Things I Learned From Knitting (6 page)

Now, time has passed and I have become a good knitter, having learned a great deal since I knit those early abominations. I've gained skill and understanding, I've learned that gauge matters and that there are some colors that don't look good on me (or any human, really), and I know enough now to correct my mistakes as I go along instead of knitting them into permanent infamy. I am so much better at knitting now, that sometimes, when I'm putting away towels and I catch sight of those early knits lurking in the back of the closet, I think about getting rid of them — throwing them away or donating them to charity.
(Actually, nix that. Some of the people who get their clothes from charity have enough problems. getting my mutant knitwear could only make things worse.) I'm rather proud of the knitting I do now, and I shudder to think of someone finding this stuff after I pass away. When I'm feeling prideful, I don't want these to be the artifacts I leave behind. I think a person should be remembered for her best accomplishments, not her lapses of knitterly judgment — or sanity.

These moments though, are misplaced conceit. I don't seriously want to throw away my old stuff. When I really think about it, these horrible knits are exactly how I want to be remembered: as a person who got better with practice. When I think about all that I felt skill-less at — parenting (the first time I picked up a baby that was mine, I couldn't believe they'd given an incompetent like me this responsibility) and writing and marriage — I look at those incredibly crappy knits and I think about how awful I was and how much I've learned. Even though I screw up all the time and make horrible mistakes and feel as though everyone in the world is better at everything than I
am, I can look at those horrendously bad pieces of knitting, then look at my knitting now, and remember. Everybody gets better with practice. Knitting has taught me that, and knitting is the proof. I can be taught. I'm a good learner, and I'm keeping those knits for the next time I have trouble remembering that.

Thinking about it now, though, maybe I'll put a little note on them. If I drop dead I don't want people to think I knit that way on purpose.

I AM THE WIFE OF AN INTELLIGENT
and engaging man, as well as the mother of three bright, creative girls with high self-esteem. These fine qualities make the man exasperating and the children difficult, but assuming I survive them, they are a lovely family with high entertainment value.

My husband wants me to run rapids in canoes (I can't tell you how many times in my life this will likely get me wet and bruised), and I've had to talk him out of rewiring the whole house for high-speed Internet access with nothing more than his instincts, a library book, and big plans to knock out a couple of walls. I can't count the number of things he's “improved” until they don't work. After many years together, I've only just now managed to convince him to at least glance at a clock a few times a day.

The children, taking after the man mentioned above, have wanted to move to Belize when they were fifteen, climbed bookcases as babies, organized uprisings at school, and repainted their bedrooms in garish colors while I was at the grocery store. (My children are both sneaky, and fast.) They have tried to start small businesses which involved selling my belongings, experimented vividly with dye, and once, in an incredible and sparkling test of my motherly affection for them, had a water balloon fight … in the living room.

Now fortunately, I'm a bright and engaging woman with a fair bit of get-up-and-go, and most days I can take on this bunch of maniacs pretty well. I've grounded my kids for trying to get passports, I've installed fire extinguishers throughout the house, I've established that under no circumstances is it okay to rappel off a staircase (even with a safety harness tied to the bathroom door), that blowtorches are only for people old enough to vote, and that no home renovations are to be undertaken — even if all four of them agree that they should add a fourth floor
— without my express permission, even if it is true that it would be a grand surprise for me.

I tell you all of this by way of explaining that in dealing with these people around me, as a person of passion myself, I am liable to make the occasional error. When there is a lot of passion for life involved, as well as a lot of passion for remaining among the living, things can get a little heated. As the person charged with keeping this whole bunch alive and out of jail, I acknowledge that I may sometimes approach the upper limits of acceptable volume while firmly explaining the way things are going to be. Like all parents, it's inevitable that I'll screw up sometimes, and when I do, I can end up feeling as if I tanked the whole wife or mother thing.

Luckily, I am a knitter, and from knitting I have learned how to handle my mistakes. I can go to the person I screwed up with, sit quietly on the edge of their bed, and say, “I'm really sorry. I'd like to rip back the last ten minutes and have a big do-over.”

Mostly, starting over works just as well with people as it does with knitting.

Knitting is still trying to teach me …

THAT KNITTING A REALLY BIG THING IS

LIKE BEING MARRIED FOR A LONG TIME:

YOU HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO DO THE

SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

WITHOUT WANTING TO TRASH IT FOR

SOMETHING NEW, EXCITING,

AND BETTER-LOOKING.

