Yarn Harlot Read online

  I retrieve the button, the butter knife, and the six pairs of scissors. I leave the screwdriver where it is. I don’t see Joe looking for my tape measures.

  Dejectedly, I wander back downstairs. I’m beginning to lose my zeal for this hunt, and surveying the damage I’ve done to the house, I realize that stopping soon is important if I’m ever going to set things to rights. One of my pattern books has a ruler printed on the edge (Maybe they know about this problem?), and I can figure out how big the sweater is from there. I’m obviously not going to find the stupid tape measure and the only creature I haven’t considered as culprit is the cat … and that’s only because all she could do is eat them, and that seems unreasonable. Doesn’t it?

  Thinking of the cat inspires me. The cat is forever knocking the little bits of things that she finds to play with down the heating vents. The heating vents! I go over to one and flatten myself on the floor, squinting down into the depths. I don’t see any tape measures, but they are plastic and slippery, so maybe they just tumble down to a place where there’s a bend in the heating duct. That spot is so far down that there’s little point in taking the cover off and reaching in. Likely all I’ll discover is that I need to vacuum, and I know that without getting the handful of dusty proof.

  Someday, my house will fall down and become part of history, complete with piles of plastic tape measures in the heating ducts. I’m only thirty-six, and I’ve lost eighty tape measures, so I figure my lifetime loss will be more than a hundred fifty. (I’m assuming an increase in tape measure responsibility in my latter years.)

  There are more than 50 million knitters in North America, though I have to figure that not all of them lose tape measures at such an alarming rate, still … Add in Europe, and you can bet that there are more than 8 billion tape measures lost in the world right now. Eight billion of them, likely in piles, lost in the bottom of homes across the world accompanied by darning needles, stitch markers, and double-pointed needles.

  A thousand years from now I imagine archaeologists working to uncover the relics of the twenty-first century. I smile to myself as I think about them trying to figure out what the strange significance of knitting must have been … that millions upon millions of knitters sacrificed billions upon billions of notions to the mighty heating ducts.

  Spring Is Sprung

  There is a universal message to spring, no matter where in the world you are or what kind of living thing you are. Every cell containing life all the way from grass through trees to leopards and humans receives the same message. It is a voice heard internally, pressing and insistent, and it says:

  Make something.

  Okay, let’s look at this. For some, this is an easy one. Grass makes more grass, trees flower to make fruit, leopards make more leopards, and people … well, the urge is fairly clear, but the interpretation varies.

  Some people clean. Their interpretation of “make something” has to do with making what they already have better. I’ve tried this spring-cleaning thing, but I don’t find it satisfying. (Big surprise.) Frankly, diluting the make-something urge with hot soapy water weakens it for me. I empty a closet and then come to my senses with a floor full of crap I haven’t seen in ten years, dust bunnies roaming like cattle, a vague sense of confusion, and no energy left for putting the mess back. Spring cleaning is not for me.

  I have fallen prey to the more traditional interpretation of spring’s message in the past, but much as I love my three daughters, making more of them is clearly not a long-term solution. Instead, for the last eight years I’ve ended up channeling this spring urge into something else: knitting. Or more specifically—Startitis. Startitis is defined as an unreasonable urge to begin new knitting projects without regard for the number of projects already begun, deadlines impending, or budgets imposed.

  As the weather warms, I start getting the message. Make something. I resist, since I already have many, many works in progress. Starting something new is out of the question. I will finish something I have on the needles. I keep knitting, but there is something unsatisfying about it. No matter how many things I finish, the urge to cast on something new is persistent. I start bargaining with myself. “After I finish this cardigan, then I will start something.” No dice. “After I finish the front of the cardigan, then?” The urge is not happy. Startitis wants me to comply. She tangles my yarn, drops the pattern under the couch twice, and sends my children in to fight while I knit. She whispers about how stupid it is to knit a cardigan when the warm weather is coming…. Who needs a cardigan? Startitis dreams of bright cotton and says nasty things about wool. She miscounts stitches and screws up the armhole shaping. Startitis throws a temper tantrum, and she plays ugly.

  I rethink my position. Maybe Startitis is right? What am I doing? A cardigan in gray wool? Was there ever a less springlike knit? The world is coming back to life, exploding with color, and here I am, knitting a stupid gray wool cardigan? What am I, dead inside?

  I snap to my senses with the realization that she almost had me there. Startitis cares nothing for me. She only wants me to begin new things. I redouble my determination to finish the cardigan, and I tell Startitis that this year, I’m using common sense. I do not need to start a new project. I can delay gratification. If I give in now, I know how it will all end. I’ll cast on a whole whack of new projects and work on them until the urge passes, and then I’ve got a whole new problem: tons more unfinished things and it’s not like Startitis’s cousin Finish-it-up-itis ever comes over for a visit. No, there’s no way I’m getting sucked in, not this year.

  I focus on the cardigan, but Startitis isn’t finished with me. While the birds sing outside, and I can smell the undeniable spring smell of melting doggie-doo, Startitis realizes that I won’t be bullied. I’m a mother of three; you can’t get me to cast on if I don’t want to. Startitis is a wily enemy, and she knows that she must appeal to my good sense, if she wants her way.

