On messy French knots and my crummy Instagram brand

Can writers be influential without being "influencers"?

Back in 2020, I decided to give embroidery - a craft I’ve long been intrigued by - a solid try…because, well, 2020, right? It was our first pandemic holiday and I was in a new relationship, and there was something comfortingly cozy about cuddling up on the sofa with my then-boyfriend and stitching away while the snow fell. I stitched dozens of hand towels and cloth napkins, using designs I found on Etsy as well as a handful I designed myself on Canva: squirrels and foxes and monograms and more.

While I haven’t gone quite as all-in since, every holiday season since I’ve picked up my needle and floss and stitched at least one or two designs. This year, nestled in my new home with my now-husband, I’m hitting it hard again, with ambitious plans to complete quite a few projects over the next few weeks.

Over the last few days I’ve been working on a tea towel featuring a fawn standing in a snowstorm, wearing a floral crown (part of this adorable and beginner-friendly set of woodland-creature-inspired iron-on transfer designs.)

I want to be clear that I am not particularly good at embroidery. First of all, I am personally a total mess the entire time I’m stitching. I lose my scissors literally every time I set them down (seriously, it’s embarrassing how often I have to look for them) and used to misplace my needles early as often, until Eric helpfully attached magnets to the lid of my floss tin and the sides of my hoops. I’m surrounded by boxes and baskets of hoops and patterns and fabric. And as I stitch, there’s usually floss (embroidery thread) everywhere: skeins wedged into the cracks of the sofa cushions, cut pieces stuck to my clothing, wads forming themselves into tangles all around.

This would be one thing if I were cranking out pieces of art, but honestly, the results themselves aren’t that impressive either. My stitches are neither tiny nor even. I mostly eschew more difficult stitches in favor of simpler ones: running stitch, backstitch, seed stitch. I rarely follow a pattern closely, preferring to improvise (with predictably mixed results). My knots are a mess. The back of the fabric…well…

Suffice it to say I will not rise to Instagram fame with my embroidery.

But I love it. I love the process of stitching, I love the satisfaction of finishing a design, and I especially love giving my completed works away, imperfect as they are.

This morning, I found myself tackling a more difficult stitch: the French knot. This stitch beguiles me. I love the textural effect of a properly-executed French knot, and when it goes well, there’s nothing more satisfying and seemingly simple to pull off.

The only problem is, it almost never goes well for me. Every single time I attempt this stitch, it’s like I’m learning it again for the first time.

I watch the same four seconds of various YouTube tutorials over and over, and still somehow manage to point the needle the wrong direction. Sometimes I am certain I did everything correctly, but still end up with a mess - or, more French-knot-frustratingly, nothing at all; the knot disappears entirely as I tug the stitch through.

I pull out far more French knots than I keep. Like this one.

This is NOT the kind of knot I’m looking for.

As I was yanking out one of those knots and trying again, I found myself thinking about the word “influencer.”

When blogging was first starting to take off, I was still pouring the majority of my energy into my up-and-coming career up as a freelance writer. By the mid-oughts I’d landed credits in respected publications like Salon.com and glossy newsstand magazines like Parenting and Good Housekeeping, and felt like I was on my way. In my role as a freelance writer, my job seemed clear: write good stuff, and let the publishers deal with the problem of getting readers to pay attention to it.

So the first time I heard the word “influencer” - in the late aughts, referring to bloggers - I was confused. I remember thinking, “that’s a weird way to refer to a writer.” Clearly, I didn’t yet see where things were headed: that blogging could be writing, but also something else. Blogs were starting to grow into mini-publications and lifestyle brands. Bloggers might be writers, but they might also be curators, trendsetters, personalities. Social media accelerated the rise of the creator-as-celebrity, and amplified its impact, corralling all those different identities under one umbrella term. It seems we’re all influencers now, whether we want to be or not.

And sometimes I feel just as confused about it all as I did fifteen-odd years ago.

The truth is, I make a crummy and inconsistent influencer. Sometimes I want to share my favorite products but other times I forget to, or find it somehow embarrassing. And while I love posting snippets and scenes from my life, there’s also a lot pressure to make those scenes add up to a curated and overall cohesive “brand”.

I’m well aware of the formula that makes social accounts grow fast: great imagery of enviable lives. But a happy life isn’t something you can buy into with the right skincare or scenery. And also: my brand just isn’t very cohesive or imitation-worthy. I’m over here making sloppy stitched tea towels and trying to learn to make a pie crust at 46; this is not exactly the enviable image of a successful lifestyle influencer.

I think a lot of us who consider ourselves writers first and foremost feel an especial discomfort with the term “influencer” - and that’s particularly confusing because most of us do, on some level, want to be influential. I didn’t start writing professionally because I wanted to hide my words in a drawer; I wanted them out there in the world as a way to inspire, inform, and connect with others. Yes, to influence.

But writers - at least the sort I like - are also drawn to a basic level of truth-telling, which I think prohibits us from trying to pass off our own imperfect lives as a model for others to covet and copy. My favorite writers don’t pretend to be perfect; they make me think and laugh, and in doing so, they sometimes inspire me to try a new recipe or project rather than just scrolling past while wishing I had their lives. In the same way, I don’t want to try to influence others to live my life, I want to encourage them to live the fullest possible versions of their own.

I’m typically cynical about new terms being applied to the same old concepts. Remember how “de-influencers” were going to be the big trend of 2023? And for as many times as I’ve seen social media experts promise that “authentic” now trumps perfection in social feeds, I’m not sure I agree. What gets attention often still feels like a manufactured version of authenticity, “vulnerable” moments included.

I do wonder, though, if there’s some value in creators of all kinds thinking of ourselves as influential - because we all are, to someone, no matter our audience size - rather than trying to grapple for a seemingly-limited number of positions as “influencers”.

It’s something I think about as I grapple with how I want to show up here on Substack and on social media. If I took the focus off myself and my persona, and put it back on the people I’m trying to reach, how might that shift my perspective?

What might I try to influence others to learn or try or consider or feel, if it were less about my image and more about their benefit? Can I can be “influential” in 2024 without professional-level photography and perfectly lit and styled images?

Anyway, after quite a few torn-out, re-done French knots, I finally finished my little fawn and all her little nubby snowflakes this morning. I hope the person who receives her can feel the love I put in to the stitching, even if some of the details look a little wonky. (I also hope the recipient will not look too closely at the back side of the stitching. Never look closely at the back side!)

And I hope you, reading this, can also feel how much fun I’m having when I stitch, and that it maybe inspires you to try something you’re also “not that great” at.

I’m challenging myself to continue to show up and share the things I’m not-so-great at but love doing, in the hopes that others, like me, aren’t looking for images to imitate, but a reminder to create full and flourishing lives of our own.

Messy knots, tangled threads and all.

Thanks for reading The Tea’s Made: stories of connection, creativity, and gentle reinvention. If you like this post I hope you’ll also check out my podcast by the same name - new episodes drop on Thursdays. You can also follow me on Instagram. And if you find that my words speak to you, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Members receive regular bonus posts plus audio and video exclusives, and have access to the full archives.