Free-Range Knitter Read online

  Make One

  Stories of Families, Encouragement, Ever-Growing Stash, and Small Knitters-to-Be

  Megan

  My daughter Megan is sixteen years old, and I love watching her knit the way that I loved watching her sleep when she was a newborn. (Megan says I freak her out, but I don’t care. As long as I’m keeping her alive and housed, I’ll look at her any way I want to.) Megan has grown up into a lot of things that I am not. Tall, for starters. Long limbed for another. Where I am short and compact, Megan is lean, long, and at this age learning to negotiate with all of these inches that turned up so fast. She’s all angles as she folds herself up into an armchair with her bright red yarn on her lap and a set of double-pointed needles in her hand.

  When Megan knits, it looks like digging. Her left needle lies over her palm, fingers below and thumb on top, the needle held between her thumb and pointer finger as though it were a tiny and effective shovel. Her right hand completes the picture of industry, this hand position almost mirroring the other, her thumbs pointed toward each other, as though she were ready to toss a miniscule salad rather than start a pair of mittens. When she begins to knit her left hand remains largely still, simply holding the needle and stitches as they wait to be knit. Only her left thumb moves, stroking the next stitch of the round forward to the needle tips. Megan’s right hand is the big action hand, and stitch in place, thumb on top of the needle, index finger curled beneath, Meg digs the right needle into the first stitch with emphasis, right hand already flicking around the needle to wrap the yarn around and back.

  Even at sixteen, the movements of knitting have been repeated so many times that Meg looks comfortable. Her hands move sure and quick and repeat her own personal knitting series so quickly that I know that someday she will knit faster than me; in fact, sometimes her dad suggests that she already does, just to bug me. As I watch her, she looks away from her knitting and watches TV, then laughs with her sister and looks over her shoulder, all while her hands beaver away in a steady, even, almost effortless string. I’m marveling at what this daughter of mine can do, how she was this tiny baby and now she knits socks without thinking, when she drops a stitch, or maybe splits it, and she glances down, stops the automatic nature of her knitting entirely dead, and is frozen as she tries to diagnose the trouble.

  It takes a long time, and Meg hunches over her work, poking at things with a long finger, and it’s only in this moment of difficulty that I can see any evidence of her lack of experience. A frown crosses her brow as she ever so slowly diagnoses what might have gone wrong. I resist the impulse to say “Oh, give it to me,” because I know I could fix it in a second, and after what seems like forever, Megan finally sees her trouble stitch, and then abruptly she’s a wee girl again. Arms akimbo, sticking her tongue out while she retrieves the runaway, awkwardly lifting and moving the needles just like she suddenly finds them unwieldy, long oars, and then, suddenly everything is on track again, she’s back to what she knows, and like someone flipped a switch on her labeled “knit,” Megan’s off at full speed again, fingers flying without a single thought given to the fact that it was her speed that dropped the stitch in the first place.

  This small example is the thing about teenagers that makes me crazy, the thing about them that makes everybody crazy. Speed. Either the kid isn’t moving fast enough, or she’s moving too much, not slowing down to think about what’s happening or what the consequences are or even what’s going on. There’s a certain whiplash in being the parent of a teenager, where you have to find a way not to scream like a berzerker every time the kid slows down to the pace of a snail on sedatives, and ten minutes later you’re following them around the house saying, “Hold on a minute. Why are you taking the cordless drill to the park?” or “I know you’re excited, but have you considered that this rodeo plan of yours might be a little dangerous?” or “Okay, maybe your teacher is a moron, but is it a good idea to antagonize a moron in charge?” It’s a beautiful thing to watch (should the process leave you with enough clear thought for analysis) because this slowing down and speeding up is evidence of what we all want for our kids—the ability to learn—and done right, this teenaged quickstep turns into the more reliable steadiness of adulthood.

