Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook (4 page)

I wasn’t the only one rediscovering the joys of knitting. I began seeing other women—young women—knitting on the subway. Soon, they were everywhere: at coffee shops, on lunch lines, at the movies, even in bars. Some of these women were pierced, dyed, and tattooed. Others were fashion-forward, trendy types. Still others were of the crunchy-granola variety. And plenty of them could not be categorized at all. The only thing we all had in common was our new hobby. And it wasn’t just a New York phenomenon. Other Stitch ’n Bitches began popping up all over the country and beyond. People were knitting in San Francisco, in Chicago, in London, even in Tokyo.
Magazines started covering the phenomenon. So did newspapers. And after years of watching knitting stores go out of business, we suddenly saw new, lively ones begin cropping up.

Today, there are over 38 million knitters in the United States, with 4 million newcomers to knitting in the last few years. According to a 2000 survey by the Craft Yarn Council, nearly one in three women knits. Younger women especially are taking up the craft; the percentage of women under forty-five who knit or crochet has doubled since 1996. These new knitters are college students, indie rockers, middle-aged Brooklynites, theater people, and sissy girls proudly asserting their sissiness. They are single and married, bohemians and professionals, introverts and extroverts. Why do they knit? It’s a strange mix of pragmatism, politics, and the desire to be fashionable. Some “crafty” feminists, like myself, are reclaiming what have been called the “lost domestic arts,” realizing the importance of giving women’s crafts their due. Others are more interested in freeing themselves from a dependence on what they see to be an exploitative corporate culture. Still others, such as those with Emporio Armani tastes but Salvation Army budgets, figure that they can learn to make fashionable items more cheaply than they can buy them.

Knitting is part of the same do-it-yourself ethos that spawned zines and mixed tapes. By loudly reclaiming old-fashioned skills, women are rebelling against a culture that seems to reward only the sleek, the mass-produced, the male. But every generation puts its own spin on the craft, and for today’s knitters the emphasis has been on using chunky yarn and fat needles for quickly completed projects; experimenting with exotic fibers sheared from alpaca, silk recycled from Indian saris, and yarn spun from hemp plants; and creating funky, colorful sweaters, bags, and scarves.

Knitting makes for a great urban hobby because a ball of yarn and a knitting project are light and portable, they’re easy to carry from home to work, and they don’t take up much space in small, cramped apartments. In an age when so many of us sit in front of computers all day long, we may feel the desire to create, to touch, to make something tactile with our hands. And in these uncertain, anxious times, warm handmade scarves and cozy sweaters feel protective and comforting. Of course, this last discovery we can’t claim for ourselves—it’s something our grandmothers have always known.

A month ago, my mother and I went to Holland for a week. We were going to say good-bye to my grandmother, who, after 103½ years of living, was finally, slowly, dying. Every day, my mother, my aunt Hetty, and I would travel to visit my grandmother at the hospice where she lay, quietly, in a strange half-slumber. Her vision was almost completely gone, as was her hearing. She was like a baby again, depending on everyone around her to feed her, clean her, pat her head, kiss her. We’d sit her up in her bed and feed her spoonfuls of food, her mouth opening hungrily after each bite. “Do you want more, Oma?” we’d ask, close enough to her ear so she could hear us. From somewhere inside there’d be a glimmer of recognition. “Yes,” she’d mumble. “How’s the food?” we’d say, loudly. There would be a pause, and then, a slow spark. “Good.” We couldn’t tell whether she was aware of who we were, but it was good just to be with her, hold her hands, give her whatever comfort we could. I always brought my knitting along with me on those daily visits—a colorful, simple sock I was working on for a friend—and would sometimes find my mother and my aunt staring at my work with a certain longing. “Can I knit a row or two?” my aunt would ask, her hands hungry for the soothing ritual of sock knitting, something to calm her soul during the stressful and uncomfortable moments spent watching a parent die. “I want to, also,” my mother would say, and the sock would be passed to her.

