Knitted Pain Project: “Mara, Dropped Stitches are Okay”
In the Fall of 2015, artist Flo Oy Wong was diagnosed with chronic pain. She began attending Kaiser pain management sessions, and started her Knitted Pain Project – knitting with scraps of ribbon, lace, yarn and saved plastic mesh netting from packages that once held rice stick noodles, tangerines, lemons, limes etc. “This series is a metaphor for the chronic pain I am experiencing from having a pinched nerve.”
Flo titled the series, “Mara, Dropped Stitches are Okay,” describing these knitted pieces as a “pain meets the environment endeavor.”
“I am making mistakes on the knitting purposefully so there are holes and some netting thread that is askew. Usually when we knit socks, sweaters we knit with perfection in mind. I can assure there is no perfection in these wildly abstract pieces, which represent my chronic pain. Not easy to knit these pieces as the plastic netting are challenging to move on the needles. That’s the way my chronic pain is. I have uber brief moments being pain-free then the pain returns with ferocity.”
On January 8, 2016, Flo gave a Knitted Pain project talk to the members of her Kaiser Pain Management class. In her talk, she addressed the correlation between her moments of pain and the actual knitting. She shared that at times she knitted because she didn’t what to do about her pain.
“I passed 3 samples of my knitting segment and asked them to touch it with a direct focus on the texture. Then I asked them to touch different parts of the clothing and give me words that described what they touched. As the words tumbled forth I used them in relationship to the challenging experiences we had with our pain. They got it.”
How the project’s quirky title came about:
Flo and I went out to lunch and while we were talking I mentioned that I had started knitting but wasn’t very good at it. I told her that my mom had wanted to teach me but we never got around to it. My friends Lisa and Katie helped me and I was now actually knitting scarves only. I told her I was still learning and sometimes dropped stitches. Lisa and Katie were good sports and helped me fix the problems.
Flo said that she used to knit and wanted to start again. She asked if I would take her to Michael’s to get supplies. We drove over and she picked some yarn and we got several sizes of needles. She said she needed an assortment of needles. She said her knitting would not be scarves but art pieces with other textiles added in. She wanted to experiment and play with the materials.
She called me a few days later and told me she finished her first piece and was very pleased with how it turned out. She was so excited, she said she was going to make a series, and that’s when she thanked me and told me that I had inspired her. She then shared the name of the series and we both had a good laugh.
I did not really think much about it at the time, but looking back, I now realize the importance and value. I am humbled and honored.
— Mara Grimes, September 3, 2026
