Yarn Harlot Read online

  It’s not possible I tell you. I don’t believe it. I had some heated debates about this with Sinead, and I’ve got to tell you that she didn’t make a good case for her supposed “allergy.” She said wool made her itch. “That’s not an allergy,” I asserted firmly. “Some wool is scratchy. Some wool makes me itch. You can’t blacken an entire fiber group because someone gave you bad wool. What about merino? Have you tried merino?” I glared at her across the table. Allergic to wool, my arse. I’m a loving person, but I wouldn’t have my beloved slandered right in front of me without putting up a fight.

  Sinead reiterated gravely, “All wool, Steph. All wool makes me itch. I can’t wear wool. I’m allergic. Knit me something with cotton or acrylic.”

  Baloney. Instead of deciding to call my dear friend a rotten stinking liar over tea, instead of telling her that for me to take her “allergy” seriously I needed to see swelling and hives and maybe a little anaphylactic wheezing, instead of speaking to her of her Celtic woolen heritage and her honor—instead I sipped my tea and accepted the challenge. I would get wool on Sinead, and she would see the goodness of it, and I would be right—not that being right was the point, though I really love to be right.

  What’s not to love about wool?

  For starters, think of one incredible fact. The world has come a long way, and astonishing and intriguing machines arrive every day, but there is still not a machine on this earth that will shear a sheep. Every ball of wool starts with some man or woman somewhere in the world, a complete stranger to you, holding fast to a pissed-off sheep while cutting its fleece free. Every single ball. Just imagine it. Every ball of wool you and I have ever knit, all the balls of wool in the world in every country in the whole history of the world thus far, came from the sweat and grit of a person wrestling a hot, dirty, furious sheep.

  Second, wool is light, warm when it is wet, and miraculously, incredibly real. Acrylic yarn is to wool as Twinkies are to whole-grain bread. It’s fun every now and then, but you can’t live on it. Itchy? Isn’t a little itch (except that there are nonitchy wools out there) worth it for the benefits of wool? What Sinead needed to learn was that there was wool, and then, there was wool.

  To establish Sinead’s actual baseline itch level, I knit a hat. I dug into the stash and came up with a plain, good wool. I knit it in a pattern that I knew she would love and want to wear. I knit it in a color that went with her coat, and I gave it to her on a very cold day (to make it as tempting as possible). Sinead was flattered. She was a little perplexed by this gift of a wool hat, what with it being so soon after the “allergy” conversation but my friends are used to being confused, and she did put the hat on. This reinforced my theory that she wasn’t actually allergic—do you see people with peanut allergies giving peanuts a whirl every now and again just to see how it goes?

  She wore the hat for a while, but developed a weird sort of salute as she rubbed the itch on her forehead every few minutes. Okay. So she’s a little sensitive. I wasn’t disappointed, since the purpose of the hat was really only to see if she knew what she was talking about and if she was telling the truth.

  Nobody said this would be easy. I went back to the yarn shop and began to hunt around for the softest wool I could find. I spent a good deal of time in the shop, rubbing skeins of yarn against the tender skin of my forearm and holding them briefly against my neck. I found a merino that made the “basic” wool seem as harsh as a girl’s first date, and I bought it with confidence. I did briefly discuss my mission with the shop owner (who wondered why I would be rubbing yarn on the sensitive skin of my lower back). For the record, she agreed that Sinead merely needed education. Back home I knit the merino into a lacy scarf (loose stitches are bound to be softer) and packed it off to my victim—er, friend. I was feeling optimistic. It took a long time to choose that yarn. It was Italian, expensive, and quite luscious. That wool was to regular wool as the ceiling of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is to the paint job in my bathroom. Sinead was going to love it—how could she not? It’s a crepe merino.

  I awaited word.

  The next time I saw Sinead, I noticed that she was wearing the scarf rather guiltily on the outside of her coat, where it lay quite elegantly but did not touch her skin. It was at this point that I started to wonder if she were running a scam. A huge cosmic “getting knitted stuff” scam, since it had occurred to me that the more things she found itchy the more things I was going to be compelled to knit for her. I started thinking (and possibly saying out loud) things like “never say die” and “try, try again.” Sinead looked worried as I stomped off looking especially driven, though I can’t imagine why. This was all for her own good.

