Things I Learned From Knitting (11 page)

After all, knitting a sweater takes time — way more time than just going to the store and grabbing one off the rack. Anybody who's recently bought yarn, especially good yarn, can attest that knitting your clothes from scratch certainly isn't any cheaper than going to the store. In fact, once you factor in what your time is worth, most of us are knitting fantastically exorbitant sweaters and ridiculously priced socks. Even if I bought
sock yarn on sale and merely “paid” myself minimum wage, a pair of hand-knit socks amounts to a good deal more than the one dollar per pair I'd spend if I bought socks bulk at a discount shop.

Add to this what non-knitters don't even know (but knitters do): After you buy the yarn and the pattern and spend hours and hours knitting up a sweater (and ripping it back and knitting it up again), due to operator error, there is still a chance that the sweater won't fit or frankly, even be wearable. Knitters entirely understand the non-knitter's confusion about why on earth, if you need a sweater so badly, you don't just walk into the store, pull one in your size off the rack, and be bloody done with it.

Knitters know this. We get the point. We see what's happening. It's not as though we're uninvolved here. We know knitting is slow; we are the ones doing the knitting. We know it can be expensive; we're the ones wiping out a yarn budget. We know that if a person had a whole family to clothe and keep safe from frostbite, and if that person had serious limits on their time and budget, and if that same person lived three minutes
from a discount store with socks on sale for a dollar, that knitting would be a incredibly silly way to get clothes for that family. We know.

That said, we know something non-knitters don't. We're not just making clothes. There is a reason the hobby is called “knitting” and not “sweater making.” If it was just about getting a sweater, we would totally do it the way everybody else does. Who on earth would spend $20 on hand-painted sock yarn and then invest at least twenty hours of time churning out the things if there was nothing in it but a pair of socks?

What we know and try to explain is that when you knit a pair of socks, you don't just get clothes. You get satisfaction. You get art. You get a boost to your self-esteem that only comes from making things cleverly. You get hours of cheap entertainment and endless interest. Best of all, you get to have something to do while all those non-knitters stand around in their standard-issue store sweaters and talk about how silly knitting is.

And that's funny, because it's true.

KNITTERS ARE QUITE USED TO
the gentle ribbing (pun intended) that we sometimes take from ordinary people. We smile and endure the persistent belief that we're engaged in some silly little pastime that is no equal to the non-knitter's clever and majestic hobbies such as fishing, bird watching, or collecting comic books. We knit while non-knitters chastise us for engaging in a grandmotherly or feminine activity. We knit while they point out that our hobby is largely unproductive (unlike collecting comic books) because they think anyone can buy the stuff we're making at any of a thousand stores. We knit with our mouths shut while they say they “wish they had that sort of free time,” and we (mostly) say nothing while watching non-knitters settle into an evening of idle TV-watching. Knitters are, by and large, peaceful creatures, we simply knit and let
others hold their opinions. We've given up on correcting them. (In my experience, most knitters have figured out that at least when it comes to knitting, revolt is at best time-consuming and useless, and at worst can tangle your yarn.)

There is a lot to be said for knowing in your heart that people are wrong. When it comes to being teased for knitting, it turns out that we shall likely have our revenge. Several studies in the last few years have indicated that there are certain things you can do for yourself to help prevent or at least stave off Alzheimer's disease and dementia as you age. Researchers point to activities that require sorting out clues or codes, use both hands, require some degree of memory work, involve hand-eye coordination, and generally demand mental energy. These kinds of activities will either keep the connections in the brain bright and active or help in the formation of extra connections so that if you do suffer from a neurodegenerative disease as you age, you might have some brain to spare.

Knitting is a perfect example of this kind of activity. It definitely requires both hands,
it absolutely requires hand-eye coordination, it even uses both hemispheres of the brain at once. As you knit there is obviously an element of memorization as you work through stitch patterns. I can tell you that a knitting chart is definitely a code you have to decipher in order to achieve any degree of success. In fact, knitting is one of thirteen activities that a study in the journal
Neurology
suggests reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. French researchers have found that knitting, gardening, working crossword puzzles, and traveling all help to reduce the incidence of dementia and keep your mental acuity as sharp as your needles.

What all of this means is that though knitting is certainly no magic bullet for wellness in the aging brain and there's no substitute for exercise and an all-around healthy lifestyle, it's definitely beneficial and can increase your odds of keeping the brain healthy — and that means that though non-knitters may laugh at us for our silly hobby, we may very well be laughing last … and longest.

A WHILE AGO, I MADE A TIMING ERROR
related to a knitting deadline that ended up being pretty catastrophic. For reasons I won't go into here (but mostly having to do with me being an idiot) I found myself having to knit eight socks in eight days — that's eight adult-sized, sock-weight socks. Naively, I felt this was going to be difficult, but possible (a frequent knitterly delusion), and I started knitting. Being a mostly ordinary person, and because I wouldn't want to land in prison for neglecting my children, I couldn't just quit all my regular stuff and knit. I had to approach my life as usual: cooking, writing, cleaning, taking care of the kids … except for one critical difference. Without exception and whenever possible, if my hands were free for even a moment, I knit socks. I multitasked. In fact, I was the supreme multitasker. If I was
walking, I was knitting. If I was on the phone, I was knitting. If I was thinking at the computer, I picked up the sock I was working on, even if it meant I just did three stitches. I took advantage of every little possibility.

My friends thought I was out of my mind. I think they may even have considered an intervention of some kind. They regarded me with a critical eye and assessed my sanity. Even my knitter friends thought I might have gone a little off the deep end, and more than one ordinary person called me “knit obsessed.” I defended myself with historical evidence. Bishop Richard Rutt wrote, in
A History of Hand Knitting,
“… it is a mistake to think that the early knitting-frame quickly speeded up the bulk production of stockings. A framework knitter working hard might produce ten pairs a week, while a good hand knitter could make six.”

Six pairs of stockings in a week? Twelve stockings? Admittedly, Bishop Rutt is speaking of professional knitters who worked at it for a living, but even so, if I lifted all burdens from you for eight hours a day and let you work at knitting
stockings for a living, would you be producing six pairs a week? (I thought maybe I could do it for one week. Then I would die.)

He also quotes Richard Valpy (1754–1836) speaking about the stocking knitters of Jersey: “This is the chief employment of the women. The dexterity and expedition with which they dispatch a pair of stockings are almost incredible.… A woman seen walking without a stocking in her hand is stigmatized with idleness.”

It's incredible to think of the specifics. Children as young as four were being taught to knit at this time in England, and certainly by the time they were seven or eight, they were expected to be making stockings in a way that could contribute to the family's income. Women, men, children: all knitting away at stockings, producing certainly as much, if not more than my measly sock a day, all while chopping wood for the fire, baking bread, sewing and mending clothes, knitting all the other items that the family needed to keep warm, caring for children, and in general leading an extraordinarily difficult life with far less leisure time and no DVDs.