Free-Range Knitter

by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  I know this, because I’ve been looking. You should, too.

  Ten Ways to Make a Knitter Love You More

  Call your modest collection of handknit socks your “real” socks.

  Offer to drive any time you’re in a car together.

  While you’re driving, offer to stop by the yarn store, just for fun.

  Say, “Man, I love the smell of wet wool in the morning” and really mean it.

  Develop a fetish for handwashing things.

  Get a T-shirt that says “Moth Hunter.”

  Claim that you love how cozy your home looks with all this wool in it.

  Tell your knitter that you think knitting charts are not just clever but dead sexy.

  On Valentine’s Day, know that red sock yarn is cheaper than roses and lasts a lot longer.

  Knit, but only a little, and with your own damn yarn.

  Love Letter

  Sitting here, nestled in your warm embrace, I realize that you have come into my life to complete me. There have been so many times in the past when love didn’t work out for me, that I almost forgot that it was possible to feel like this, to know real, perfect love. I’ve suddenly learned that we can look forward in our futures and try to exert control over the way thing go, and spend so much time planning how we will get the things we want, but the truth is that some relationships either work out or they don’t, and a lot of that is destiny, far beyond what I can predict.

  Knowing you and the warmth you’ve brought to my life has also proven to me that when things work out, it isn’t only destiny, because the relationship has had enough work put into it that the fit has gotten to be just right. You can’t let the thing get so big that it consumes everything you’ve got and smothers your own self, but neither can you allow it to become constricting, limiting, and small, becoming a thing that makes you feel like you’re the wrong size yourself. For so many years of my life I have worked to get something just like this. Opening myself and everything that I had to the possibility, trying to get rid of the old patterns I kept falling into, and hoping that this time, when I began a new relationship, it would work out, even though there have been so many disappointments. I knew I had what it would take to make this happen, but over and over I have been so hurt when it didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would be.

  It’s terrible to think of, now that I have these days with you, coming out on the other side of all those times the magic didn’t happen, times when I found that something that had seemed so right turned out to be harsh or too difficult, times when I made mistakes and endured injustices that were such an insult to my soul that I was almost afraid to try again. I was so frightened of the cost and wasted time that I had trouble even imagining a relationship that could end up being this deep—rich love that goes so far past a simple infatuation.

  None of this is to say that what we have was easy to get. Heaven knows we’ve had our difficulties getting here. I know that you were as frightened as I was a few months ago, when it seemed like everything was coming undone. Loving you has taught me that sometimes you have to take calculated risks, to gauge what is possible. To extend trust to the process that has brought this into being. When I first saw you, I could only guess at what it could all become; you seemed so strong and sturdy, I wouldn’t have ever guessed that you had such a soft side.

  I may be a hopeless romantic, but I am old enough not to be naive. I know how seldom this perfect a love comes into anyone’s life and how lucky I am that it worked out for us. I know, too, that time will pass, and we may someday be parted. Nothing can last forever, and that only makes you more of a treasure to me. You have taught me not to give up. You have taught me to open myself up to the wonder of a relationship that makes me feel so complete and safe when you wrap yourself around me.

  Until I met you and learned that I could learn to do this, realized that I wasn’t going to be left out of something I saw other people finding, there was an empty place I didn’t know I had. Until I met you, I was a little cold.

  You are really the best sweater I’ve ever had.

  Love,

  Stephanie

  P.S.: Don’t take the new pullover on the needles too personally. I have enough room in my heart for two.

  Yarn Over

  Stories of Challenging People, Projects, and Knitters

  Denny

  My friend Denny is knitting. I love, with a helpless and unreasonable passion, the way she knits. I just love it. The way Denny knits breaks all the rules about knitting I’ve ever been told or made up for myself. Denny holds her hands, palms down, with her fingers curled loosely under, like for sleep. The needles rest in the curls of her fingers, so relaxed that I am constantly surprised that she doesn’t drop them. The yarn she is using, a softly spun alpaca, snakes up from the handwoven basket by her feet and snakes forward along the line of the right needle toward its tip, passing under her palm and through the curve of her fingers. When most people knit, they tension the yarn somehow; we’re all told that it’s necessary to come up with a system for this, or our work will be uneven or loose. You need to press it between two fingers or wrap it around one of them or do something, but Denny didn’t get the memo, and she doesn’t do anything at all to control the yarn. It just lies there, unbound and uncontained, under her palms. Her hands rest in her lap, not tense or tight, and until she makes a stitch, it looks like the least efficient or quick way to go about things.