  It took about twenty years of parenting (eighteen, actually, but I did several kids at once for extra credit) to come to understand that it isn’t really the slowing down and speeding up that is driving me crazy with my teenagers. Speed is a symptom of the terrifying truth beneath. I want my kids to even out and quit driving me bonkers with this stuff because on some level I know that the lack of steadiness reflects a lack of solid priorities or a reliable sense of their responsibilities, and that’s scary as hell for the grownups watching.

  If a kid can’t slow down enough to see danger or can’t speed up enough to get out of its way, then she isn’t safe on her own yet, and yet she is old enough that everything demands that I start letting go and sending this kid, the same kid who just informed me that piercing your belly button is “normal” and “everyone but her” has done it (call me crazy, but I think “everyone” might be an overstatement), out into the big world alone, where she can make even bigger mistakes and get anything she wants pierced. My husband has a little sign in his office that says, “Quick, hire a teenager while they still know everything,” and that’s the bigger part of the trouble. You have this kid who’s speeding up and slowing down at seemingly random moments, working hard to solidify priorities and morals that are still developing, and the kid has no idea. Not only does the kid think that she has all the answers, but she thinks that you, as an adult and a parent, are a great big wanking idiot who is to be ignored at all costs.

  Any normal parent placed in this position is going to want to do one thing, but unfortunately, building a cage in the basement to house your teen until she grows a brain is illegal. I’ve settled on something else. I’m letting go of Meg as much as I can, while simultaneously looking for evidence in her behavior that shows me that she’s growing up, is getting a clue, and is going to be okay in the long run. With Megan’s older sister, Amanda, it was that she played the violin. There was something about seeing my teenager play in an orchestra that was so stunning and civilized that I found it almost impossible to reconcile the young woman so poised on the stage with the mouthy kid who broke curfew the day before. Even though she had blue stripes in her hair, as she drew the bow across her instrument all I could think was that she was going to be all right. All the worry, angst, and concern I had for this teenager could slip away, if only for three minutes. If a kid can do this incredible thing and do it so well, then I just can’t believe that she could grow up to be a bad person. When I find something like that, I cling to it like a life raft.

  Last week, without discussing it with me, Megan went down to the yarn shop at the end of the street and bought a skein of bright red, chunky baby alpaca. It was $17, and she bought it with her own money. She brought it home, asked me (who was just about stunned senseless) if she could use my ball winder and swift, and then began to knit red mittens. As a mother, I couldn’t have asked for a better sign, since I feel absolutely sure that she cannot have a secret drinking or drug habit and be spending $17 on alpaca. It has to mean something, doesn’t it?

  This proof, these moments that we parents can cling to like life rafts, has to be why I really like watching Meg knit. There are moments, for sure, where Meg is knitting too fast and risking a mistake, and there are moments when the sloth lurking inside every teen takes over and she problem solves at the rate of a two-year-old who missed naptime, but mostly my Meg knits at an even, constant speed that belies her stop-and-start nature and the fickle aspects of her adolescent pacing. Everything that teenagers are—unruly, unfinished, too slow or too fast, too stupid or too smart, the way they know everything and have to reinvent the wheel all the time—all of that is absent in Meg when she knits. When Meg is knitting she is neither rushing nor dawdling, hurried nor absent. She is pure forward, effective movem
ent, her body and hands doing nothing that is unnecessary. All of her is productive, and confident, and steady, and sure. All of her is beautiful. All of her is adult.

  Megan’s knitting is a hint, a window on her future, a crazy sneak preview of the sort of woman that she will be, should we survive each other, all crystallized in this one perfect moment when I watch my Megan knit an extraordinary pair of warm, red, $17 mittens.

  Quick, a Baby Sweater

  If you live in Canada, it’s incredible what happens in the spring. You would expect part of it. The part where the snow melts and the birds come home and tulips and pussywillows appear from out of nowhere, that’s to be expected and doesn’t really come as a surprise to us Northern types. Despite the death of hope when it’s still freezing in March, we do believe that spring will eventually come. Spring, and with it the liberation of just tossing on a sweater if you need to go outside, the quiet relief that it’s finally warmed up enough that if you lose your keys you won’t be killed by exposure while you’re looking for them, all of that you expect. What I never expect is the sudden plethora of surprises in your neighborhood and among your neighbors.

