portion of what I did craft wise until my daughter came into the world and I was looking to make her a summer hat because I just couldn't find one in the local stores.

I had never been particularly fond of knitting so when I was watching Kirstie's Homemade Home on TV one afternoon I remembered back to the crochet my mum had made for me as a child and I realised it would be much easier to call on those old skills to make the baby sun hat. The rest is history, I designed my own, I shared, I made videos to explain things better and HappyBerry was born, but crochet was still just something I did in the background. I was much more focused on running art exhibitions in my local area, working as a freelance graphic designer and of course being a new mother. It was natural to build a website for HappyBerry to share my designs being a designer as interest grew, but it was still just this thing I did in my spare time. To everyone else though, I was entering this crochet community that I was completely unaware of. You also have to remember that the British interest in crochet was slowly growing in the background. My followers grew on YouTube, the website gained more visitors. Me however, I was completely oblivious!

Then one day someone said to me, "you're well known as doing .. such n such .. in the crochet community," .... I was? What community? Who is in this community? When did I enter it? I asked myself. Then someone said, "You shouldn't talk about your experiences, it's bad for the community." True story.

I was flummoxed! Crochet had become this thing I did when I was watching TV, to calm my nerves. It was for me. It was my therapy. Yes, I was sharing my work online and I loved connecting with others and seeing what they had made from my patterns, but for me that was no different to jumping into an art forum or reading an article on physics or sharing my experiences with teaching English in Japan with other like-minded people. Was I in multiple communities I had no awareness of? When did this happen? Had I been completely ignorant of this process? Should I be paying more attention? Who was running these communities? What were these mysterious rules? The questions began to stress me out, especially as my followers got bigger and bigger. Suddenly I was back in school and I wanted to retreat back into my own world, but my world was crafts. I was lost! This became especially toxic on Facebook so I deleted Facebook. I had a page of over 70,000 followers, but it was not a place I could retreat to anymore.

And I've never looked back. I suddenly realised that community was something we have to feel inside of us, not told we're a part of. It is not something that should be imposed on others and if you don't attune to someone else's version of community then you are labelled as a threat, as a competitor, but this is not true. I just want to walk my own path and find my own community, and these people don't have to stay the same. I like to think my community ebbs and flows. It is not static, it is not central to the UK where sadly most of this toxicity was coming from, it is international and it is something I should feel a part of inside me. Followers come and go, some stay for the ride, some grab a pattern and never return, but each visitor is treated the same and I value each and everyone who drops by, but I will always return to doing my own thing. 

Crochet doesn't define who I am. I love it of course, I love sharing it and I love talking to others about it, but it is not who I am. It is just a thing I do. I love being on the outside. I don't want to belong to any community based on what other people are doing. I want to belong in my own space and do my own thing. That was drives my passion and that is where my creative, happy place is. When you are on the outside looking in, you are free to create, you are free to truly express who you are because there are no restrictions, no labels, no rules to follow or things you have to do. When you're stuck on the inside that is when competition arises, that's when you feel your place is threatened because you are stuck, you are limited, you are having to conform to spoken and unspoken rules. Be brave and break free. Don't look back, don't look at others and compare your work or think you have to be doing what they're doing. Look within you, look around you, look beyond you. Then you will find your space, your therapy and your community because it will resonate with who you are. 

So, competition vs community? It's a non question really because both are inherently good and both are inherently bad. It's how you view yourself that matters and how you find what works for you on an individual level. You shouldn't be labelled as a competitor if you don't follow a specific community because that's what mean girls in school do. "If you don't do as we say, we're not speaking to you!" These are not your friends or your community. Instead, try a third option, YOU. If people think your competing with them, then so be it. If you suddenly find yourself in a community you weren't aware of, then remember it doesn't define who you are. It is just how someone else sees you and that's ok, that is their thing, it doesn't affect what you do or who you want to be. Others will always see you a certain way, you cannot control this, but you can control how it affects you. 

For me, crafts is my therapy. It is my way of escaping the world and connecting with people from all walks of life. I don't need someone's else's version of a community. I don't need to compete with others as I only want to compete with myself. I want to do better. I want to improve and to do that I need to walk on the outside.