Free-Range Knitter Read online

  That’s when I noticed there was no wool. The doors had slid open, the tail had fallen out, and there was no yarn on the elevator. I stared, then I jumped in and looked around. Where the hell had it gone? I goggled at the floor. I looked in all the corners. I examined every inch of the floor, inasmuch as it was possible to do so with all those other people getting on. Damn it. The urge to shove a woman blocking my view of the front left corner passed briefly through my mind. I settled for a more normal choice, but I got the impression that “normal” might not have been how I looked as I asked them all to check around their feet for errant yarn. It wasn’t there. The elevator began to move again. I couldn’t stop looking at the floor. I ran back through the series of events. I dropped a ball of yarn in the elevator. The doors closed, and the elevator went directly to the seventh floor. Presumably, at that point the doors opened, then closed again, and then the elevator came directly back to the lobby. Since no one got off, nobody had gotten on at the seventh floor. So … where did it go?

  As we rode up in silence, I tried to figure it out. Maybe it had all raveled. No, not far enough, was it? I looked at the sock in my hand and thought for a second. No, not far enough. A pair of socks takes three or four hundred yards, and I was still on the first sock, so at least two hundred yards had been in that ball. Even seven floors of building couldn’t use up that much. I wondered whether maybe the end had gotten pulled into a gear (I’m not sure how; when I’m upset my theories tend to be a little loose) and two hundred plus yards of fingering weight merino had been sucked into the workings just as I had feared, only now I’d been stupid enough to get on the elevator. I was an idiot. Not only could I end up stuck here for hours, imprisoned by my own wool, but I’d have nothing to do while I waited to be freed except stand there and hold the remaining half sock as evidence. Maybe I could eat it before they got the elevators fixed. I looked at the other people. Damn. Maybe I could eat it secretly. The elevator kept traveling, and I came up with another hypothesis. Perhaps, as the doors closed downstairs, me on one side and the yarn on the other, the yarn had sat in the middle of the floor where I’d last seen it. Then, as the elevator began to move, the yarn had, because the insides were a little bit tangled, you know how they are sometimes, not pulled free smoothly. The line had drawn taut as the elevator moved, and the ball of yarn had been pulled to the seam at the front of the elevator, pressed against the spot where the yarn snaked out. The yarn, under tremendous strain between the two closed doors, had snapped, and when the elevator had gotten to the seventh floor, the second the door that the yarn was pressed up against opened, the yarn had fallen out the opened doors, and down, down, down the gap between them, all the way to a dark and lonely fate at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

  Can you get things back from there? I visualized myself trying to explain to the building’s mechanic why I needed to go into the bowels of the building, but I knew (after the episode with the subway platform last year) that it probably wouldn’t go my way. I tried to imagine some risk to the building that would make them want to retrieve it and give it back to me, but my imagination let me down. As we approached the seventh floor, I reconciled myself to the fate of my yarn. Down the gap to a damp, dark eternity. Mystery solved.

  Solved, until a moment later, when I stepped out of the elevator and cast a mournful eye down. I stopped in the doorway. There was no gap, or technically, not one large enough for my ball of yarn to fall down. People went by me, pushing around me on my left and right, and I stood there and stared. No gap. My hypothesis crashed down around me. I straightened, eyes front, and looked at what waited outside the elevator on the seventh floor. A long queue of people spilled out of the passport office and past the doors of the elevator. They stood there, some with headphones on, some looking impatient, some of them gazing off into space. The line wasn’t moving quickly at all, so I could guess that these people, or maybe those ones, a little farther up, had been the folks standing here when the elevator door opened three minutes ago with my little ball of yarn sitting in the middle of it. I stepped off, and I surveyed them.

  That’s when it hit me. One of these people was a knitter. They had been standing here, waiting in the queue when they had heard the elevator bell chime, and out of natural human curiosity, they had looked over to see who was getting off. The door had opened, and there had been my single ball of exquisite handpainted merino sock yarn. They had been stunned. I mean, here they were, standing in line at the passport office, bored out of their tree (I imagined that this would be the one day they had forgotten to bring their own sock to knit with them), and out of the blue, while they were standing there thinking, “Woe is me, if only I had a little bit of sock yarn,” and the door opened, and they looked in and saw it. An offering from the elevator gods. They must have been stunned. They surely looked around, decided that if they were quick they might not be caught, ducked out of the queue, snagged the yarn, and resumed their position, clandestine yarn stuffed in their pocket, hardly believing their luck as the elevator doors closed and returned to me.

  Suddenly, I knew this was true. I’d been robbed. Yarn stores occasionally report theft (and on my bad days, I could sympathize with the criminals), and who among us would say that if they were suddenly offered free-range yarn, tendered by an elevator in the passport office, we definitely wouldn’t take it? Taking yarn from another knitter was one thing, but taking it from an elevator wouldn’t seem that bad. Elevators don’t even knit.

