But he needed surgery for his demolished rear end, and that would only happen after they stabilized him, which would take days. If he made it. I couldn’t bear to think about losing him again, and handed over my credit card, knowing it was close to maxed out. The cost didn’t matter. We’d pay it somehow. He had to be fixed.
I went home and blogged Digit’s return. I wrote about having had four or five dreams since he’d left that he’d shown up, alive, so very there, and how when I’d been kneeling in the kitchen, I’d asked Lala over and over if I was dreaming. “No,” she’d said, scratching his head, “You’re not.”
Within hours of posting, hundreds of comments flooded in. A friend suggested I ask the knitters to raise money for his medical bills. I laughed. There were a million good causes to which people could give their hard-earned money. Digit was just a cat. (Just the cat, but that was beside the point.)
I couldn’t ask for money. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t want to. But it gave me a thought: What if I held a drawing? Anyone who donated anything would get a chance to win sweaters, the very ones they’d watched me knit (and swear over) on the blog throughout the years. I included an alpaca V-neck pullover, soft gray with a purple Fair Isle design at the hem and the cuffs that I was proud of—it had been my very first successful design. I also put up the first true Fair Isle sweater I’d ever made, a Philosopher’s Wool kit (stranded colorwork, requiring one to carry different yarn in both hands at the same time). I included sweaters I loved. I didn’t want it to be easy to part with them. It was only right.
I thought perhaps I’d raise a hundred dollars. Maybe two. That would have thrilled me.
But the knitters pulled out their wallets and gave so much that my hands started shaking and didn’t stop for two days. In amounts of mostly small denominations, five or ten dollars, these knitters who read my blog and loved my cat raised more than seven thousand dollars. I blogged immediately that we’d raised more than enough for his treatment, but people kept giving. I pledged to give the overage to local animal-rescue organizations.
Knitters all over the world had come to the aid of a beat-up old cat, proving the cat/knitter stereotype both true and lovely. And I had to finally learn how to say, simply, thank you. How could I possibly say it so that people would know I meant it? How would they know that every single dollar, and every single thought made a difference in my life, and therefore, in Digit’s life? I tried to write it, tried to blog it, but nothing felt adequate to convey my feelings. Everything came down to those two simple words, and I learned that sometimes you just have to say them, and mean them, and hope that it’s enough. It was okay that I didn’t feel quite worthy of the money and the attention. I knew Digit was worthy, and that made it okay.
When we finally took him home to meet the young usurpers in his house (we’d gone from one cat, Adah, to suddenly, happily, four, including Digit and the two kittens we’d rescued in his honor), I resolved to never let him out again. He could howl all he wanted and pee where he might, but he wasn’t going out. Never, ever again. But he didn’t seem to want to go. He didn’t cry (except for food) and he didn’t use anything but the litter box to relieve himself.
I had my tonsils out not long afterward, and we recovered together, he with a cone on his head, still trying to knead and suck on my clothing, me with a puffed throat, unable to talk. I cast on for a sweater and knitted in bed, putting my gratitude into the stitches. I didn’t eat bonbons, but I did eat a lot of Jell-O, and I read as many romance novels as I could get my hands on. Digit sat by my side and whacked any animal that got too close to me.
We slept as we always had, his many-toed paw in my hand, holding on to each other. My cat had found his way home, and I wasn’t letting him go again. Growling in his sleep, claws latched lightly into my skin, he wasn’t letting me go either.
STOCKINETTE STITCH
Growing up, I bossed both my sisters. All the time. About everything. I told Bethany she should use different colors when she was painting the mailbox with carefully chosen hobo signs. I told Christy that less glitter was sometimes more (I’ll state for the record I was totally wrong about that). I told them to keep their greedy paws off my yarn stash, and Lord help them if I caught them using my long afghan-crochet hooks for swordplay—my wrath was fierce, my tattling tongue legendary, and when I cried to my parents, my halo couldn’t have shined brighter or been more centrally perched above my head.