AT SOME POINT, EVERY KNITTER
will be presented with opportunities for skill growth. These opportunities will often be disguised as “knitting deadlines.” Even knitters who don't enjoy deadline knitting and find it so stressful that it takes all the fun out of the thing can occasionally have one come up by accident, even with the best planning.

Sometimes gift-giving occasions like Christmas or your mum's birthday sort of sneak up on you (despite the predictability of these events arriving on the same day every year). Or maybe your best friend's due date arrives in what seems like a whole lot less than nine months and leaves you with twenty-three days of baby-blanket knitting to accomplish in mere hours. Often, the culprit is a case of knitter's high self-esteem; we grossly underestimate how long it will take us to knit
something. We all make timing errors with our knitting, and the consequences, though occasionally ugly, emotional, and damp with tears, reveal that knitting challenges, like other life challenges, often teach us that we are capable of much more than we had ever expected.

A few years back, in a misplaced gesture of fondness for my sister, I decided to knit a pair of kilt hose for her rather unworthy, bagpiping boyfriend. Kilt hose are an undertaking: They are traditionally knit at a pretty fine gauge, go up to the knee of the kilt wearer and then have a fold-over cuff, just to increase the amount of knitting required. Fortunately for bagpipers, but unfortunately for the knitter, most bagpipers have two feet, so a knitter must complete this feat of derring-do twice in order to get a pair. At the time I was not much of a sock knitter, but I had knit a pair or two and I figured these couldn't be that much harder. I was wrong. Those kilt hose took forever — or what seemed like forever — and because I approached them with a lot more confidence than turned out to be appropriate, I ended up with a crushing knitting deadline. It all
came down to me and the kilt hose at midnight for many nights in a row. Had they been for someone I liked, I would now regret the curses and ill will that came to be knit into them during those trying midnights. As it was, my sister dumped the lout, and now I sort of like the fact that he's wearing all that bad karma.

In retrospect, as mind and finger numbing as the experience was, I now have to admit that it completely changed an aspect or two of my knitting. For starters, I now think of regular socks as short, and having knit what seemed like acres of fine-gauge work, I'm now far more likely to take on any project at that gauge. I walked away from those hose thinking “good riddance to bad rubbish,” but there is no denying that I'm a better knitter for it, and I advanced my skills, whether I liked it or not.

There are knitters and some ordinary people (like the ones who say that I take on crazy projects to create stress because I enjoy it, which has never sat right with me) who will claim that pressure isn't good for people, that pressure amounts to stress and discomfort and that because
knitting is supposed to be relaxing I shouldn't let it get crazy. To them I point out that pressure and knitterly heat can transform a knitter, much like exerting pressure and heat on carbon creates diamonds. Knitters, like regular people, can discover new and wonderful qualities in themselves as they rise above during times of duress. There is seldom greatness without great effort.

It is probably not a good idea to remind anyone looking difficulty in the eye that it takes 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, pressure of more than 850,000 pounds per square inch, and a very, very long time to turn carbon into diamonds. The wisdom is probably going to be lost on them while they are sleep-deprived in the middle of an endless pair of kilt hose for a bagpiper they don't even like, but surely you can see what I mean.

I WAS STARTING A NEW SWEATER
, or trying to. Straight out of the gate though, I misread the pattern and cast on the wrong number of stitches. That didn't bother me; it happens all the time. I chalked it up to user error and cast on the right number of stitches, but after a few rows I discovered my gauge was too loose. I unraveled my work, switched to smaller needles, and immediately cast on the wrong number of stitches again.

A sweater can hardly be blamed for my stupidity, so I took some cleansing breaths and cast on the right number of stitches only to discover that my gauge was now too tight. I ripped back, found my needles in the middle size, calmly retrieved the other needles from where they'd landed when I hurled them across the room, and tried again. Now I was getting the right stitch
gauge, but discovered that I wasn't even close on row gauge. I decided I didn't care. I would compensate later. (I wasn't sure quite how, but I didn't let that stop me.) I knit the ribbing for the sweater bottom and switched to larger needles, just like the pattern told me to … except that I must have taken leave of my senses for a second or two because I only swapped out one of them and then proceeded to knit about four inches of the sweater with two markedly different needles.