At Knit's End

by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  I took a speed-reading course and

  read War and Peace in twenty minutes.

  It involves Russia.

  — WOODY ALLEN

  The knitting world is full of books and patterns for “quick knits.” They involve big yarn, big needles, and projects promising instant knitting gratification. I love them; they are tons and tons of fun. Finishing a hat in two hours can make you happy. Finishing a lace shawl of fine cobweb wool, however, makes you want to go into the street and accost complete strangers, forcing them to admire the shawl and be awed by your knitterly genius.

  With great effort comes great gratification. I will sometimes choose projects that will take a long time and be difficult.

  Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.

  — JOHN RUSSELL

  I had a crazy aunt. This crazy aunt used to spend the whole year knitting wonderful, intricate pairs of mittens for me, my siblings, and my cousins. She made blue ones, red striped ones, ones with reindeer on them … there really was no end to the wonderment of mittens. Then she would box them up; half went to my cousins far away, and half to our family. There were so many in the box that during my entire childhood I never wore a mitten that came from anyone else.

  It would have been a perfect thing, if only she weren’t crazy. When she divided up the mittens, she would mail all the left ones to my cousins, and all the right ones to us.

  I will remember, should I get a little weird in my old age, that this strategy does not (as she had hoped) promote family unity. Nobody will drive 400 miles to swap mittens.

  Zeus does not bring all men’s plans

  to fulfillment.

  — HOMER

  Despite the best-laid plans, the most cautious and careful knitters, the most experienced knitters, and the ones who are clever at math have all been humbled by the same crushing experience. If you knit long enough, it will happen to you, no matter what attempts you make to avoid it.

  Someday, somewhere, somehow, you will run out of yarn.

  I will remember, when my day comes, that there is one magic word that can help: STRIPES.

  Really we create nothing.

  We merely plagiarize nature.

  — JEAN BAITAILLON

  Sunlight dapples through green maple leaves at the park and gives me the perfect idea for a Fair Isle colorway. I’ll use the greens in dark and light shades, the brown of the bark in the shade, and the gold of the branches in sunshine. I feel so artistic, like I’m connected to the great masters who painted scenes much like this. They mixed paints on their palettes, I’ll pull yarn from the stash and shops, but we are all artists striving to re-create the natural world with our talents.

  Two weeks later, as I’m desperately scrounging through the bins at the seventeenth yarn shop I’ve visited, I’m realizing that the exact lime green of sunlight striking the top leaves does not exist in the yarn world. I wonder whether I’m the first knitter to think that Michelangelo and van Gogh had it easy. They could mix the color they needed.

  I will remember that every medium has its limits. Maybe I can’t get the exact color I need, but Michelangelo would have had a hard time carving something that felt like angora.

  It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead.

  The chain of destiny can only be grasped

  one link at a time.

  — SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

  Especially for beginning knitters, a complex pattern can be daunting. You look at a pattern and are overwhelmed by the 46 rows in a lace pattern, or think that you are going to cry in public at some point during the short-row cap sleeve, or that you will lose hours of sleep gnashing your teeth and end up with only a tattered pile of knitted crap.

  Before I cast aside my destiny (and a pattern for a spectacular lace coverlet), I will consider that all knitting, no matter how complex, how huge, or how intimidating, was knit one row at a time.

  You know you

  knit too much when …

  You will check out a book

  from the library just because

  you heard that one of the

  characters knits.

  The only way to get rid of a temptation

  is to yield to it.

  — OSCAR WILDE

  With my wool as my witness I will swear that yarn emits resolve-impairing rays. There is no other possible explanation for why a perfectly normal woman like me can go into a yarn shop determined to buy only a set of double-pointed needles and leave with 18 skeins of blue wool, a shawl kit, two books, and a quirky self-patterning sock yarn.

  I will support all attempts by science to explain this effect.

  The statistics on sanity are that

  one out of every four Americans

  is suffering from some form of

  mental illness. Think of your three

  best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you.

  — RITA MAE BROWN

  One of the most interesting things about knitting is that it causes a delayed sense of clarity. A knitter can stand in a yarn shop and plan, purchase wool for, and explain to friends her plan to knit a cover for a king-size bed out of fingering-weight yarn using 3mm needles and not ever once, even for a moment, consider that insane until after she has started the project.

  I will remember, should my friends in the yarn shop giggle as I purchase my wool, to run a quick “sanity check” on my idea.

  The art of being wise is the art of

  knowing what to overlook.

  — WILLIAM JAMES

  I am done with the back of my friend’s sweater. My friend is 6’4” and … er, robust … and it is only through sheer will that I have knit the front and endless sleeves. It may have been a tactical error to make those allover cables in black; in fact, trying to see the cables has been at times staggeringly difficult, and if I ever am completely blind, I’m going to know which sweater to blame. Suddenly, I see it. At the bottom of the sweater there is one miscrossed cable. I feel nauseous and the world swirls around me in darkening circles as I think about reknitting the entire back. I know I’ll never be able to live with the mistake.