Maybe my grandmother felt left out. One day, we entered her room to find her strangely agitated, her hands restlessly moving in the air above her bed. Perhaps she was dreaming, or perhaps the present and the past had melded together in her mind, but after days of silence, suddenly she was chattering, talking aloud to herself in the room. “I already knit one sock,” I heard her say, anxiously, as I came closer to her bed. “But now I still have to knit the other one.” My aunt gasped; it was difficult for her to see her mother all wound up about an imaginary sock that she thought needed to be knit. I grasped my grandmother’s hands in mine. “That’s a beautiful sock you made,” I told her, calmly. “Knitting is nice and relaxing, isn’t it?” “Yes,” she murmured, becoming a bit more restful. I put a cool towel on her head and kissed her cheek, but soon she began to grow anxious again. “It’s over there, it’s drying,” she repeated, gravely, “but now I have to knit the other one.” I squeezed her hands tightly. “Rest, Oma, don’t worry,” I said, as I felt her hands slowly unclench. “I’ll knit the other one for you.”

A S
TITCH IN
T
IME
: A B
RIEF
H
ISTORY OF
K
NITTING

No one really knows when knitting began. Unfortunately, that secret likely died with the craft’s inventor. And we have very few samples of ancient knitting, because fabric disintegrates quickly. However, a few fragments have survived, including bits of blue-and-white cotton socks that seem to have been made in Egypt somewhere between
A.D
. 1000 and 1300. Historians have concluded that knitting’s roots most likely lie in this ancient land.

In the mid-1300s and 1400s, a number of paintings were made in Italy and other areas of Europe showing the Virgin Mary, with little baby Jesus at her feet, knitting away on some sort of round garment. They suggest that, by the late Middle Ages, knitting had arrived in various parts of Europe. Working with four needles—no slouch, she!—the knitting Mary in these paintings tells us that even Jesus Christ wore sweaters made by his mom.

Both men and women knit in those days, but the men belonged to fancy, exclusive guilds where they would spend six years training to become master knitters, the pièce de résistance of their studies being a vast knit carpet they would complete at the end of their schooling. For most of its history, however, knitting has been a women’s craft, perhaps because it is so portable and can be done in small stretches of time, which makes it perfectly compatible with child rearing. Knit one, purl two, nurse the baby, knit another row.

Knitting also served as an important source of income for many poor and rural women—that is, until 1589, when a British clergyman named William Lee, upset that his wife was spending more time with her knitting needles than with him, invented the first knitting machine. Eventually, the machines put most home knitters out of work, as hand knitting lost its profitability.

Still, before the widespread availability of cheap, manmade clothing, hand knitting was one of a woman’s, and a girl’s, basic chores. It was also a leisure-time hobby among Victorian ladies. In fact, knitting became so fashionable that new methods of holding the needles were introduced to make the craft appear more ladylike to the casual observer. Today, many women still knit holding their needles like pencils as the Victorian ladies did, which is much slower than holding
the needles under the palms of the hands, but apparently much more attractive to potential suitors.

Although women of all ages have always knit, it has been associated with grandmothers for at least the past hundred years and has gone through alternating cycles of falling in and out of favor with younger women. In the 1890s (the era of the “New Woman”), women had taken to wearing the then-shocking bloomers (pants, basically) and gave up spinning wheels for bicycle wheels, as knitting became associated with “old-fashioned” womanhood—on both sides of the Atlantic. But by 1906, a London magazine for girls reported that “the art we were wont to associate with grandmothers and quaint, lavender-perfumed old ladies is to-day a favorite pastime.” In the 1920s, knitting was once again rejected as “silly domestic work” by young American women who had just achieved the right to vote. Yet during the Depression, a tight economy dictated that women take up the needles once more, and the craft became popular again, a trend that lasted through the next several decades.

