Over the decades I attempted to encourage the people around me to take up knitting.

I held a fabric art exhibit, Cubao After Dark, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in the early 90s. It received good press coverage. Many strangers, mostly female knitters, knocked on my door to show me their knitting and ask me for lessons and tips. All of them, however, were interested mainly in knitting for personal fashion and not knitting as a serious art.

I taught an elective course titled Handknitting at a university in the late 90s. I had a good number of students, with only one male, who seemed to be there for the novelty of the course and learned to knit at least the back of a sweater in one semester. None of them probably continued knitting after that.

I engaged with the personnel of Coats Manila Bay, a busy factory that produces cotton thread for distribution locally and internationally, but they seemed more concerned with sales quotas for their products and their kits.

I sponsored a summer knitting workshop in my house 13 years ago, hiring a knitting teacher to do the tedious work. My family participated in it but grew to abhor it. I recall that my granddaughter Angelique, then a little girl, kept crying in frustration because she could not cast on more than ten stitches.

The present generation seems to favor instant, as opposed to sequential, production, a result of the computer age. People prefer machines to do the work for them as much as it is possible.

I now knit only for myself, albeit knowing that I am the 100th monkey who will imprint the art of knitting in my country's collective unconscious.