At Knit's End (17 page)

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.

— A
RISTOPHANES

I
magine 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.

— B
OB
T
HAVES

M
ost 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.

— E
DWARD
R
OBERT
B
ULWER
-L
YTTON

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.

— J
OHN
L
ENNON

W
ell, 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.

— B
ENJAMIN
D
ISRAELI

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.

— Q
UENTIN
C
RISP

I
f 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

— Y
ARN
L
ABEL

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.

 

Grown-ups never understand anything
for themselves, and it is tiresome for
children to be always and forever
explaining things to them.

— A
NTOINE DE
S
AINT
-E
XUPERY

M
y 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.

— K
IN
H
UBBARD

I
nsert “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.

 

Not a shred of evidence exists in
favor of the idea that life is serious.

— B
RENDAN
G
ILL

I
try to keep this quotation in mind whenever it seems to me that I might have to cry because my knitting isn't working out. Making mistakes in knitting isn't a serious problem. It's just knitting; it's supposed to be a fun hobby. It isn't supposed to be a process that stresses you out and causes upset, anger, or the urge to put a needle into your thigh.

I will reserve that honor for accidentally throwing a hand knit in the washing machine.

Nobody has ever been killed by his or her knitting.

 

I value my garden more for being full of
blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly
give them fruit for their songs.

— J
OSEPH
A
DDISON

A
s I am a woman of little patience, I occasionally set fleece and yarn in my backyard to dry. The fresh air dries it very quickly, and it makes me very happy to see the pretty colors of the wool drying next to the flowers and trees. I feel like I'm at one with nature. The birds sing, the garden blooms, and my wool dries in the pretty sunshine.

I will try to retain this feeling, even as I notice that the thieving little birds are ripping off my yarn for nest materials.

 

You know you
knit too much when …

Your kids complain that
you are paying too much
attention to your knitting,
so you switch to a garter
stitch project.

 

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

— C
ONFUCIUS

P
erhaps because knitting is mostly done by women, or perhaps because it is considered by some to be one of the “domestic arts,” such as sweeping or doing the dishes, there is a tendency, even among those of us who do it, to consider it simple, frivolous, or unworthy.

I will remember, the next time someone asks me about my hobby, to refrain from calling it “just knitting.”

 

If you rest, you rust.

— H
ELEN
H
AYES

M
y Auntie Helen is very old. She is so old, in fact, that everyone in the family has lost track of how old exactly she might be, though we all agree that she is well past ninety. She has always knit mittens for us, and even now, though her hands get sore and her eyesight is failing her, she continues to knit, only from memory instead of from a pattern. If you ask her what the secret to her vibrant and productive old age is, she'll tell you that you just need to keep moving.

As I grow older, I can hope that I will continue to knit… even if I can't read a pattern. It will help me keep moving.

 

Youth is a wonderful thing.
What a crime to waste it on children.

— G
EORGE
B
ERNARD
S
HAW

I
have taught all my children and plenty of other people's children how to knit. Most kids are capable of it at about the age of five, and it is a real treat to watch a youngster discover the joys of knitting and hold up a misshapen little scarf, thrilled to be able to say “I made it myself.”

Always remember, should you decide to pass on your knitting knowledge to the next generation, that kids have a natural aptitude for handiwork, a knack for learning, and given half a chance, are absolutely driven to poke each other with pointy sticks.

 

I just need enough to tide me over
until I need more.

— B
ILL
H
OEST

3
signs you have a serious yarn habit:

You have invested money in a yarn storage solution that involves more than one room of your house.