During times of war, knitting’s popularity has soared. Although we’ve often heard of Rosie the Riveter, we’ve overlooked someone whom I’ll call Ned the Knitter—the men at home recovering from war injuries, the veterans too old to serve, and the young Boy Scouts, who, during the last two world wars, were enlisted to help knit socks and blankets for the soldiers, right beside the womenfolk. Apparently, in times of war the false limitations of gender fall away. Of course, we’ve always known there’s no reason men can’t knit just as well as women can.

With the resurgent women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, knitting came to be seen, once again, as a symbol of women’s entrapment in the home. But while some women were rejecting the hobby, others got into it as part of their hippy-dippy, back-to-nature thing.

Today’s knitting phenomenon is just the most recent upswing in the history of a craft that has cycled in and out of fashion with the younger generation for the past two centuries. With legions of young knitters “taking back the knit” (and more and more girls picking up sticks every day), the popularity of knitting is at an all-time high. Major media have embraced the craft, touting knitting as the “new yoga” and “not for grannies anymore.”

If you want to knit, the first thing you’ll have to do is get yourself some yarn. This can be more complicated than you might expect—choosing a color isn’t even the half of it. Step into any knitting store these days and you’ll see that not only does yarn come in every color from fresh-off-the-sheep brown to not-found-in-nature acid-green, but it also ranges in texture from bumpy to silky smooth; and in thicknesses from as thin as thread to as thick as rope. To a new knitter, it may come as a surprise to learn that knitting needles, too, are made in all shapes and sizes and in a variety of materials, from aluminum to plastic to bamboo to milk (yes, really). With all these choices, how will you know what to get? Don’t worry: I’m about to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about yarn and needles but were afraid to ask.

Some folks like to call all yarn “wool,” which is as silly as calling all shoes “Birkenstocks.” While it’s true that plenty of the stuff out there comes from sheep, don’t let anyone pull the wool over your eyes: Yarn is made of fibers derived from sheep, rabbits, goats, hemp, flax, cotton, chemicals, and more.

Animal-based fibers are what Mother Nature has come up with, after thousands of years of research, to be the best body covering for warm-blooded creatures. And she knows what she’s doing. Fabric made from animal fibers has practically magical properties: It insulates, keeping you toasty warm when it’s cold outside and cool when it’s hot. And it is super-absorbent: A wool sweater or hat can absorb up to one-third its weight in water before it—and you—start to feel wet. (Which may explain why you’ve never seen a sheep wearing a raincoat.) Some animal fibers are warmer than others (the fiber from alpaca, a llama-like animal, is exceptionally warm), but even seemingly weightless fibers, like mohair, can knit up into an airy sweater that’s as warm as a heavy down coat.

Plant fibers are not as insulating as animal fibers, but one thing they do especially well is absorb moisture. They’re also strong and very breathable, which is why cotton or linen yarn makes great summer clothes. Also, all plant fibers are hypo-allergenic, so they are a natural choice for anyone allergic to wool.

Man-made fibers, such as acrylic, are petroleum-based—meaning they’re essentially plastic. While that may sound pretty unappealing, acrylic yarn does have a couple of advantages over natural-fiber yarns: It’s cheap and it’s easy to wash. (Fabrics made of animal and plant fibers often require all kinds of tsuris to clean.) Still, while clothes made of acrylic fibers can be thrown in the washer and dryer, they won’t be very warm, and unlike wool or cotton, they won’t be very absorbent. And, truth be told, some acrylic yarn is made so cheaply that it downright squeaks.

Nevertheless, there are very soft acrylic yarns to be had, as well as some popular acrylic-wool and acrylic-cotton blends. And for sock knitting, wool with a small percentage of nylon will wear much better than wool alone. Still, if you can afford it, go for the animal- or plant-based yarns. If you’re used to wearing acrylic-blend store-bought clothing (which most of us are), experiencing the way your first 100 percent wool sweater keeps you warm without overheating you will come as a revelation—you might swear there were little electric
heaters in there. In the end, you’ll probably agree that if it’s good enough for sheep, llamas, and other critters, it’s good enough for you.