Things I Learned From Knitting (2 page)

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. I've just started another three sweaters.

IT IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE
that knitting involves patience. A beginner's plain garter-stitch scarf, to choose a simple example, contains in the neighborhood of twelve thousand stitches. Clearly, at some point, patience is involved. No human can repeat the same action twelve thousand times without some dose of patience, and we haven't even begun to examine what sort of fortitude it might take to pull off a sweater or an afghan. Most knitters will giggle themselves stupid, however, when a layperson unacquainted with the nature of knitting announces that he doesn't knit because he lacks the patience for it. This is what I've learned from knitting:

• You don't knit because you are patient. You are patient because you knit.

• It isn't that knitting is only possible for those who are already patient. Patience is granted
to those who knit by virtue of knitting's basic nature.

If you doubt this to be true, I suggest you try a small scientific experiment. First, take a knitter. Just about any will do (though it's probably best to get one who is relatively happy with her project right now, because messing with a knitter who's doing battle with a tricky bit is not only unfair, but can be downright dangerous). When you have one, ask her to wait for a plane. Make the wait at least an hour, and warn the knitter that there will be a period of waiting. Observe her. Left to her own devices, the knitter will pull out a project and amuse herself happily for the full hour, perhaps even expressing some regret when the period of waiting is up. She'll be the very picture of patience — and for all the world it will appear that patient people knit. After all, we can see knitting and we can see patience.

Now, take the same knitter and ask her to wait for another half hour. When she pulls out her knitting, take it from her. (Warning: Accomplishing this may require more than one scientist.) When you've removed the knitting,
observe the knitter. Stripped of her coping tools, the same knitter who just displayed so much forbearance will now display not only painful knitting withdrawal symptoms, but a marked absence of patience. She may pace. She may attempt to read magazines or a book, but it won't go well. She will express restlessness and discomfort. It's even possible that a knitter who has no natural patience of her own and was relying entirely on the artificially generated patience granted by the act of knitting may attempt to drink heavily, become a nuisance to others, or even require sedation. (In the case of the truly impatient, it's best not to approach the knitter; instead, administer the sedative via blowdart from a safe distance away.)

In short, the knitter will prove my point. Knitting grants the virtue of patience … and without our knitting, knitters are mere impatient mortals like everyone else.

Knitting is still trying to teach me …

THAT MAKING BIG MISTAKES WHEN

YOU'RE LEARNING IS HOW IT GOES.

IT IS WHY KNITTING CAN UNRAVEL

(AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED IT TO).

IN MY PRIVATE, HOPEFUL HEART
of hearts (and I know I can't be the only knitter who has thought this) I have a secret wish: to injure a lower limb.

Now, if this hasn't occurred to you yet, I know it sounds crazy, but try and imagine it for a minute. I'm not a masochist; I don't enjoy pain, so I don't really want the injury to be something permanent or painful, just a mild and slow-to-heal injury to my foot or leg. Imagine going to the doctor with a vague and minor ache in your knee and being told that the only cure, what you simply must do, is sit down and rest for six weeks. Surely, as a knitter, you can see where I'm going with this.

I want just enough of an injury that no matter how much I want to — because heaven knows I want to — I simply wouldn't be able to do all of
those things that, as much as I love them, eat up knitting time. Things like washing the kitchen floor, going grocery shopping, doing the laundry or scrubbing the toilet. (I'm sure that, like me, you'd feel especially sad about not being able to scrub the toilet.) Imagine six glorious, guilt-free weeks of sitting and knitting (in my best version of this fantasy, it's the six weeks before Christmas), and now ask yourself if wishing for a sprained ankle is really so wrong?

A while ago, I met a knitter who, in a terribly unfortunate incident involving her husband, poor judgment, and a car door, had found herself in exactly this place. In early November, she got a cast on her foot and began a knitting marathon of epic proportions. She couldn't go to work, she couldn't do the housework…. there was nothing she could do but knit. She knit and watched old movies. She knit and listened to the radio. She knit with her foot up on a pillow in the sunroom and watched birds at the feeder in the morning sunshine. It was wonderful, because she had very little pain, and the fantastic bonus (this really is too much to hope for) of a husband who was
responsible for her injury and thus exceedingly guilty, attentive, and kind. He brought her tea in the morning and wine and dinner in the evening, and in between his loving ministrations, she knit.

It was, I thought, the best thing that could happen to a knitter. I was jealous — very jealous — right up until two weeks into her fortunate and fantastic knitting jag, when she was on her way to her stash for reinforcements. She tripped on her crutches, pitched forward wildly, and in a horrible, terrible moment which she regrets to this day … she instinctively put out her hands to break her fall and …

She broke her wrist.

I take it all back. I forgot the Fates have a sense of humor. Be careful what you wish for.

ONCE YOU'VE BEEN A KNITTER
for a little while … like, say, ten minutes … the odds are very good that you will have been screwed over by knitting enough to be able to see that some of the ways it messes with you can be pretty funny. Admittedly, as Mark Twain said, “Humor is tragedy plus time,” so the more time has passed since you got screwed, the more likely it is that you've been able to move through the pain and find humor in it.

Knitting teaches us quickly that our screw-ups aren't the end of the world. After all, it's only your time and sanity that are wasted when you make massive mistakes in knitting. As a matter of fact, knitting can help teach us all to manage mistakes better and learn to laugh at ourselves. For most of us, knitting will provide more than ample experience and opportunity for learning how not
to take our errors too seriously (no matter how stupid they are).

The problem, though, is that time. If you have been the victim of your own temporary lack of intelligence, then the amount of time it will take to recover and laugh at your mistake is going to be directly related to the amount of personal pain you endured as a result of that error.

I once entirely botched a hat at 2
AM
on Christmas Day. It was supposed to be a gift that would be unwrapped later that day, and I didn't read the decreases right and while I was trying to knit my father-in-law an elegant winter hat, I ended up with a thing that was more like a massively mutant cone-head headdress. (Hint: My father-in-law isn't a mutant cone-head.) I still can't explain how it got so far out of hand without me noticing, but I blame fatigue and eggnog. It was horrifically traumatic. Christmas Day was dawning, all the stores were closed — I couldn't buy another gift to replace it. No matter how I looked at it, or how fast I worked, there really wasn't going to be time for a re-knit. I had to go gift-less with a bad hat and an explanation, and
the embarrassment of that awful day has stuck with me. I confess: I still don't think it was funny.

If, however, the bad thing that happened to you happens to someone else, even if it wasn't then (nor is it now) really, really funny that it happened to you, most knitters will be unable to control themselves. They'll have at least a wee chuckle at their fellow knitter's pain. I know several otherwise lovely knitters who still giggle when they think about that mutant hat I made. Even I think (through my pain) that watching somebody knit sleeves that don't match without noticing until she tries on the finished sweater is like watching a version of the Keystone Kops or the Three Stooges. It's knitter's slapstick, and it can be darned funny.