  I took my place in line, my doomed half sock still clutched in my sweaty hand, and I tried to empathize with the thief. They couldn’t have known what they were doing. A knitter would never take the yarn that another knitter needed to finish something, and I really believe that they would never take the only yarn a knitter had on them, if only for reasons of personal safety. This mystery knitter couldn’t have thought it through. It must have seemed miraculous to them: Just stand there, and an elevator gives you yarn. What a great day.

  I spent the rest of my time in line ripping back the half sock I had and beginning a pair of booties, since this event had changed my project’s destiny. I tried to be happy. I tried to love my fellow knitter. I tried to forgive and forget, and I didn’t shove a single person up against the wall by the elevator and frisk them on their way out.

  I’m still rather proud of that.

  Left-Leaning Decreases

  Stories about Women, Politics, Knitters, and Looking at Things a Different Way

  Ken

  I’m not going to describe how my friend Ken knits. Enough people look at him while he does it. He’s like a magnet. Everywhere he goes people swarm around him, particularly women. Now, Ken’s an attractive guy, but that just doesn’t explain the interest women show in him. Young women, old women, knitters and the non-knitting alike, they can’t take their eyes off him while he knits. They sidle up to him in restaurants, stare admiringly on buses. They stop walking and come over and talk to him about it, and I know it’s not just the knitting that does it, because I knit in public all the time, and all I’ve ever gotten is the occasional, “Oh, I wish I could knit.” Or, “You must be so patient.” Now, I’m at least as attractive as Ken, so I know that the attention has to do with the combination of his Y chromosome and yarn. You would think male knitting was Brad Pitt in a thong for how much attention it gets.

  Last summer (or maybe the summer before) I sat on a park bench next to Ken, and we both knit. It wasn’t an experiment, but it sure got me some information. I happened to be knitting a lace shawl. Very fancy, very intricate—a whole lot of points on the “impressing people in public” scale. Though he is a very competent knitter, this day Ken happened to be knitting something squarish in plain, no bells, no whistles garter stitch. Two women came up out of nowhere and began to fawn over him. They asked him where he had learned to knit and how long he had been knitting. They stood over him like he was a rare bird or a valuable racehorse. They said things like, “That’s terrific,” “Good for you,” and the killer,
“You’re just amazing.” I could have taken off all of my clothes and danced on the bench beside him holding only the shawl in progress over my private bits, and they wouldn’t have so much as said “Nice work” while glancing at me.

  I know that this is how people behave when we step out of our expected gender roles, but I can’t help but be offended. It’s insulting, and not to me; I don’t mind that they didn’t care about my shawl. It’s insulting to Ken, and to all men. What does it say about our expectations of their gender that when one of them knits, just as we do, we think they are exceptional or remarkable? As Ken points out, they must think him as bright as bricks if they are so impressed that he’s able to manage.

  It doesn’t stop with knitting; I’ve noticed that many otherwise bright and astute women have a remarkably low standard for men’s behavior, and they don’t even know it. There’s a woman in our neighborhood who recently gave up full-time work to stay home with her three kids. Daycare wasn’t working out for them, and one of the parents needed to take the hit. She did so, graciously and with aplomb. You would think she would be the toast of the neighborhood. You would think the other women would all be talking about what a great mother she was, to see her kids’ needs and step up and sacrifice like that. You would think that the other mothers would have made her some sort of award. Instead, as they gathered in the park I heard the sainted mother in question and her friends discussing her husband and how he had gone from playing hockey three nights a week down to two, to give her an evening of “help” now that she had the kids full time. They were all talking about how he was the best father ever.

  You could have knocked me over with a feather. Don’t get me wrong: I think any parent who makes any sacrifice for his or her child is a good person. I think what he did does make him a really good dad. I just think that we live in a society where because of our low standards, men who give up a night of hockey to care for their own kids are great guys, and women who sacrifice a year or two (or ten) of their careers are simply doing what’s expected of them, and their gift of time to their family isn’t discussed in the park at all. Frankly, that pisses me off.

  There are examples everywhere. We hear people refer to men “helping” with the housework as though women bear the primary responsibly for it, or going home to “babysit” their own children. (Tip: If you never get paid, it’s parenting.) Think over how many times in your life you’ve heard a woman say, “I know that some men are like that, but not my Bob. He helps with the housework a lot. He’s terrific.” Then everyone nods and agrees. Bob’s a good guy, and he is. There’s no doubt in my mind that Bob, and a lot of guys like him, would live up to our expectations if we raised them, especially if we did so collectively. There’s only so much we can expect men to do to improve their contributions if we heap praise on them by the boatload every time they do something that we do all the time. We’re the ones who are telling them that it’s enough. We’re the ones telling them that we’re so thrilled that they’re doing this little bit to break down the rules about the domains of women and men that they are impressed and proud about their contributions already.

