Yarn Harlot

by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  My grandmother’s love for me and the proof I always wanted is finally something that I can see, as I fold the soft green sweater, knit with the stitches she taught me, into a box for my daughter’s birthday. It turns out that she gave me one lasting, invaluable gift, after all.

  Ten Ways to Anger a Knitter

  Ten quick and easy ways to make a knitter angry:

  Consistently refer to her work as a “cute hobby.”

  When the knitter shows you a Shetland shawl she knit from handspun yarn that took 264 hours of her life to produce and will be an heirloom that her great-great grandchildren will be wrapped in on the days of their birth, say, “I saw one just like this at Wal-Mart!”

  On every journey you take with your knitter, make a point of driving by yarn shops but make sure you don’t have time to stop. (This works especially well if there is a sale on.)

  Shrink something.

  Tell her that you don’t know why she knits socks, that it seems silly when they are only $ 10 for five pairs and they’re just as good.

  Tell the knitter that you are sorry, but you really can’t feel a difference between cashmere and acrylic.

  Tell her that you aren’t the sort of person who could learn to knit, since you “can’t just sit there for hours.”

  Quietly take one out of every set of four double-pointed needles that she has and put them down the side of the couch. (You can’t convince me that you aren’t doing this already.)

  If you are a child, grow faster than your knitter can knit. Requesting intricate sweaters and then refusing to wear them is also highly effective.

  Try to ban knitting during TV time, because the clicking of the needles annoys you.

  This Makes More Sense

  I have uncovered a plot. For years I have surmised that there was something going on. I didn’t share my suspicions with other knitters since I was worried about causing mass panic without being confident of the facts. I have now gathered enough evidence to share the following with you.

  It would appear that a group I have named TAKE (Team Against Knitting Enjoyment) is active in my household. I am writing to warn you in case a similar team is operating in your house too. Some of you may be unfamiliar with TAKE, but most of you will either have had personal experiences or know a victim of its baby-led splinter group TAPES (Team Against Parents Experiencing Sleep). I have established that TAKE has four operatives inside my household, and has definitely infiltrated my friendships and extended family.

  TAKE is insidious and will stop at nothing to keep you from knitting. Some of their more advanced agents will spend years insinuating themselves your life, even living with you, in order to lull you into their antiknitting web. Some agents are small and innocent-looking, posing as mere children; even your own offspring may be suspect. These tiny charming agents can disrupt many, many hours of knitting time. Do not allow their friendly manner and cute ways to lull you into a false sense of security.

  Be alert to the following clues that TAKE may be active in your home:

  The ringleader is the trickiest. This advanced agent appears unafraid to invest years of his or her own life maneuvering into a position to spoil your knitting enjoyment, dating you for a prolonged period of time or even entering into unions such as marriage to ensure a position of influence. He or she may even appear to support you in your desire to knit, softening you up by calling you “dear” or “honey,” and perhaps saying things like, “What are you knitting? That’s really nice.” He or she may even seem to take your side against the other agents, saying, “Go play outside, kids, your mom is trying to knit.” Do not be sucked into the web of deceit. Watch for the subtle indications that this person is a TAKE member. For example, after sending the children outside, ostensibly so you can concentrate on your knitting, does he or she then interrupt you every two minutes? Expect meals? Need you to find his or her shoes? Attempt to engage in marital relations? This agent will stop at nothing to distract you from your knitting mission.

  Other operatives may flatter you or even request knitted objects of your making. Watch out for this insidious phrase: “Wow, Mom, that’s really cool; will you make me one?” If you pay close attention to their deeper intentions there will be indications that they are insincere. For example, after requesting a sweater, do they then make it nearly impossible for you to knit it? Common strategies include choosing a yarn you hate using, patterns that are outrageously expensive or out of print, bizarre fitting requests, or color choices that may actually cause permanent brain damage to the knitter. A classic example would be a child (read: operative) who would like an unreasonably complex Aran sweater knit out of acrylic in a neon variegated colorway, with the neckline adjusted so it isn’t “choky.” Other operatives may catch the flu, lose their mittens, or pester you with requests for homework help. The smallest of these agents is the most effective, especially those weighing less than twenty pounds, since they are willing to get up in the night requesting feeding or comfort, thereby making you too tired to knit. Realistically, these small operatives have less effectiveness than the ringleader, since they must eventually “grow up” and move out of the house. Be aware that while this would appear to solve the problem, in reality they have just completed their training and are moving on to new assignments with other knitters.

  If you doubt me, ask yourself this: Does your family claim to have “no problem” with your knitting, but then make unreasonable demands that cut sharply and directly into possible knitting time? This technique is typically used at the precise moments that you sit down to knit. The agents of TAKE, having observed you make yourself comfortable with your knitting, will then attempt to drag you from your task.

  Be aware of keywords they may use like “dinner,” “laundry,” “bills to pay,” or “gainful employment.” These are simple attempts to distract you from knitting. Don’t fall for it.