The fact is, both my sisters have always needed way less advice than I think they do. From how much eye shadow to wear in high school to what neighborhoods to consider renting apartments in, I’ve shared my opinions, even when they haven’t wanted me to. Perhaps especially when they haven’t wanted me to. I think it might be a big sister thing. God forbid someone push either of them around, though—there’s only one person allowed to do that, and that’s me.
For twenty years or more, I’ve nagged my middle sister Christy to learn the purl stitch. She stubbornly refuses to do so, enjoying the fruits of her rather infrequent knitting labors just fine with the one stitch she knows. “But look,” I say. “This scarf has ribs, and it’s only knit and purl. Doesn’t it look fancy?”
She glances at it. “Pretty. Still don’t want to.”
In all honesty, she’s naturally much more detail-oriented than I am. While I simply knitted as a kid (and often not that well), she painted Ukrainian Easter Eggs and built tiny dioramas inside walnut shells. When she decorated the walls of her bedroom with a snow scene, she didn’t paint the details white on a blue background; instead, she painted the white wall blue around the intricate snowflakes. I, of course, thought she was crazy for doing it that way, and told her so, up until it was done and gorgeous—then I took my friends on tours of her room to show off her cleverness.
And even now, she’s the one with patience and forethought. Christy takes deliberate, well-thought-out steps toward a goal, just like she does when making art. When she achieves each goal, she can stand atop her accomplishment knowing she’s made it there by choice, knowledge, and determination. While not the eldest, she was the first to leave our parents’ house (I admit I clung to my mother’s apron strings longer than most). Christy got her bachelor’s degree from Mills College in Oakland, and then she went into environmental planning, getting paid to do what she was fascinated by. She applied to UC Berkeley, was accepted, and then graduated with a master’s in city and regional planning. Goal, check. Next goal, check.
Me, on the other hand…my only real goals were to fall in love as much as possible, and to write. While I got pretty good at the love thing, I spent years not writing anything but journal entries. Sometimes I reached goals by just getting lucky. Sure, I might have made it over the divide, but I only leaped because I didn’t know how wide the gulf was in the first place and how ridiculous I was to try. Query a national magazine and land an article with no previous national writing experience? Sure! An MFA in writing? Why not? Christy went to Mills College in order to obtain the tools to make our world a better place. I, on the other hand, only went to grad school because a boyfriend wanted me to get a master’s sooner rather than the later I’d planned on, and I went to Mills College because I remembered how pretty the campus had been when I’d visited Christy there.
Christy brought that same focus and determination she’d applied to school and her career to her knitting. She learned how to knit in second grade from her teacher (note she did not learn from me, more evidence of her intelligence; when we fought as kids, we could be brutal, and knitting needles can make gruesome weapons). She picked up knitting again in her twenties, creating perfect garter stitch in one rectangular form followed by another. She used gorgeous yarns and didn’t drop stitches, and she ignored me every time I tried to nag her into learning how to purl. She’d been listening to me Know Better for many years by then. She didn’t care if I thought her scarf should be longer, or wider, or narrower, or a different color. She’d learned long ago how to tune me out.
In spi
te of my faults, Christy gave me the very first scarf she ever made. A fuzzy blue chenille scarf with long bits of fringe, it remains my favorite scarf not just because of its pillowy softness, but because she gave that first piece of knitting away.
When she handed me the wrapped package, her face was worried. “It’s not very good,” she said. “You might not like it.” She closed her eyes and her face squinched up as I opened it. But the scarf was as lovely as her selfless act, and I adored it.
As Christy plotted strategic waypoints along her route, and I leaped before looking, our little sister Bethany bobbed through the waves of growing up a bit more gracefully. She’s always been more of a dabbler, trying everything that crosses her path with fascinated interest. As a child, she picked up whatever craft was floating around at the time. She used my crochet hooks and Christy’s tiny paintbrushes. During the lanyard craze, we had plastic rope key chains coming out of our ears. I remember her making hemp bracelets, friendship pins, felt banners, and macaroni trivets. And of course, I always had a great idea how she could do things better. She listened to me, and usually obligingly did as I said.