  I got to thinking about socks. Handknit socks are such a luxury that I can’t think of Sinead or anyone else turning them down just to make a point (which I had increasingly come to believe was true in this case).

  Finding the softest sock yarn in the history of the world is not a game for the impatient, and it took (understandably) quite some time. I looked for Sinead’s sock yarn all through the summer, scouring Toronto’s yarn shops—going further afield, to Kingston, Ottawa, Hull, Montreal. I expanded the scope of my search as my family traveled through Canada’s eastern provinces, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland. But it was in Nova Scotia that I hit pay dirt. The sock yarn I found there was so lovely that if you had told me that angels flew it down from heaven twice a week to try and make up for poison ivy, I would consider that a reasonable explanation. It is so beautiful and soft that I would not hesitate (except for the nagging concern that people would think I was a raving lunatic) to knit it into underpants. As I began knitting the socks for Sinead I thought to myself, this yarn wouldn’t itch if it was diapers on a four-day-old baby.

  When I smugly gave Sinead her socks, I knew in my heart that this time I’d got her. Not only were the socks soft, but they had been rated nonitchy by each and every test subject who had tried them on.

  “Not one negative review,” I told Sinead cheerfully. Now she’d know about wool. She was going to thank me for this. This was really a poignant moment for me, sitting on the floor shoving the socks onto her feet (Sinead had inexplicably demonstrated some resistance).

  “Maybe I could try them later?” Sinead asked, with her toes curling up. “I’m really running a little late and I didn’t know you were coming with the socks so I …” Her voice trailed off. I glanced at her as I whipped her old left sock off and wondered why she kept looking at the door. Never mind, I thought, working the sock on over her heel. Besides being the softest socks in the world, these were among the most beautiful, rainbows of muted colors. Wool at its best—it brought tears to my eyes.

  I would like it noted that up to that point, I didn’t really have a plan. I was just an ordinary obsessive knitter trying to spread the gift of the sheep throughout the world, that all people might know the same joy that I had found in woolen goods. I only wanted to bring happiness and knitted love to Sinead’s life and straighten out her little “allergy” idea. That’s all I was after—right up until the exact moment, not more than ten seconds after I had those socks on her legs, long before the sock molecules could possibly have made their way to her immune system … when Sinead reached down and quietly scratched her sock-clad leg.

  Seldom in my life have I had such a moment of sparkling clarity. As I watched her discreet efforts to rip the not-at-all itchy socks off her body, it hit me. I finally understood. After all of those tries and all of that time and all of that knitting, I finally got the allergy thing.

  Sinead believed that she was allergic to wool and the mind was a powerful force. Clearly (since we all know that a wool allergy is too ridiculous a concept to entertain), Sinead had a psychosomatic illness. Since my past attempts to convince people to seek professional help because they did not feel the way that I do about wool have rarely succeeded, I began to think about … let’s be honest, here … a little white lie.

  Now, as a general rule, I’m
a very honest person. I don’t lie as a matter of course, and I certainly don’t take lightly the idea of leading a friend into a web of deceit.

  But desperate times call for desperate measures. If Sinead had a bias against wool, whether she knew it or not, she wasn’t giving the wool a fair shake. There was no freaking way those socks could be itchy. Sinead was pretty quick to pass judgment on the scarf too, now that I thought about it. Her subconscious (probably scarred by some horrible cheap wool in her youth) was projecting itchiness where there was none. Therefore, anything Sinead believed to be wool was going to itch. Deceiving her was perfectly ethical; it was like having a double blind or a placebo in a real experiment.

  I started to think of a plan. Naturally, I didn’t tell Sinead about it. I didn’t tell her of my plan to trick her. I simply said, “Okay, Sinead, I give up.”