  I’ve heard knitting experts say hundreds of times that the least efficient way to knit is like this. Loose, unfettered, the yarn out of control in between stitches. These teachers would have to take it all back if they met Denny. When she makes a stitch, her left index finger moves the next in line to the tip with a movement so petite and ornamental that it seems like it doesn’t matter, then her right hand guides the needle in, and whirl, her right hand lets go, and scribes a graceful circle around the needle tip, taking the yarn that had been resting under it for a ride in the curl of her fingers and snaps back to its original position as if nothing had ever happened. It reminds me of watching a ballet dancer spin in place. Her body whirls around, and her head snaps back to center with each turn to help her keep her balance. Whirl, snap. Whirl, snap. It shouldn’t work, but it does, and that’s just like Denny herself. It’s exactly what I like about her: that the accumulation of her traits shouldn’t work, but it does, and it’s that aspect of her (which is sort of the whole her) that almost kept me from liking her in the first place.

  When I met Denny we were both attending a spinning class. (It was spinning on a spinning wheel, not the other sort of spinning class that involves a stationary bike. I assure you, neither of us would be caught there unless there was a hefty bribe.) I’d just gotten a wheel and couldn’t seem to make anything on it besides knots and alarming wads of wool that could have been sold as artificial bird’s nests, so I was there to learn something that resembled a skill. Denny, well, I’m still not sure why she was there. She was already perfectly competent at the wheel, the loom—everything to do with fiber was already something she was good at, but somehow, and I hope Denny knows what I mean when I say this, I couldn’t tell that.

  The teacher was a serious sort, and that was fine with me because I was there to learn. The room contained a few other students, looms of all sorts, spinning wheels of all types, drum carders, hand cards, distaffs, and odd piles of fiber, and sitting there, in the middle of all of this incomprehensible stuff, was Denny. Denny is not supermodel material, which is not to say that she isn’t beautiful in a surprising way. She’s a little short, average weight, plain brown hair, even her age would be hard to pin down. She’s not old, nor young; she’s right in the middle, and she’d be hell to describe to a police sketch artist. There’s nothing remarkable about her—except, somehow, all of her. She was dressed, as she almost always is, in an outfit that defies description. Denny is one of those people who can wear whatever she wants and look grand. Denny can put on striped tights, a plaid skirt, a handknit sweat
er in a color that is not present in the stripes or the plaid, top it with a red velvet jacket and a white lace scarf, toss on German shoes, and look inspired. It’s a gift. If I put on the same outfit I would look crazy, or homeless, or both. I can spend forty-five minutes picking out my clothes, and I will still look like I grabbed my outfit out of the dryer in the dark, but when Denny wears it, she looks artistic and creative and original. I’m standing in this class, dead serious and a little nervous, and here she comes, wearing I don’t know what, laughing, gesturing, making tea (when there was a huge “no food or drink” sign), breaking every rule that there was about everything, and I was taken aback. I didn’t know what to do with her. She was much too much for me, and that’s saying something, since I’m often accused of the same thing.

  She was odd as fish, that lady, and my unease went on for weeks, and for a while there, if I’m being really honest, I can tell you that not only did I distrust Denny because she was an unknown quantity, but I think I actually disliked her for breaking the rules and getting away with it. Actually, not just getting away with it, but making the most of it, rising above it … thriving on it. Denny had more individuality in her little finger than I had in my whole body, and I was a little resentful. I wanted to be like that, so firmly me that I didn’t let anything stand in my way, and with that thought I caught the magic, and whether I wanted to or not, I started to admire her, and then to like her (quietly, and while she wasn’t looking), and then to genuinely love her and take her as a friend.

  The magic was this: Denny is so uniquely, profoundly, and unapologetically herself that something crazy happens when you see her. Usually, when you meet someone remarkable like that, you are so awestruck by the wonder that is them that you feel a little bit like you want to be like them. You start to think highly of them, look up to them. And Denny’s not like that. You don’t look up to Denny, and she wouldn’t be capable of looking down on anyone. She looks across at you, and somehow you’re inspired by her not to be more like her but to be more like yourself, whatever that is, and I think that’s why Denny’s best nature breaks all those rules, and it’s why she gets away with it.

  It’s even there in the way she knits. You’re not supposed to be able to knit the way Denny does and not suffer the wrath of the knit fates. If you don’t use patterns, don’t do swatches, don’t even tension your yarn, then you’re going to have trouble. Her knitting should be terrible. It should look sloppy and uneven and show the lack of rules like the knitter’s version of a scarlet letter, but it doesn’t, and that drives us all nuts—for a while, and then you start catching on. There’s a reason Denny’s done away with the rules. She has to be unique and dance to her own drummer and do it all her way, so that you’re inspired to start playing around with the rules about who you are.

  There are still people who don’t catch Denny’s magic. People who find her all the things I found her to be before I came to understand why I met her, what her magic is, and why I think she’s here. There are people who can’t get the hang of it or are offended by all the rule breaking, people who talk about how she doesn’t fit in, and I wonder about those people. If Denny’s gift is the ability to make you want to be more like yourself, then what about those people who can’t get used to her? Maybe they just don’t like who they are enough to want to be themselves.