  I will remember, should I ever find myself in a similar situation, that I don’t have to live with the mistake at all. I can sew the thing up and give it away.

  Experience is something you don’t get

  until just after you need it.

  — STEVEN WRIGHT

  When I was six, I spent an afternoon in my grandmother’s garden with my needles, yarn, and what I thought was a darned good idea. It occurred to me that I could save myself all kinds of time while knitting if I didn’t have to turn my work at the end of each row. When I had it completely figured, I traipsed up to the house, found my Nana, and showed her my incredible invention — backward knitting. My very proper Nana said this was simply “not how it was done.” Chastised, I returned to conventional frontward knitting, and it wasn’t until last night when I was working on a five-stitch strap that I remembered. I could have been really good at that by now.

  I will not let anyone tell me what a good knitting idea is.

  Find something you’re passionate about and

  keep tremendously interested in it.

  — JULIA CHILD

  I know a knitter whose husband is starting to worry a little because his wife appears to have become completely obsessed with a movie star. At least, that’s what he thinks, because she has rented the same movie about 15 times just so she can stare intently at the male lead. I know better; she has confessed that she’s actually obsessed with the sweater the guy’s wearing and has been trying to puzzle out the pattern for months. She hasn’t told her husband because she’s worried that he will think she’s completely out of her mind.

  Consider that your husband might actually be relieved that you are oddly drawn to a sweater, rather than believing that his wife has developed a completely unhealthy attraction to a 19-year-old.

  Love is always bestowed as a gift —

  freely, willing
ly and without expectation.

  We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.

  — LEO BUSCAGLIA

  In every knitter’s stash there are a few skeins of yarn that were purchased with absolutely no purpose in mind. The knitter knows, though she may never admit it, that this yarn isn’t looking for its destiny either. It will never, ever be knit. Its sole purpose in the knitter’s life is to be beautiful and to be loved.

  This yarn and its role are perfectly normal, though a knitter should understand that other knitters will mock her, much as we sometimes mock the older man who marries a young lovely, for having acquired “trophy yarn.”

  A home without books is a body without soul.

  — CICERO

  This quote applies as well to knitters as it does to scholars, poets, and writers. The knitter’s urge to procure and hoard a lifetime supply of yarn is only one side of the obsession with knitting. The other is a profound and deep need to buy an incredible number of books, patterns, magazines, and newsletters that talk about yarn, knitting, and the ways of needles.

  Although the mountains of written material most knitters have in their homes would seem unnatural and odd, it is only the normal extension of a deep interest in knitting and the human desire to better oneself in one’s chosen art.

  That, and the pictures are pretty.

  Reality is the leading cause of stress

  for those in touch with it.

  — JACK WAGNER

  Most of the stress associated with learning to knit is not caused by knitting but by an inability to fix errors. Pity the poor knitter who can’t fix a mistake; every time she makes one, she has to start her project over. Wise knitting mentors teach students at the first sitting to pick up a dropped stitch so that they are not living in paralyzed fear of a little woolen loop that has broken free of the needle.

  Consider telling those you teach that no matter how it feels to the new knitter, a dropped stitch has never actually caused stroke, heart failure, or a world war.

  You know you

  knit too much when …

  You are so excited about the

  yarn you just bought that

  you buy new size 5 knitting

  needles (even though you

  have nine pairs at home)

  so that you can start your

  project on the bus ride home

  from the yarn shop.

  Learning without thought is labor lost;

  thought without learning is perilous.

  — CONFUCIUS

  Learning to do cables without a cable needle is a liberating feeling. Once you have mastered the technique, it is faster, easier, and more efficient.

  Should I feel reluctant to learn this technique, I will remind myself of how inevitable it is that I will lose my cable needle anyway.

  A fool and his money are soon partying.

  — STEVEN WRIGHT

  I don’t know what it says about me that if I get a little money, and I want to go nuts and have a really good time … enjoy a real blowout celebration, cut loose, go wild, and lose all my inhibitions … that I will go to the biggest, wildest, fanciest yarn shop in town.

  I will celebrate the happy events of my life in a way that makes sense to me, and besides, yarn has more staying power and less of a hangover than tequila does.

  Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.

  — PABLO PICASSO

  It is an incredibly charming and clever trick that knitting is one long piece of string. It is not like building blocks or bricks, made up of individual pieces, but more like sculpting in clay, where the material is shaped by your intentions and creativity.

  I will remember that the downside to this fancy trick is that a two-year-old left alone with knitting for three minutes can undo the better part of a shawl, just by pulling on that one string.

  Let each man exercise the art he knows.