  She sends the children in. They want to go to the park; I can knit on the bench while they play. No problem, I start stuffing my cardigan into the knitting bag. It suddenly seems kind of big … and dull. I should really take something smaller to the park, something that will fit in my pocket … yeah. I need another project. I begin to drift toward the stash, maybe a hat? No, not a hat, how about that twin set, in cotton? Oh yeah, the twin set, I’m already pulling out the pattern. What cotton to use? I’m into the stash … there’s that pale yellow cotton with the slubs, can’t use that, a pale cotton for dirty park knitting? Not smart … how about the red that a friend bought in Italy? Naw, there’s not enough … Wait! I could make that little shell out of the Italian cotton, and I’ll stop at the yarn shop on the way to the park and get cotton for the twin set. Maybe a blue … like a robin’s egg, that will be just the perfect spring knitting.

  As I’m reaching for my credit card, I snap out of my reverie, seconds away from falling into the trap. Startled by my near-brush with perdition, I shove the cardigan into the bag and leave. My being away from home thwarts Startitis for several hours.

  When I get home, Startitis has my brother phone and ask me what I’m making my mother for her birthday. Now, this is just underhanded. Have I ever missed my mother’s birthday? Does Startitis think that she can trick me with this? Still, I don’t realize that this is another of her attempts until I’ve got the Italian cotton and my hand is on the pattern shelf. As I replace the book I remind myself to stay alert. The urge is not happy about me being onto her. I look at the rest of the stuff on the shelves. There are at least five unfinished projects, from just this time last year. I know she wants me to make something but it’s terribly misguided. Sure, I want to take part in the planet’s rebirth and we all know how this will end if I go the spring-cleaning route, but it’s important for me to realize that Startitis doesn’t really make anything for me; she just gets me into knitting trouble with an unfinished project in every drawer. But what’s wrong with giving in? Why not just cast on the cotton, start another sweater …
This is supposed to be fun, right? Crowded house be damned. Forget finishing projects—let the house be completely overrun with me and my stuff, needles and yarn everywhere. Who needs the satisfaction of finishing anything, ever!

  I sigh, then I go purposefully downstairs and pick up the cardigan. It’s a nice project, and no matter what Startitis says, winter will come again, and I will want this done. I wrap the wool around my fingers and feel the soft warmth of it. I’m thinking about how much I’m going to like finishing this. Evenings are still cold in the spring.

  My husband has channeled his Make something into finding the summer clothes and has gotten the Birkenstock sandals out. I love my Birks. I really do. It’s still too cold to wear them though. I could wear them with socks … yeah, that’s it. I don’t have any really nice bright socks though….

  How to Succeed at Knitting (Without Really Trying)

  It’s happened again. I have become cocky and proud and my knitting is suffering for it. The world is spinning crazily around me, and I’m looking at my knitting completely staggered. To stay on track for my deadline, I need to finish this slipper today. As I gleefully sail through the last row, I realize that I don’t have the right number of stitches left over. This means that I’ve got the whole slipper crooked, and given that my mother’s feet don’t point inward at a forty-five-degree angle, I’m going to have to rip it back and start again. Once again, I’m furious with myself for not taking more care.

  That is the knitting theme this year—rookie mistakes that shouldn’t be happening to somebody who has been knitting as long as I have. These are the sorts of mistakes that you make when you’re learning to knit; experienced knitters laugh about them over coffee. I’ve apparently decided that I am above natural knitting law. And I’m paying for it.

  I’ve finally decided that the simple rules that every knitter needs to respect can’t be outgrown. Since I can’t be the only one who, over time, comes to expect experience to outweigh common sense, I’ve come up with a list of humbling reminders.

  Swatching is not stupid. I cannot intuitively tell the gauge, behavior, or washability of every yarn in the world simply by holding it in my hand. Experience does not excuse me from knitting a swatch. This is obvious since I have in recent months knit a sweater that grew to seven times its original length when it hit water and a pair of socks that had ribbing so tight that they threatened mid-calf amputation.

  It is not dumb to circle, highlight, or otherwise indicate the instructions for the size you are knitting on your pattern. I remembered this while frantically trying to think of a family member with an enormous hunchback who could wear a sweater with a size small front, and a size large back. While reknitting the front I realized that I’m disappointed that I don’t know anyone misshapen enough. How weird is that?

  Double-checking what chart symbols mean is not for losers. Just because if I ran the world, a light blue square on a chart would correspond to using light blue yarn, this does not mean that this is what the light blue square actually means.

  Sure, a horizontal line should be a purl stitch, and it’s logical that no symbol means no stitch. But it ain’t necessarily so, as the song says.

  Shocking as it may seem, knitting designers do not have a psychic uplink with me and do not always design things the way that would be best for me personally. (On the upside of this one, while I didn’t get a sweater that looked anything like the designer’s, I believe I invented a new stitch pattern in an appallingly hideous colorway.)

  It is not a waste of time to read ahead in the pattern, I do not always know what is coming. A classic example: Carefully and deliberately working the armhole decreases according to the instructions, while ever so artfully incorporating the cable pattern into my work all the way to the top, then checking the pattern for my next step and reading “at the same time” followed by the decrease directions for the neck shaping that I should have begun six inches ago.