  All winter long people are in their homes, sequestered from the cold. We don’t stand on the sidewalk and talk to our neighbors, we don’t chat on the porch in the evening. If we do happen to catch a glimpse of each other, we’re all so bundled up that unless you can see what house someone goes into, you might not even be able to tell who they are. (I spent one whole winter thinking that a neighbor was having an affair with a strange man until I bumped into him while salting the sidewalk. It was her husband. He just had a new coat.) We are wearing hats, scarves, sweaters, coats, extra socks, gloves, and mittens, layer after layer of clothing. It renders people pretty indistinguishable from each other, unless you happen to recognize their knitwear. (One of my daughters got busted for skipping school in mid-January when she was identified at a distance—and with a scarf obscuring her face—because she was wearing a handknit hat that the rat who finked on her recognized as my work.)

  There is a chance you will get a look at a neighbor around the holidays, but frankly we’re still wearing a lot of layers against the bitter Canadian cold, and there are many months of winter after December. Suddenly, spring comes, the world peels a layer off, and all of us are stunned to discover winter secrets. The woman who moved in next door in February is actually a guy named Rick, or maybe your neighbor Bob takes off his coat, and holy cow, he’s lost twenty pounds over the winter. (Or gained them, which is a little more common with the holidays and hibernation in there.) Children are taller, teen boys have grown whiskers, teen girls have sprouted figures, everyone’s hair is longer, and in my personal favorite, you discover the woman you’ve been talking to at the elementary school every single morning for five months when you drop off your kid has had a big secret under her parka. She’s eight months pregnant, and whammo, you need a baby sweater, or booties, or something, and you need it fast. The winter has robbed you of the traditional several months of warning. If you’ve got a reputation as a knitter who shells out the good stuff when a baby is born, you’ve got problems. Problems that you can’t outknit.

  Last year, I decided to knit a wee baby sweater. I’d been screwed a couple of years ago when one of the mothers on a school committee had taken off her coat and given me three weeks’ notice and a baby shower invitation, and no way was I going up the river again. I would knit a nice red baby sweater. Red’s a lucky color and equally good for a boy or a girl, and then I’d have it in reserve. The next time someone had a pregnancy that was unplanned, as far as my perspective went, I’d have some recourse. I knit it up over the winter. I even went to the store when I was finished and got an appropriate gift bag, some tissue, and a blank card. I gloated all the way home. This year, I had it covered. This year, they could all be as pregnant as they wanted, and I would look great at that baby shower.

  I waited for spring.

  As expected, at the end of March the weather turned, and I started to look for who was expecting. Green things appeared along with my neighbors, everything emerging from winter. Coats and hats came off, boots were traded in for shoes, and I began to walk among my fellow humans again. Lo and behold, one day in the school yard, there came the mother of one of my daughter’s dear friends, as pregnant as it was possible to be. We chatted, I congratulated her, and I enjoyed the conversation entirely. How pleasant it was to find out someone was expecting and not have to immediately begin working out how long I had to knit a baby sweater. This preparedness stuff was fun, I thought, and I even let the idea of doing some of the Christmas knitting ahead of time this year cross my mind, just so I could have more of this good feeling. We stood and chatted, talked about her due date (two weeks, but what did I care?), and laughed about how funny it is not to be able to know these things in the winter. “You would think,” she said “that no coat could hide these two!” She patted the broad expanse of her belly.

  “Two?” I said, beginning to feel slightly less smug and perhaps a little nauseous.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “It’s twins!”