  Other TAKE alerts are simple to spot. Look for gaps in their logic. Do they drive you to the yarn store and then seem surprised or disapproving that you have bought yarn? Do they buy you yarn or support your yarn purchases and then somehow expect closet space? Once you are onto their game, the evidence is everywhere.

  The final proof that TAKE is real and rampant is your own stash. Look how much yarn you have. You clearly expect to have way more knitting time than you get. What sane person would buy twenty-four sweater kits if they didn’t think there would be time to knit them?

  Agents of TAKE, beware, this knitter is on to your game.

  Three Blankets

  This blanket is a disgrace. It is an abomination of the knitter’s art. It is ratty, stained, and used up, and, frankly, it was very badly knit in the first place. Lest you think I am slagging some other poor knitter, I’m the one who knit it. This blanket is so bad that sometimes, when I think about it, I worry that my house will catch fire and that the only thing that will survive the flames is this blanket. Then people will find it and think that this was as good as I ever got—that this was the kind of knitter I was. It terrifies me that this blanket might be my knitting legacy. Whenever this nightmare hits me, I think about throwing the blanket away. But I never do.

  I knit the blanket sixteen years ago when I was expecting my first child. I had been knitting for a really long time, but I was a knitter, not a Knitter. I had done scarves and hats and dishcloths, and I’d even done one sweater, although my profound misunderstanding of the true importance of “getting gauge” meant that I had, in the end, knit something that more resembled a sloop’s mainsail than a sweater. I had not yet accepted my calling as a Knitter. I still sometimes thought that I might have other hobbies.

  Suddenly I was enormously, hugely pregnant with a baby who I was quite sure would never be born, and in those four weeks (two while I waited for my baby due date, and—regrettably—two while I still waited) I knit the blanket. I had seen the lace pattern in a knitting book. Somehow my idea of motherhood included a pretty pink baby in a pretty pink sweater (already successfully knit,
except for the overly long arms, for which thankfully I had had a stroke of genius: they developed cuffs), wrapped in a lacy white blanket. I went to the craft shop and found some white yarn. It was the eighties, and it was acrylic. I tell you this because there is a difference between acrylic then and acrylic now. Nowadays, there is such a thing as nice acrylic; then, there was not. I got worsted weight too, even though the pattern called for fingering, because I knew it would make the blanket go faster. At the time, I didn’t understand about yarn requirements or about going past your due date. It was a “due date,” for crying out loud. Doesn’t that mean anything to anyone?

  I tried to rush the baby and the blanket. I knit and knit and knit for four weeks. I knit all day long while I waited for something to happen. I knit in the evening while I waited with my husband for something to happen. I even knit a few nights when I was too huge to sleep. My daughter was born the day I finished the white lace blanket and I wrapped her in it and felt proud of the baby and the knitting, as if I had really accomplished something.

  Sixteen years later I am both a better mother and a Knitter, and what I thought back then makes me laugh out loud. The idea that I had accomplished something fifteen minutes after my kid was born and I’d knit a crappy acrylic blanket? I had no idea what was going on.

  That first blanket knit out of worsted-weight yarn was a weird size. It didn’t fit. Because I had used heavier yarn without changing the pattern it had come out really, really wide. Because I had bought the recommended amount of yardage (even though I had changed the yarn) it was also really, really short. It was actually more like a scarf or a wrap. It wouldn’t stay wrapped around the baby or fit in the bassinette; it fell out of the sides of the stroller and dragged on the ground. I couldn’t get it to behave the way it was supposed to.

  The baby was like that too. She didn’t fit. I had this idea, this pattern image of the kind of baby I had been making, and she came out all different, just like an unexpected blanket size. She wasn’t a pink little baby wrapped in a white blanket. She was usually red-faced and screaming and wrapped in a blanket that wasn’t white because it was too damned long and had dragged on the ground again. The baby cried all the time, except when she was eating, and nothing got done. “This wasn’t at all what I was expecting,” I remember thinking, as I looked at both the baby and the blanket. I had expected both of them to be prettier (and quieter) and cleaner.

  If you look at that ratty sixteen-year-old blanket, you will see several mistakes. These are not the sorts of mistakes that you notice only if you are a knitter and fussy. An alien from Saturn, who had never seen knitting before, would point out these mistakes with its long green fingers and question you on them. It’s funny that I can see them so clearly now, because at the time I remember thinking that the blanket, like my mothering, was not that bad, just a little rough. Of course, now that I am a real Knitter and a real mother I can’t believe that I made it.

  If I had the blanket to do over again I would have been more careful. I would have counted my stitches and used markers and taken real care. Somehow though, that first blanket and that first baby weren’t about getting it right; I attempted perfection with my every waking moment (of which there were many), but every row and every day quickly disintegrated into just getting through it. I got up, I nursed, I rocked, I walked, I knit. I can see now that I didn’t think enough about the pattern, I was too stuck on each individual stitch. I had blinders on, and it was getting through that mattered. There are days when you’re a new mother when the day is a success if you manage to get your hair washed.