“When you color in your princess’s fingernails, you should use the red crayon. Not that blue one. That’s dumb.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened as she reached for the red stub of wax. “Okay.”
I was also often full of great ideas about how she should get me a glass of water if I was on the couch and fetch my book for me if I’d left it in the other room. She’d sigh and protest weakly. I’d say it again, alternately cajoling or threatening if the bossing hadn’t worked. Off she’d trudge to do my bidding. I loved being the big sister. Boy, had our parents gotten our birth order right, I thought.
After she turned sixteen, though, things abruptly changed: Bethany drove like I knitted—sometimes with a purpose, sometimes just to see what happened. She didn’t often get lost, but when she did, she made great discoveries. As I worked out the best possible left-slanting double decrease, she figured out how to find the best back roads with the most curves.
And somehow, driving straightened her spine. One day—we both remember this quite vividly—I told her to grab me a Kleenex.
“No,” she said.
“What? You’re closer than I am. Just get me one.”
“No. I will not get you a Kleenex. Get it yourself, lazyass.” She says that she realized at that moment that she didn’t have to do one damn thing I told her to. The fact that this realization occurred right around the same time she learned that turning the wheel could take her just about anywhere she wanted to go wasn’t a coincidence.
But just because she stopped obeying my every whim didn’t mean she didn’t stop listening to me when I had good ideas. I encouraged her to indulge her dearest dream: to travel the United States before leaving them to explore other parts of the globe. Raised by parents who loved to wander, we’d all seen a good deal of the world but very little of our own country. Bethany had huge dreams of seeing every state, driving on the “blue highways,” stopping wherever fancy struck her. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and its House on the Rock had affected her deeply, and she wanted to see for herself roadside attractions like huge pineapples and statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox. Christy worried she’d be murdered while sleeping in a Walmart parking lot in Nebraska, so I loaned her the gun that was a souvenir of the same relationship that resulted in my going to Mills. (Side note—I still love guns. As a Bay Area liberal, I’m anomalous in my affection, but I think they’re fascinating things, as interesting to me as knitting machines.)
During her travels, Bethany tried to figure out what she could give me for my birthday that would be both appreciated and, more important, cheap. She wanted something knitting related, but she was stumped as to what she could give me that I didn’t already have in triplicate. I had enough row markers, and Bethany knew I certainly had enough yarn to tide me over till the apocalypse.
Then it hit her. The scarf from Christy had been so well received—what if she made me a sweater?
She’d been knitting hats and scarves, so she wasn’t a total newbie. Choosing a simple pullover pattern, she knitted for months, keeping it a secret. If she’d been in the Bay Area, she wouldn’t have been able to hide it from me. She would have slipped, unable to resist asking me a knitting question. Instead, far away, she had to choose her own method of casting on, and when the pattern said to put the sleeves on holders, she had to trust she was guessing how to do it correctly.
In town for a short while before getting back on the road, she gave me my birthday gift. Just as Christy had, she looked worried as she pushed the present toward me.
“I’m not really sure about this,” she said.
I pulled out the beautifully heathered gray wool sweater and immediately words abandoned me. Eventually I was able to stutter something inane like, “You made me a sweater?”
Her face fell. “You don’t like it?”
I didn’t know how to say it. It was wonderful. The sweater fit me perfectly, almost better than anything I’d ever made myself. It had waist shaping that curved inward where I did, and the V-neck was just the right depth. It was cozy. And really, no one knits for a knitter. I felt loved when I put it on, just as I did when I wrapped Christy’s scarf around my neck. Safe. If this was what everyone felt when they put on hand-knits, then I wondered how people who didn’t have any got along in the world. On cold, foggy Bay Area mornings, I’d be able to wear my scarf and my sweater and remember that my sisters loved me for who I was, bossy boots and all, and I’d remind myself that we weren’t children anymore—my little sisters had grown up, and so had I.