  Dear Designer #2

  Dear Designer,

  How are you? I am very well, though somewhat disappointed that I haven’t heard from you about that brief letter I sent addressing what I felt were the somewhat inadequate instructions regarding the neck decreases on your most recent pattern. I know I was probably ever so slightly over the line when I claimed that you were not knitting with all of your needles, and I’m very sorry for any insinuation I may have made about your academic record in mathematics, but I still stand by my conviction that it would take you less time to write clear instructions than it would for me to reknit a neckline, but you would know better than me.

  I’m writing to you today because although I have tried to forget that this happened between us, I can’t let go. I do not fancy myself your conscience, Dear Designer, but when I find examples of your poor behavior I feel that I must speak up. You have been elevated to the status of a role model in the knitting community, and your designs are everywhere waiting to assault delight and enlighten knitters worldwide, and I feel that in exchange for this honor, you have a certain responsibility to us, the humble knitters gathered at your feet. I feel that even though you never answer any of these letters, you must bind each of them to your heart and deeply contemplate all that I write to you.

  It is because we have this close (albeit somewhat one-sided) relationship that I was among the many knitters gathered around you at the bookstore where you gave a talk last week, and I was listening carefully to everything you had to say about your work and your calling, and it just so happened that I was sitting right next to the girl who asked you about the difficulties she had encountered with one of your fanciest colorwork sweaters. Her problems involved having so many different colors operating in one row that the number of yarns she had to carry along the rear of her work resembled a rope that would have been entirely at home along the bow of a transatlantic ship, and, I hope you recall, she had asked you for some direction about how she should accomplish this task. Nay, Dear Designer, she had asked what you, the matron of all knitters, the lighthouse by which we guide our yarny journeys, how you yourself managed to carry the seven (or was it eight?) strands of yarn that needed to be transported along that section of Fair Isle knitting.

  I leaned forward then, for as you may recall from my fourteen-page letter of last October, I had tried to knit that sweater, and it was that exact row she was talking about that had resulted in the incident I sent you all of the full-color photos of, and since your answer to me had certainly been lost in the mail I waited to hear what you would say. How had you handled it?

  Imagine my shock, imagine how completely stupefied I was, when you looked this woman in the eye, this woman who had (as we all do, I am sure you are aware) put all of her knitterly time and faith (as well as a fair bit of her yarn money, not that we think of the insignificance of mere cash when we are knitting one of your patterns) into working this sweater pattern of yours and supporting your career, and you told her (and this is an exact quote, since this moment is burned into my memory forever) that you “had heard the test knitter say there were some real challenges” but that you had “never actually knit that pattern.”

  Never knit it? Never? You turned that row with the eight colors (because it was eight, you lunatic, I just went and looked) loose on the world without any sort of warning at all? Furthermore, you (without having strangled six of your ten fingers trying to follow your chart) had the audacity to have the caption beneath the photo read, “This charming summer pop-over, just bursting with the colors of the season, works up quickly thanks to sport-weight yarn and flirty cap sleeves.”

  Flirty cap sleeves? Works up quickly? Your test knitter (who must be a saint among women; would you mind sharing her address? I’d like to send her a sympathy card box of chocolates) told you that there were “some challenges,” you knew full well that you had eight colors in a row in your “flirty cap sleeves,” and you still felt that it was honorable to inflict this on share this with the world without having tried to knit it yourself?

  Now, I am not a naive woman, my dearest designer, and deep in the seat of my intellect (which surely pales compared to your own) I was aware that you could not be knitting each and every one of these patterns. It is impossible for a designer to make a full-time living out of creating knitwear if they knit every masterpiece themselves. Knitting is too slow for any knitter, even a wonder such as you, to produce enough patterns in one year that she wouldn’t have to moonlight as a waitress at a local diner for the privilege. That part of me should not have been surprised. The rest of me sure was, though, as I sat there in that audience realizing that not only could you not give thi
s woman, this fellow knitter, any help at all, but you also could not offer any real sympathy, not even a shred, and I was suddenly so shocked that I could scarcely breathe, and the world swirled blackly around me.

  When I regained consciousness (having thankfully been caught by a loop of my circular needle so as not to fall into the aisle; can you imagine how mortified I would have been if I had disrupted your talk with the sound of my body hitting the floor?), I had sudden clarity of thought. As I tried to explain it to you right then (seriously, does a knitwear designer need “security forces”?), it is not that you didn’t knit these things that stunned me. It was not lying awake wondering whether you could knit these at all that perplexed me. It was the realization that you and I are not in the same boat together after all, that when I knit your patterns it doesn’t link my work to yours in a beautiful chain of continuous art; we don’t share high moments and low points together, we are not having a shared experience in the slightest. I can no longer take solace in the idea that if it was possible for you, it must be possible for me.

  As my fellow knitters and I await the latest inspired manipulation of wool and genius to fall from your pen and in our general direction … perhaps you could do us the humble and profound honor of at least knitting a freaking swatch of the damned thing before you inflict it on us.

  It is only fair, Dear Designer, because if we do not stand together as knitters, then we do not stand at all (or sit, actually, because it is less comfortable to knit standing up, but you know what I mean).

  Thank you.