  How to Make a Hat if You Are Twelve (and Not Very Careful about Stuff)

  Step 1. Do a gauge swatch, then measure your head and do the math. Then have a fight with your mother, who has knit like, 10 million hats and indeed has written books about knitting. Make the argument about who would know better how many stitches to cast on. Insist that you would be the expert. Glare at your mother for daring to have an opinion. Never, ever admit that your mother may be halfway intelligent; eventually cast on the number she suggests but do so in secret. Do not speak civilly to your mother for some time.

  Step 2. Begin knitting circularly but pause to have a fight with your mother, this time insisting that you are knitting garter stitch, because you are knitting every row (and your mother admits that she told you that garter stitch means knitting every row). Refuse to entertain the suggestion that circular knitting may be different from flat knitting, and again insinuate that your mother knows nothing about knitting. Maintain the fight until your mother looks sort of twitchy.

  Step 3. Tell your mother (who is pretty freakin’ annoyed at this point, partly because of the repeated inane hat fights but also because she has not been alone, not even to go to the bathroom, in days and days) that the hat seems “sort of twisty.”

  Step 4. Even though you have not listened to one word your mother has said to you in days, and even though you have never, ever just accepted something that your mother has said without challenging it and asking for an explanation, even though there is not one molecule in your body that believes that your mother could be right about anything, when your mother tells you that stuff on circulars is like that sometimes until you get an inch, inexplicably choose this time to believe her, question nothing, and walk away.

  Step 5. Return to your mother the next day. Come to her when she is tired, has a limp from spinning, has a work deadline, and has just poured her first glass of wine. Be sure that this time is long after your expected bedtime. Come to her when she is weak and her resistance is low. Come hostile, and come loud. Show her the hat, which is now very, very twisty.

  When your mother bursts out laughing, trying to say something about “Join, being careful not to twist,” darken your expression and scream, “This is all your fault” and make all sorts of statements that begin with, “You said …”

  Step 6. When your mother tells you that there is no way out of this, that it has to be frogged, threaten a meltdown that makes Hiroshima look like a minor problem.

  Step 7. Insist that your mother fix it or you will never knit again.

  Step 8. Watch your innovative and clever mother thread the hat onto waste yarn, sew up and down a row of stitches, and cut between the lines. (Refuse to learn the concept of steek if at all possible, even though it is right in your face.) Important note: Even if you think it is a good idea, resist the urge to say so. Try instead to insist that it will never work, even while
it is working.

  Step 9. Refuse to participate as your mother threads the hat back onto needles. Briefly smile, looking for all the world like a happy and content child, but hold the bitterness you feel for your mother deep in your heart.

  Step 10. Despite the fact that your mother has rescued you from your knitting disaster, immediately begin another fight with her, this time about how you can no longer knit the hat circularly. Mock her during her counterargument about how you were at the decreases and were going to have to switch to needles anyway and maintain that as usual, your mother has sucked the joy out of your life. Stomp away angry. Continue being a normal twelve-year-old, being sure to leave your mother emotionally tattered, exhausted, and confused.

  Dear Nana

  Mum told me to go send you an e-mail thanking you for my birthday sweaters that came in the mail after I did my spelling but before I went for a bath so I am. Thank you very much for the sweaters. I like the blue one with the dog on it and the green one is a good color, but I think it might be itchy but Dad says he has been wearing your itchy sweaters his whole life and just to put a turtleneck under it so it doesn’t touch me. That’s what I will do I think.

  I think this is a big sweater year for me because you sent me two and Randy gave me one, except for there was a train in the box too and he said that his mom gets sweaters at the store not knits them and I asked him why but he didn’t know. Also, Mum is knitting me a sweater, except hers is taking a long time and yesterday when she was trying to make the sleeve part she held it up against my arm and it was too short. Then she said a bad word and I told her that she had to put a quarter in the swear jar and she said that maybe she would just put a five in there because I grow faster than she can knit and now she doesn’t have enough wool. She laughed, but I don’t think she really thought it was all that funny. Also, I grew out of my boots.