Things I Learned From Knitting (10 page)

Mostly.

To: The Stash

From: Stephanie

Re: Your behavior of late

I know that you and I have an important, loving, fluid relationship, and mostly I treasure you and the way you respond to new yarns and changes in how often I visit. (I really appreciate how you dealt with that mohair thing. I'm so sorry about what happened.) That's why, after all this time together, I dislike having to lay down the law like this, but you leave me with no choice.

You seem to be under the impression that we are in a marriage of equals — that I will love, honor, and cherish you and that you will take part in our relationship as a teammate and partner who makes suggestions and decisions about the life we lead together and what gets knit around here. That, my wooly friend, would be wrong.

You are actually more like my high-priced concubine. I love and cherish you, feed, house,
and spend money on you, and in exchange, you're to give me what I pay for: entertainment, pleasure and silent, nodding assent. I'm the one with plans, and you exist only to please me. I demand that you cease and desist with the following unacceptable stash behaviors.

• Stop throwing sock yarn at me just because I've finished something. This behavior will not be tolerated. You can also quit wagging your fancypants yarns at me and tossing skeins off the shelf, for I will not be tempted. I am going to finish the socks I have in progress before I want to see even one more label about “hand-painted” anything.

• Please leave the door to the stash closet closed the way I left it. I know you force it open sixteen times a day to give me a tempting peek inside because you resent my decision to finish my current sweater before I knit anything else. Having made that decision, I am reminding you that I am simply not the sort of knitter who would open the closet to look at the gray merino sixteen times a day (actually, I was just looking for
the tea towels), so back off. I know it's you who opens the door to make me look weak, because frankly, I'm better than that.

• Immediately stop with the whispering about other projects that would be more fun than everything I have on the go right now. I bought you, I own you, and I will make the decisions here. (You, there — the mouthy laceweight in the back — shut it.)

I want you to know, my darling stash, that I believe in your basic goodness and that I think you are a reliable and decent collection of yarn. I would never have brought you that nice silk for your back corner if this wasn't true. I hope this review of appropriate stash conduct helps us continue our long and fruitful relationship. You are a mighty stash, and I admire the way you stick to what you want, but no matter what, you still need to learn … no means no.

I SAVED UP AND BOUGHT A KIT
for a sweater I very much wanted. It was knit from two strands of yarn which you alternated back and forth throughout the whole thing. Strand A is a mohair bouclé. That means it's loopy and bumpy and hairy, which, because you can hardly tell where your stitches are with this stuff, should make it a Class 1 knitting mistake hazard. Strand B is a super-fuzzy brushed mohair, which means that it's effectively a yarn adhesive. The combination of a Class 1 knitting hazard and a yarn adhesive means the potential for looming disaster with this sweater is painfully obvious.

Having suffered terrible indignities at the hands of projects like this before, I looked at those two yarns and understood instantly what was at stake. There was going to be no going back. Loopy bouclé yarns don't rip back well;
fuzzy, hairy yarns really don't rip back well; and loopy bouclé yarns worked together with fuzzy, hairy yarns effectively weld together in the knitting as if they are the yarn equivalent of Super Glue. The stitches stick to each other like Velcro, and the bouclé defeats all attempts to pull it back, forming nasty knots as you go. I knew that once I cast on, I'd better make sure that I was right; there would be no going back and little chance that I could rescue the yarn if it turned out that I had made a mistake. On a good day I make a knitting mistake every ten minutes, so I was a little threatened.

Sure, you can knit a swatch to help remove some of the risk, you can pay extra attention to the pattern and try to engage in safer knitting, but as you're gingerly moving forward with expensive yarn that has only one real try in it, the process can become the adrenaline-pumping equivalent of tiptoeing through a minefield (okay — a minefield that blows up yarn instead of people, but it's still intense). Swatches lie. Patterns have errors. Even if I was exacting, nothing is sure in the land of the bouclé-mohair sweater.
You must move forward with thoughtful, careful maneuvers, knowing every step of the way. If you're wrong about the dimensions of this sweater, if you go just one inch too far in the knitting, there will be no recovery.

You move forward slowly with this sweater, knowing full well that despite all the money, all the time, all the caution and the avoidance of haste … that if you screw up and make the arms too long, you'll have made a sweater you entirely adore … for your really tall aunt Carol.

When confronted with this sort of challenge, I've learned that I need to concentrate. I need to seize quiet, peaceful times when I can focus and I need to make the most of opportunities when I won't be interrupted. In short, I need to make hay while the sun shines … I need to wait until my husband is out.

ONE OF THE CONCEPTS KNITTING TEACHES
you (eventually) is the idea of looking far ahead. You have to acknowledge that the failure to look ahead with gauge means you might not get something that fits. Failing to look ahead with timing means you might not finish your mum's sweater by Christmas. Not reading the pattern all the way through before you start can have tragic consequences. Even buying yarn demonstrates that knitters are looking forward in time: If you looked ahead at what you think you'll accomplish in a lifetime of knitting, you'd stop buying the stuff right now. This foresight is good thing in humans, and I humbly propose that we take this concept a little further: that we start doing a little knitting math in this forward-thinking vein.

I examined the number of stitches in a sock and I did a little calculating: Let's say there are
16 inches of knitting to accomplish for a sock, and that it takes about 10 rounds to add up to an inch, and that there are 68 stitches in a round. If my math is correct (and it should be; I had a thirteen-year-old check it), this means there are about 10,880 stitches in a sock. Multiplied by 2 (because, hopefully, you knit socks in a pair), this results in 21,760 stitches to knit before you will have wearable items.

(By the way, it's normal to need a minute to lie down now, having realized how many stitches you may have knit in your life so far or how many more you have planned in order to use up your stash.)

Now what if you look before you leap? What if you take advantage of that human ability to look ahead and change one or two tiny variables? What if you cast on 64 stitches instead of 68? Bingo! This results in a slightly snugger sock, but now you're only knitting 20,480 stitches to the pair. What if you make the leg or foot a little shorter? If you cut off 2 inches, you're down to a mere 17,920!

If you're thinking that isn't a big deal, you just aren't thinking. That's 3,840 stitches less. If
you still can't see the logic, go time how many stitches per minute you knit as you work one round of a sock and then look at that number again.

Looking before we leap has got to mean that suddenly, I am not the only one who's doing a bit of math and then rapidly coming to the conclusion that if it's going to save me thousands and thousands of stitches, maybe I should be checking the foot size of people before I begin to love them, and that in the meantime (since I'm already stuck with some big-footed people) my family can live with slightly snugger, shorter socks.

Knitting is still trying to teach me …

THAT THINGS GET KNIT FASTER

WHEN YOU ACTUALLY WORK ON

THEM. THAT'S WHY THE SCARF I'VE

ALLEGEDLY BEEN KNITTING FOR

TWO YEARS JUST ISN'T GETTING ANY

BIGGER, NO MATTER HOW LONG

I LEAVE IT IN THE BASKET.

IT MAKES ME LAUGH WHEN PEOPLE TELL ME
, as they so often do, that knitting is a silly way to get a sweater or a pair of socks. These garments are simply clothes to non-knitters. They look at the time and expense involved and shake their heads sadly at knitters' collective lack of intelligence. Even knitters can't argue that if what you're after is just some new clothes, knitting might be a pretty dumb way to get them.