  I started to do my research. I learned about micron fiber measurement and blood count and sheep breeds. I learned that Corriedale is an average fleece and that Cotswald is only good for rugs or outerwear. I constructed wild fiber nightmares of the infant Sinead swaddled in a coarse Cotswald blanket. I imagined the exact nature, color, and breed of the sheep that must have done this to her. Mostly, however, I was busy enjoying my new hobby, which consisted of asking every knitter and spinner I met what the softest fleece in the world was. Some of them answered in long dreamy soliloquies. Some of them begged off without an answer. Some of them got annoyed because I asked them twice. But when they heard about poor wool-deprived Sinead, they all promised to keep an eye out. I kept an eye out too. While the search was sometimes wearing, it comforted me to think of all of the knitters out there in the world looking for the magic fleece that would convert Sinead.

  One fine day, I met up with an especially sympathetic spinning friend who had with her a largish garbage bag. In this bag, she told me, her voice low and trembling, was a fleece.

  “A Merino-Targhee cross.” At the words, she got a tic over her eye and looked wildly out the coffeeshop windows. “Did you see someone there?” she whispered urgently. “I got the last one for you,” she said, giggling a little.

  “Thanks,” I muttered comfortingly. I was always glad to get a fleece.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, clearly appalled at my cavalier attitude. Lowering her voice and speaking with hushed reverence, she said, “It’s the softest fleece in the world. You don’t know what it cost, you don’t know who else wanted it. You don’t understand.” She puffed up with pride. “I got it for Sinead.” She giggled again.

  I took the bag and left. I did feel a little bad for what Sinead’s illness had cost my fellow knitters and spinners, but victory has its price.

  Once home, I realized what I had. Inside the bag was a little tag with the names of the shepherdess, the contributing sheep, and its parents. Fleece sheep (not meat sheep) are bred for fleece quality the way that racehorses are bred for speed. This sheep’s parents were the Secretariat and Seabiscuit of the sheep world. This fleece was not just a fleece; it was a legend. It looked and felt like cobwebs or dandelion fluff or cotton balls. It was going to be perfect.

  Fast forward several weeks, during which I washed the fleece by tiny immaculate handfuls in the kitchen sink, spread it in the sunshine to dry, carded it by hand with my finest cards (no drumcarder for this prize) and began to spin it into fine, fine yarn. As I worked I imagined Sinead’s face when she put on the socks I would knit with this yarn. In the fantasy, joy and relief spread across her face as she tells me that these socks are like a symphony. A masterwork. As I began to knit them, my mind’s eye could see her expression melt as the socks slid up over her feet and ankles. She wonders at the beauty of them, the simple perfection of them. The short-row heel, the seamless grafted toe, the ribbing that clings so softly to her leg … She begs me for more. She believes, as she marvels at the simple ribbed genius on her leg, that not only does she now love wool (and completely sees my point and concedes that I was right all along), but she also thinks the socks make her legs look really slender. In some of my daydreams, Sinead cries tears of happiness.

  One sparkling crisp fall day, I finished the socks. I phoned Sinead and tried to act casual. “Coffee?” I said casually. “Wool?” she asked anxiously. I laughed what I hoped sounded like a little light laugh. “No, no … I told you, I gave up.” Sinead laughed too, with what sounded more like relief than happiness, and agreed to meet me.

  When we met for coffee that day I tried not to think too much about what was going to happen. I tried not to seem too invested. Casually, I slid the bag with the socks in it across the table, as though they meant nothing to me. Sinead looked warily at the bag and pulled her purse a little closer to her, as though she was thinking about making a break for it.

  “What’s this?” she said, tentatively extending her hand toward the bag, the way a trained expert approaches a bomb.

  That’s when I said it. That’s when I put it all on the line. The perfect small moment that I’d been waiting for hung in the air between us. It was now or never, the work and search and commitment of a whole team of knitters and spinners—it all came down to now. Trembling a little, I said the two words: “Cotton socks.”

  Sinead looked around her for the hidden camera. “Really?”

  “Yes” (two lies). “I understand about the wool” (three lies) “and I wanted you to know I’m sorry about all the woollies” (four lies).