  Most important, I do not always know a better way to do it. Enough said. I am surrounded by an assortment of freakish knitted objects. Sweaters for which I changed the neckline to something “better” so now the neck won’t go over my head. A vest for which I thought that casting off the stitches and then picking them up again for the neck was a stupid waste of time, only to learn in a horribly graphic demonstration that this alleged time-waster prevents the neckline from stretching out so much that you can step into it. Socks with drunken cables because I was overconfident about memorizing a pattern. Two left mittens. Hats for pinheads. Socks that would only fit horses.

  I accept it. I will remember the rules. I will acknowledge that these are the simple mantras I must chant to myself if I want my knitting to look like the pattern. I will knit the words “Pride goeth before a fall” into a scarf of the scratchiest wool and wear it against my bare neck for a month to humble myself.

  If anybody knows when the circus is passing through town, please let them know that I have a few things for them.

  Yarn Requirements

  To Daring Designer,

  AbFabFibers, Inc.

  Dear Designer,

  I know how busy you are. Why just yesterday, was admiring your new pattern for your thigh-high argyle stockings with the coordinating felted garter belt. (You are such an intriguing woman.) I won’t take up much of your time, but did want to take just a moment to ask a question about some of the specifics on your sock pattern.

  Why don’t you and I try to agree on some basic principles? I’m not talking the big ones, like politics or world peace … All I want sorted out is the exact yardage on your wonderful knitting patterns. (That’s a lie. I would also really like a word with the screwdriver people, I mean get real—how many kinds of screwdrivers does the world really need? Is it not possible that we could get our crap together and agree on one kind of screw? It isn’t enough that I have to go looking for my screwdriver, but to need to find the small Phillips type screwdriver? It’s really unnecessary.) I know that the element of surprise is a valid part of your pattern writing, and that you don’t like me to think too much for myself, but I do wonder if telling me how much yarn you used would be over the line.

  Your pattern says that I need one four-ounce skein of the lighter color and an equal amount of the dark. Your pattern even tells me that each skein of your AbFab sock yarn has about 350 yards. I appreciate your efforts (however short they may fall) to supply me with (limited) information.

  My problem, my dear designer, is that I have a partial ball of your incredible sock yarn in the darker color, and I am wondering if it will be enough for the three stinking rounds that it is used for on your (as previously mentioned) wonderful pattern.

  I know that this will seem odd and shocking to you, your position in the yarn world being what it is, but just try to imagine this for a moment. What if I don’t want to buy a full boatload of your yarn every single time I knit one of your patterns? Naturally, since there can be no other yarn like your yarn, I wouldn’t dream of trying to use another company’s yarn. You should know better than anyone else that knitters never substitute yarns (right?). But is there a rule against using leftovers?

  The light-colored yarn is used for the leg and foot of the sock, so I can accept that I would need a brand spanking new 350-yard skein. My question is for the darker yarn. Since it is only used for those three masterful rounds at the top of the sock, is it true that I need a full 350-yard skein, as your pattern requirements state? Or have you figured out a way to knit a black hole into the top of that sock? I wouldn’t doubt it, your skills being what they are.

  I know that doing this your way means that more people purchase more yarn, rather than using up leftovers or spinning their own, and that selling more yarn is in your best interests. I even appreciate that you need to sell me more yarn to support yourself so that you can continue your important design work. (Your Fair Isle toilet seat cover work is groundbreaking by the way—good for you, for not listening to those silly “market surveys. “) But would it be comp
letely unreasonable for me to ask whether, perhaps, I only need maybe ten yards of the darker color for the sock?

  Your lady of the limited realistic budget,

  Stephanie

  P.S. Letters are a two-way street, and it wouldn’t kill you to write back once in a while.

  “IT”

  Once again, it’s Christmastime. How I can be completely blindsided by a holiday that happens on the same day each year is absolutely beyond me. You’d swear that they only announce the date for Christmas in November and I have maybe three weeks to cope with the news. Once again I am nowhere near ready, and once again my family has turned its back on me.

  I can’t really blame the poor embattled souls; they have been down this road with me before and they know how it ends. I know how it ends too. “IT” is the bane of our holidays. Every year I swear that “IT” will never happen again, that I will learn from my experience. It seems I can’t be taught.

  Even as I write, I don’t believe that “IT” will happen to me this year. This year will be different. This year I can do it.

  Here’s how “IT” begins. Sometime in the fall, when the weather gets crisp and wearing wool starts to make sense again, I realize that Christmas is coming and I’d better get started on the holiday knitting. (Mind you, if everyone pitched in and did something about global warming I might get more of a heads-up, but never mind.) Usually I voice this happy concern as I begin taking apart the stash, leaving stacks of patterns and yarn around the house, and further neglecting housework and my real job. Every year I am convinced that this time, I have started early enough to avoid “IT.” I plan all kinds of things. Little sweaters for babies I know, hats for quick gifts, socks to keep darling feet warm and afghans for new homes. (That’s right—afghans. Hope springs eternal.)