  The border on the blanket is dodgy. There are spots where the edges have come away, or places where I had too many stitches, or too few. I was like that then too. I know that there were days that I cleaned too much, and rocked too little, days that I got the border, the parts of our life that were around the edges, wrong. When you are in the middle of something like that, you forget that it’s all going to be a whole. I didn’t pay enough attention to the people around the edges—my own mother, who had a wealth of experience, my friends, who could have sympathized. I didn’t understand that taking the time to put things around the edges properly would help the whole come together. I worried too much about stupid things and not enough about enjoying myself, my baby, and those things around the edges.

  That blanket is on the top shelf of my cupboard, and underneath it are two more baby blankets, one each for my second and third daughters. The second one is quite a bit better than the first one; it’s made of better yarn and has fewer mistakes. Even though it’s more complicated, it was easier to knit. The second baby was like that. Even though I had two little kids, a bigger house, and a more complicated pattern to accomplish it just seemed to go better. I had improved. The third blanket is beautiful. It’s knit of lace weight; the border is seamless and it just flew off the needles, sort of like the third daughter, who just “arrived” one day, to very little fanfare, upset, or acclaim. I didn’t make many mistakes that time on either the blanket or the baby. By then I knew about attention to detail, about taking your time, about living to knit another day. I knew that it was worth it to skip a load of laundry to count stitches or read stories and that time spent doing another repeat wasn’t a waste but a lovely, enchanting theme.

  I’ve saved all three of the blankets because I hope someday my daughters will take them for their own children, and I’ll rock a grandbaby in them. I feel a little bad about the first one. I did such a terrible job. It’s so messy and horrible and disappointing that sometimes I think about reknitting it to make it better. Maybe pulling back the yarn and starting over—at least getting it to be a blanket shape. I feel bad that my first daughter got all my messes and endured bad blankets, weird sweaters, and bad days while I learned to how to knit it all together and how to be a mother.

  Still, I don’t pull the blanket back, I don’t reknit it, and I don’t throw it away … though I do sometimes think about pinning a note to it that says “I got better at this,” just in case of that house fire. That misshapen, lumpy, mistake-ridden scarf/blanket is part of our history, a remembrance of those first awkward sleep-deprived and scary times as a Knitter and as a mother, when no matter how hard I tried, it really didn’t come together. I’ve learned that just because I didn’t do it perfectly doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Now I look back with some affection on those days that I knit bad stuff and got dinner on the table at ten because it was all so hard, especially now that I’ve got a few years of sleeping through the night. I know I made it harder than it had to be. But I’ve got those later blankets to prove that it was about learning and growing and patience. Every time I think about trashing that pathetic blanket I look at the daughter that I made at the same time. Despite my difficulties, they are both very beautiful.

  I keep this blanket because I have this idea, almost a vision. I imagine my first darling daughter is a grown woman, and she has this blanket to wrap awkwardly around her first baby. I imagine that maybe when my firstborn wraps her firstborn in that bedraggled sorry blanket at three o’clock in the morning, when everything seems to be going so wrong, that maybe, just maybe, she won’t feel so bad about riding a learning curve. After all, I did that too. The blanket shows you that.

  Resister

  Dear Designer,

  The good news is that I have recently remortgaged my house and can now afford to buy your latest book, though I’m still looking for that second job so I can buy the yarn to go with it.

  The bad news is that my eldest daughter has said something horrible. So horrible in fact that I fear for her future. If you are standing up, please sit down. Take a deep breath. Yesterday, as I was trying desperately to occupy the children (when I run the world, it will never rain on days when the kids are home from school), I pulled out your latest book, AbFab Projects for Pubescent Purlers, in an attempt to occupy the dear little souls. The youngest two picked out projects, but when I asked my fifteen-year-old daughter what she would like to knit she looked m
e in the eye and said, “Mom, I don’t want to knit. It’s boring.”

  1 can scarcely believe this has happened. I really felt that simply by carrying my DNA she would knit. All my children knit. This must be some form of teenaged rebellion, right? Boring? Knitting isn’t boring. Knitting is very interesting (I told her), knitting is good for your mind. Knitting restores order to a troubled psyche. She’s a teenager, that’s got to be helpful, right? Knitting at its best is absolutely gripping. At its worst knitting is meditative, perhaps, but never boring.

  Maybe sometimes the plain bits can wear on you a little. I admit that the second sock of a pair can take inner fortitude. I also admit that on occasion the really big stuff, like blankets, or sweaters for enormous men can seem a bit monotonous, but that’s not what’s happening here. We are talking about the dear little heart complaining that the entire experience of knitting, even the act of contemplating or casting on a project is “boring.” All I could do was stare at her.