  — ARISTOPHANES

  Imagine a knitter. This knitter, having taken a trip to the beach, has become obsessed with knitting a scarf in the exact shade of the ocean. She is not trying to capture the entire ocean in wool, but only the part near the edge of the bay, right where the water gets deep. Since she has returned from the beach, she has scoured stashes, yarn shops, and Internet sources, searching fruitlessly for yarn that is the exact, perfect, marine blue. This behavior is normal, but this knitter is not. Most knitters, defeated by yarn unavailability, would spend the rest of their lives happy, but always looking for that yarn. This knitter … she has bought some dye.

  Occasionally, the universe conspires to keep something from you so you can learn new things. Look for those chances to expand your chosen art form.

  Money talks — but credit has an echo.

  — BOB THAVES

  Most knitters, if they were to be completely honest with you, would have to confess that the place their credit card gets the most use is in a yarn shop. When I was done being a student, I had two kinds of debt: student loans and yarn loans.

  Think carefully before buying yarn on credit. You should at least be able to pay for it sometime before it is knit up. (For most of us, this is not a powerful deterrent.)

  Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue.

  — EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON

  I have, once or twice (which is a pretty good track record, when you think of it), felt remorse over time “wasted” knitting or a particularly extravagant yarn buy. I usually manage to rationalize myself into feeling good about it again, and I have found a very efficient remorse eraser. I’ll share it now, in case you are ever tempted by remorse:

  I am not wasting time knitting or wasting money buying yarn. I am creating useful and beautiful objects that will outlast me and my days. I am creating a legacy to outlive me.

  All you need is love.

  — JOHN LENNON

  Well, that’s a nice thought, but you can’t knit love, baby.

  Even as I strive to reduce the complexity of my life to encompass only most of the basic elements of human happiness, I will remember that even though John Lennon said, “All you need is love,” I’m not giving up my yarn. After all, he never gave up his guitar.

  The essence of education is the

  education of the body.

  — BENJAMIN DISRAELI

  I was teaching a children’s knitting class, and one poor little guy absolutely could not get it. This was profoundly disappointing to him, because he had announced when arriving that he was already a pretty good knitter. Over and over he tried, over and over he dropped stitches. Finally, I put my hands over his and together we made a stitch, then another and another, and pretty soon he was flying solo.

  When his mother arrived, he proudly showed her his two rows of perfectly solid knitting. “I thought you already knew how to knit,” his mother said. “I did,” he replied. “But it took a while for my hands to catch on.”

  I will remember, the next time I am frustrated with my knitting, that the problem might not be me … but my hands.

  If at first you don’t succeed,

  failure may be your style.

  — QUENTIN CRISP

  If it turns out that you are the kind of knitter who makes mistakes often (not that I can relate), then you are very lucky. You are going to learn lots of stuff about knitting that those simple, perfect knitters will never have the chance to learn. For example, just the other day I heard about a knitter (not me, of course) who invented a new way to increase when she accidentally knit into both parts of a split stitch.

  I will embrace my imperfect nature and take what good comes of it, resisting the urge to mock flawless knitters who don’t invent anything.

  You know you

  knit too much when …

  You are at the video store

  renting a movie and reject

  a film with subtitles because

  the project you are knitting

  has a chart.

  Everybody knows that you

  can’t read subtitles if you
>
  are already reading a chart.

  100% pure wool, 50g,

  120 yards/110 meters

  — YARN LABEL

  I have checked every single ball band on every single ball and skein of yarn I have ever bought and none of them, not even one, has ever listed a warning about the addictive qualities of the product contained within.

  I know that this is a clear omission, because it’s not possible that yarn is not addictive, given what happens to most people who buy some.

  Just because the world hasn’t figured out what I know to be true does not mean that I am wrong. For years people said that cigarettes weren’t addictive. I will wait for science to catch up with me.

  Grownups never understand anything

  for themselves, and it is tiresome for

  children to be always and forever

  explaining things to them.

  — ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

  My young daughter was enjoying a play date with a child she knew from school, and the two youngsters were playing hide-and-seek when the little girl’s mother arrived to take her home. The girls where hiding, so the mother made a game of hunting for them. She looked under the table, behind the chesterfield, then spied a closet and flung it open. Imagine her shock when inside were not only two little girls but also a literal wall of yarn.

  “Wow,” she said. “What’s this?”

  “It’s one of our yarn closets,” my daughter told her, looking at her like she had just asked the purpose of our stove.

  “A yarn closet?” the mother replied, clearly astonished.

  “Yeah,” said my daughter, slowly and carefully, like she was speaking to someone very stupid, “you know … where you keep your yarn?”

  Sometimes, children see things so clearly.

  A woman will buy anything she thinks

  the store is losing money on.

  — KIN HUBBARD

  Insert “knitter” for “woman” in the quotation above and you have the beginnings of an explanation for what seems like 70 pounds of super-cheap, butt-ugly, army green kitchen cotton that I have sitting in the yarn stash.

  I will persist in believing that I was stunned into submission by the deeply discounted price on this yarn, because the alternative is to accept that I really have no taste.