Things I Learned From Knitting (12 page)

If you contrast this productivity with my trifling idea to knit a mere sock a day, I don't think you'll see me as a knit-obsessed maniac on her way to a mental breakdown or think of me as headed for some sort of vague incident involving men with huggy coats and a sedative blow dart. All this, and sock a day starts to sound reasonable…

As a matter of fact, historically speaking? I might be a slacker.

I'M SORT OF A FAST-MOVING PERSON
. Like a lot of people who enjoy getting things done, I have high enthusiasm, bore easily and have an attention span like a hamster with ADD. As a result of these personality traits, I've really had to work at trying to learn that haste makes waste. I tried to learn this when I displayed my propensity for attempting to get where I'm going way too fast and got lost or knocked over stuff on my way. I attempted to learn this when I tried to speed up the cooking time of rice by turning up the heat and thereby immolated an entire pot-full. (This didn't stop me from trying the same technique with oatmeal. I can be a bit of a slow learner.) My whole life, everybody has been trying to teach me to slow down just long enough to get a grip on something before I launch into it. My whole life, I've been screwing stuff up
because I'm still trying to learn to take the time to do things right.

Knitting, which is an excellent teacher of many things, has also tried to teach me that haste makes waste. It hasn't lectured me, it hasn't told me to slow down, it hasn't put me in detention, and it hasn't grounded me. Instead, every time I've neglected to take the time to knit and wash a swatch in order to check my gauge, it's simply given me a sweater the size of a luxury ocean liner or a hat that entirely covers a human head, right down to the neck. Knitting doesn't play at subtlety.

Despite this discovery, that knitting has no problem with punishing you for rushing, and despite the fact that every knitting pattern ever written has a warning at the top to remind you of the consequences the knitting Fates may exact should your excitement for a new project cause you to forget yourself (“To save time, take time to check gauge”), I and just about every other knitter I know still ignore this warning in moments of extreme knitterly enthusiasm. We simply launch without looking, making haste with no regard for
wasted time or knitting energy. We end up with yet another garment that bears no relationship to the intended object.

I've wondered why we do this. Clearly, knitting has tried to teach me this concept over and over and has done so far more effectively than my stubbing my toe as I rush though the living room, so there has to be a reason why knitters continue to ignore the warning. Having to re-knit something is a big deal: It takes a lot of time, and that should be an effective deterrent.

My guess is that because the consequences of failing to knit a swatch are only that you have to rip back your work and knit it again, there's no real incentive to learn to swatch. After all, we like knitting. Having to do more of it just isn't a severe enough punishment.

AH, DENIAL
. All of us learn the value of taking a dip in the river of self-delusion from time to time. Denial is an important bargaining tool in the arsenal of every person's relationship with reality. In the land of denial we can convince ourselves that almost anything is possible. I don't know a single human who doesn't need to deny the spiritual truth about their lives occasionally, if only so that they don't have to think about running off to Aruba when they face up to the laundry pile.

Knitters particularly need denial when:

• You're trying to finish a pair of socks for your mother's birthday the next day, and halfway through the cuff of the first one, you've managed to convince yourself that you're “almost done” and will absolutely finish in time.

• Even though you've used nine balls of yarn to complete the back and sleeves of a sweater,
you tell yourself that the remaining ball “might” be enough to knit the front.

• You tell yourself that the “mis-crossed” cable right over the left breast of your sweater isn't obvious and you definitely don't need to fix it. (You do, though; we both know you will never wear it if you don't.)

• You manage to convince yourself that even though your sister's bust is 44 inches and the sweater you're knitting her is coming out a rather smaller 36 inches, that you'll really be able to “block it out bigger.”

• You successfully tell yourself that sock yarn doesn't count as stash and isn't included in your yarn diet. (Hint: If it takes up space or costs money, it counts.)

• You've knit seventeen warm wool hats with earflaps because you love the pattern, and despite the fact that you live in the hottest part of Libya, which has not seen a chill since the Ice Age, and violently resist any insinuation that these hats may not come in handy.

IMAGINE THAT A BUDDY OF YOURS
tells you he's going to do something completely insane, something absolutely, preposterously stupid and dangerous, such as going skydiving for the very first time while he's drunk as a woodlouse in a rum barrel.

As a good friend, you'd be forced to say something like, “Please get in my car. I'll drive you to the hospital where you can be treated for your illness.” Jumping drunk and unprepared out of a plane is right batty, no question. Now imagine that your friend reflects on your offer of hospitalization and says, “Okay, I'll take some skydiving classes before I jump, and I'll go sober.” Doesn't that sound more reasonable? Of course it does. It almost sounds like a good plan. Your friend has just demonstrated relative risk. Jumping out of a plane is always risky, but
jumping out of a plane with no training while hugely impaired is so risky that, by comparison, this new plan of pitching himself out of a plane 3,000 feet above the ground with his wits about him suddenly seems sort of okay. If you compare the relative risks, jumping out of a plane in this condition is much better than Plan A, which was absolutely a piece of crazy pie.

Teenagers use the concept that everything's relative to great effect. For instance, they might propose that their very solid 11
PM
curfew be moved to 3
AM
. Once you recover from the shock, you find yourself agreeing to midnight, because relative to 3
AM
, midnight suddenly seems like a winner.

Knitters also can use this idea of relativity to their advantage. Knitting has taught me that if you're having a big knitting problem, you just have to assess it in relative terms. Imagine that you're knitting a sweater for yourself and you have a 38-inch chest. Think your sweater requires lots of work? Get a spouse with a 50-inch chest and start trying to knock off knitwear for him. All of a sudden, that first sweater doesn't
seem so unreasonable, does it? Has it occurred to you that ordinary socks take too long? If you knit some knee-highs, your return to regular socks will be painless and euphoric. Are you finding a baby blanket to be a broad expanse of boring knitting? If you cast on an afghan on small needles, you'll beg for the baby blanket. Have you thought that the lace scarf you're making is fiddly and tedious? I have an heirloom lace shawl pattern you can borrow that will knock the sense right back into you. For every knitting challenge, there's a relative project that will send you rushing gleefully back into the arms of the project that was breaking your will to live before you considered the alternatives. It works every time. Shift the gauge, shift the size, shift the complexity … suddenly, you shift your perspective.

Are you under the impression that you'll be knitting that baby sweater for the rest of your life? Yeah. Try making a baby. It's all relative.

• You don't throw in the towel just because it isn't working right now.

• There is always something happening that you really weren't expecting.

• The odds are extremely good that what you end up with won't be anything like what you were trying to achieve.

• The longer you work at it, the better you get at it.