Bethany took off for the open road again not long after giving me my birthday gift. She would spend the next year and a half touring forty-seven states, sleeping in the truck’s rear camper shell. She picked up odd jobs when she ran out of money and took showers at truck stops. She knitted mittens and hats through a cold winter in Minneapolis, where she worked nights at a hostel, and spent the next winter in a cabin in Montana, knitting herself a pink cabled cardigan while she retiled a bathroom floor.
We all went camping just before she left again, and Christy and I saw her off from an Old West–style bar in a tiny mining town named Copperop-olis. We both bossed her senseless as we ate our fries. Lock your doors! Call if you need money! Don’t take any wooden nickels! People named Shiv should never be trusted! For the love of God, floss! She drove north, ignoring all the little reminders we tossed at her, cheerfully waving her hand out the window as we swiped at our wet faces. I told Christy sharply to stop crying, and she told me to shut it, and then we clung to each other in the dusty parking lot, watching Bethany’s red pickup disappear in the distance.
MAIDENS AND FLYERS
I’ve had plenty of obsessions over the years, from macramé to rock climbing. New skills take over my brain at regular intervals, leaving me little room or desire to think of anything else. But the urge to spin wool blindsided me with its intensity and connected me to a past I’d never considered.
For years, I’d refused to spin, saying I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to try to understand how those pretty wheels worked. They looked so deceptively intricate with their dark wooden flyers and carved gears. The sound of the treadle seduced me with its rhythmic thump. But I didn’t have another free minute, and spinning was just another time suck. I was busy enough with a full-time job, writing, and knitting.
Then I touched a wheel, unable to resist my friends’ encouragement any longer. Like Sleeping Beauty, I fell into a trance, except my eyes stayed open—and the fiber flew.
Of course, when first I sat down to try spinning at my friend Janine’s wheel, I massacred it. The fiber kept spinning into great, undraftable clumps, or drifting into fine whispers of twist, floating apart in my hands. The more I tried to grab it, the more it slipped away from me. I barely resisted the urge to stomp my feet and throw a tantrum. A fiber craft! One that I couldn’t learn! Oh, I was steamed.
With Janine’s encouragement, I kept turning the wheel. My feet moved. I drew my arm back. Then, suddenly, something fell into place. I looked at my left hand and saw an amazing sight: loose fiber turning into yarn. Finally I held the fiber loosely enough. I’m surprised I didn’t hear the bing as the light bulb went on over my head, but Janine saw it happen, and she pointed it out: That point, just past my fingertips by a few millimeters, that was where the magic was. It didn’t happen at the wheel, or where the yarn entered the orifice to wind around the bobbin. The wheel itself, a thing that looks like it should do all the work, doesn’t. Your hand does the work, as it draws back and plays against the tension the wheel provides while it inserts twist into those loose fibers.
In a way, it felt better than knitting. In knitting I created a concrete something. In spinning, I was creating a presomething. Yarn, not yet knitted, held an almost infinite number of possibilities.
Oh, I was born to spin.
I wasn’t some wunderkind spinner—my yarns were lumpy and, well…homespun looking. But within an hour of learning, I was making decent yarn and, within a day, I was beyond hooked. I loved the speed with which the finished product came from my fingers and whirled around the bobbin. In a short amount of time, I could go from owning a pile of fluff to owning gorgeous one-of-a-kind yarn.
I needed my own wheel. I had to have one of my own. But the next fiber festival was all the way across the country: Maryland Sheep and Wool. I understood it was ridiculous to fly that far when I could just do some research and probably find one I liked locally. But a festival would display all of the different makes and models. I’d get to try whichever one struck my fancy. I’d have choice.
A Life in Stitches Page 8