  Sinead reached into the bag and pulled out those soft, perfect socks—socks that, now they were done, were only (if at all possible) softer than the fleece that I had started with. I had spun them with the utmost care. Not too much twist to make them feel hard, three plies to make the yarn seem rounder and soft. They were like the pillows of angels, the clouds of a summer sky, the soft new skin of a baby’s tummy.

  She took them out of the bag and ran her hands over them, then slid a hand inside. My heart was pounding, but I sipped my coffee and looked nonchalantly at the pastries.

  “Steph,” she finally said, “these are beautiful. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied, and then we ate Danishes and chatted about things that didn’t matter.

  A full week, I waited. Seven whole days, when I resisted the growing urge to drop by Sinead’s house and catch her wearing the socks. Seven days that I waited for the phone to ring and to hear Sinead’s grateful voice on the other end, calling to tell me (her voice catching with emotion) that the socks have changed her life, that she loves these cotton socks above all else. Seven long days during which I practice my “A-ha!” speech, the speech I’d been working on for months—the one in which I tell her that the socks are wool, not cotton.

  Sinead is unbelieving at first, and shocked, but then gratitude spreads through her as she realizes that I have freed her from the nightmare of a life without wool. It is delicious anticipation. I wait eagerly for my moment.

  Sinead doesn’t call. By the seventh day I know why she is silent. It’s not because she doesn’t want to call. No; it’s because she can’t find the words to tell me how she feels. She loves the socks so much that she is beyond words.

  I decided to free her. I dropped by that afternoon to see her in the socks and was gobsmacked almost beyond all decency to see that she was not wearing the socks. Had she worn them out already? A single nauseating moment of horror swept over me: Perhaps, having accepted the cotton lie, she’d machine-washed them, and my deceit had been revealed when she pulled half-size felted booties out of the dryer. I sweated while she made coffee. I looked around (discreetly) for the evidence.

  Sinead gave nothing up. If she knew about the lie, she certainly wasn’t telling. I waited another horrible two minutes and then I went for broke: I asked about the socks. As casually as possible, without even making eye contact, I said it.

  “How are you liking those socks?” and then I held my coffee cup and I waited.

  I’d spent probably a hundred hours trying to bring the joy of wool to my beloved friend. I’d lied
, and worse than that, I’d corrupted other knitters into helping me lie. I’d given up whole days of my life washing sheep crap out of a legendary fleece in my kitchen sink and had worn my fingers raw spinning it. The limp in my left leg from all the treadling still hadn’t gone away. I’d spent time, money, and most of my pride—and here we were in Sinead’s kitchen, and she was holding the moment I craved. I sipped my coffee; I tried to breathe slowly and evenly and this time, I looked her dead in the eye.

  She looked back. Then she sighed and said, “They are so beautiful, Steph. But I have to tell you …”

  The world stopped turning and my heart skipped four beats. This was my moment …

  “They’re the itchiest cotton socks I’ve ever had.”

  War and Pieces:

  Or, You Can’t Win Them All

  What Her Hands Won’t Do

  There is treasure on the floor.

  I am in my friend Lene’s apartment with her and my friend Ken, and there is treasure on the floor. Now, if you are not a Knitter (and you must note the capital K, for there are people who knit and there are Knitters and the two are very different) you might think that what’s on the floor is yarn, but the three of us, Ken, Le ne, and I, are Knitters, and we know treasure when we see it.

  Usually, when I see riches like these, I know just what to do with it: Stuff my pockets and run. If I can’t be sure of a clean getaway, I speak reverently of the yarn and hope that someone will give me some. This day, though, it’s different.

  I don’t know if I want this yarn.

  It’s crazy not to want it. I want all yarn, even ugly yarn, and this yarn isn’t ugly. There is alpaca the color of chocolate milk, linen from Denmark, hand-dyed mohair in a shade of blue that reminds me of that particular blue of baby eyes, and much more, each skein tantalizing and special. It’s all so beautiful. It’s a whole life laid out in yarn.