The connecting and healing powers of knitting
How crafting helped Mairlynd battle breast cancer
Copyright: Georg Lukas
A cancer diagnosis changes your life. There is no way around it. When Melanie Berg, known as Mairlynd in the knitting community, was told the lump in her breast was malignant, she felt like the rug was pulled from under her. Now cancerfree, she works tirelessly to pass on the support, strength and positivity she received from her family and friends but also the thousands of kind strangers online who shared their own experiences with her and helped her get through the treatments.
Patterns providing creative relaxation
Mairlynd is celebrated for her casual and modern pattern designs with a twist, ranging from sweaters to shawls and baby knits. She usually designs for herself and what she likes: “I want to provide a relaxing knitting experience and a great result at the same time.” We call it creative relaxation after a long day, and I am here for it.
Most of the time, Melanie’s inspiration comes from different yarns. This is where she can play with colour combinations and find stitch patterns that really make the yarn shine. She enjoys testing out new yarns she receives from yarn companies, and admits to having a relatively big yarn stash at home. “But at the same time, I donate many of my leftover yarn to the church’s knitting circle in the neighborhood.”
“I want to provide a relaxing knitting experience and a great result at the same time.”
Copyright: Melanie Berg
Becoming a designer
Like so many designers I interview, Melanie learned to knit from her mother as a child. But it wasn’t until she gave birth to her own first daughter in 2009, that she felt the need to create something warm with her own hands for the baby. So, she took up knitting again, and hasn’t let it go since.
She quickly found Ravelry and YouTube, but noticed that she always adjusted designs. Eventually she wrote and published her first pattern. Her business grew organically and through many collaborations with yarn companies, indie dyers and publishers. She has been a fulltime knitwear designer since 2015 and continues to learn and grow: “Knitting? I am a long way off from being done with it.”
A life changing diagnosis
In 2022, Mairlynd designed her Pink Is For Power sweater pattern for the Pink Ribbon foundation, which aims to raise breast cancer awareness. Since then, she donates all proceeds from the pattern’s sales during the month of April to Pink Ribbon.
Melanie received her cancer diagnosis on the 12th birthday of her daughter in summer 2021. “It really knocks you off your balance”, she says. It was a time of fear and uncertainty: “Suddenly, you have to contemplate life-threatening issues and questions of life and death.”
Instead of creative relaxation, knitting proved difficult during the weeks between the diagnosis and operation: “My type of knitting, which is relatively simple and straightforward, was not suitable, as my mind really started to spiral downwards.” She felt as if she was at the mercy of powers beyond her control. “Only once the doctors and I had a treatment plan, I became an active participant in my life again. That was when I returned to knitting, too.”
Melanie and I agree on the power of a positive outlook and having agency in your own journey. Of course, the medical side of things is important. They have to operate, radiate and give you chemo therapy, but mental health and interpersonal support is also absolutely crucial.
She explains: “Thanks to my psycho-oncologist – a profession I had never heard of before – I was able to change my outlook on chemo therapy, for example. Initially, I saw it as something that I have to endure and felt passive in the decisionmaking. However, she helped to see it as something positive that will help me in the long run. Thus, I actively decided on my own treatment. I found that having this agency and outlook certainly helps you deal with side effects better.”
Together with Chad Lewis, Mairlynd developed the concept of Row Maps for knitters who have limited attention available – for whatever reason. “How can we make a pattern less overwhelming?” they asked and came up with this almost-GPS-like feature. Currently almost 30 of Mairlynd’s patterns have Row Maps!
Passing on the hope
While Knit is for Power is currently only available in German, an English version is in the works.
During our chat, I find Mairlynd’s authenticity inspiring. About her diagnosis, she says: “I never considered not sharing it. It wouldn’t have been honest or authentic.” And so, the other aspect Melanie keeps referring to was the support of her inner circle – friends and family – but also the outpouring of kindness from her followers online.
Her worries and negative thoughts were changed into strength and courage: “Reading a message from someone telling me that they received the same diagnosis 17 years ago, gave me hope. I also wanted to be able to say in 17 years from now, I went through this. But I am still here.”
She is grateful to be able to inspire the same confidence and hope in others now. Partly through her adapted patterns with Row Maps, partly through new collaborations. And partly through her Knit is for Power book: “It’s a beautiful thing that came out of something very terrible.”
“I also wanted to be able to say in 17 years from now, I went through this. But I am still here.”