  Ken is not to be blamed for any of this, of course. He’s a lovely man, a fine knitter, and when women fall on him, singing his praises about his ability to do things that women do all the time without getting any accolades at all, he cops to it. He doesn’t buy what they’re selling, that it’s more special when a man does it, that it’s wonderful and validating for women to see a man do something traditionally considered feminine, and he sees the injustice of how it all works. He’s on my side, and he’s the closest thing to a feminist male that you can get, and he’s properly insulted by how impressed they are that a man would summon up the brain cells to knit. He knows that he’s being held to a different standard, that it’s easier for him to be impressive because he happened to be born with his reproductive organs on the outside rather than the inside of his body.

  These are old stories, and I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know this: Offering men accolades and waxing lyrical when they do the things that women have been accomplishing forever (and usually all at the same time), like parenting, housework, or knitting, even if they are doing more than other men, doesn’t do either gender any favors, make the work women do any more valuable, or do anything to help diplomatic relations between the genders. I can tell you that I spent eighteen years at home with my kids, and not once did anyone come up to me and tell me it was fantastic that I had given up not just my pastimes but my job to do it, told me I was a really great person for taking the time to clean the toilet, or told me that it was simply amazing that I was knitting, and although I do think it’s grand when a man does those things (mostly because I think it’s grand when a woman does those things, too), I increasingly think we need to even up a bit, so here’s what I’m thinking.

  The next time you see a man knitting, try to treat him like he’s not exceeding your expectations or walking on water, even if you are really impressed and sort of have to fake it.

  Remember, if you can do it, so can he.

  Smarter Than They Think

  I am not a stupid woman. That’s not to say that I think I’m a genius or that I’m smarter than anyone else, but I know that I am not stupid. I’ve raised children without seeming to do them any permanent harm, and I passed my classes in school. I read books. I’ve even written books. I cook good meals without regularly setting the kitchen afire, and I can drive a car. I make decent conversation at parties. I figured out my new coffee maker, and I can even work my computer most days, as long as you don’t want me to do anything really fussy or explain how the damn thing works. By all the standards given me by the culture I live in, I am smart enough.

  I don’t tell you this because I have low self-esteem and I need you to know; I tell you this because I often run into people who look at how much time I spend knitting, watch the enormous pleasure I take from such a seemingly simple activity, and conclude that I must be equally simple to be so thoroughly amused by such a thing. Generally speaking, these people are too well brought up to mention my dim nature publicly, but I watch their eyes when I take out my knitting, and I see them do the math. No matter what I was doing before I took out my knitting, even if I had been discussing physics or comparative religion, the minute I pull the stuff out of my bag a look flashes over their visages, and I can tell that part of them just thought it. No matter what they thought of me before, what some of them think now is that if sticks and string are all I need to amuse myself, then I must be very easy to amuse. (I’ve commented before on how incredibly ironic I find it that they think I’m dim for doing something they themselves cannot do, but that’s an argument about perception and their own problems, and we’ll gloss over it for today.)

  Their concept of me and my attendant acumen is only cemented if the darlings happen to see my stash or if they find out what I paid for it. If you’re up for a bit of fun and would like to test this theory, show someone a handpainted skein of yarn and tell them it was twenty-five dollars and that you are going to make a pair of socks out of it. Almost every time, they’ll look like you’re crazier than a bag of wet weasels and shake their heads sadly (or discreetly) about your lack of intelligence. Some of these dear souls, the ones with poor self-control or less than stellar behavior, some of them will even try to help you understand the error of your ways, pointing out that socks can be had for a dollar a pair with almost no effort at all. (As an aside, I’ve never understood what they hope to gain from this. They tell me that as if they expect me to exclaim, “Really? Are you serious? Why didn’t someone tell me before now? Do you know how much time it takes to make a pair of socks? Oh, woe is me, the hours I have wasted. Thank you, thank you, sir, for telling me this and freeing me from my wretched hours of sock-knitting labor. Please, please, I beg of you. Take me to this mysterious ‘Wal-Mart’ where I too can obtain these cheap socks!”)

  When I was a younger knitter, and a knitter with less experience, this used t
o get to me. There are so many people who don’t understand my relationship with knitting that I used to get overwhelmed. As I was growing up, my grandfather used to have a theory. He used to tell me that if one person thinks you’re wrong, you can still be right. If two people think you’re wrong, you might want to check your facts and the basis for your argument, but if three or more people think you’re wrong? You probably are, and you shouldn’t let your pride get in the way of seeing that.

  Clearly Grampa wasn’t a knitter, for if he was then he would have seen that there an exception must be made for activities as widely misunderstood as this one. The culture I live in is chock full of people who think I’m wasting time when I’m knitting. In fact, the culture I live in thinks that watching TV with a bag of chips is a lot more valid—or certainly easier to understand. (Demonstrating that I knit while watching TV and eating a bag of chips hasn’t helped me fit in any better.) Nobody wants to stop me from knitting, not many people even care that I’m knitting, but precious few of them think that my knitting is a demonstration of my intelligence or general canny common sense. Perhaps it’s a leftover from antiquated beliefs about women and the work they do (especially since men who knit aren’t generally regarded as dim—merely effeminate), or perhaps their distaste springs from a general misunderstanding about what’s really happening when we knit.