Yarn Harlot (14 page)

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

T
here 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.

Lene is giving it all away. Ken and I are supposed to divvy it up and take it. All of it. Despite my knitterly imperative to cavort and stuff my bags full, I can hardly touch it.

Lene is giving away her whole stash because Lene has rheumatoid arthritis. Although its vicious workings have confined her to a wheelchair, I have never considered her disabled (just nonwalking) until today.

Lene’s hands won’t do it anymore. They are exhausted and knotted and tired, and they won’t knit.

I can’t imagine giving up knitting. I simply can’t. I try to imagine what I would do if I didn’t knit. How would I fill those hours? How could I not be knitting? If I had to give up knitting I’d certainly have to take smoking up again—maybe heroin … I certainly would be ruder and wait less patiently. I think about all the time I’ve spent waiting in my life. I think about arriving at the doctor’s office and having to bide my time; instead of being frustrated and angry, I’m grateful. I pull the sock from my purse and turn the waiting time into footwear that will warm the feet of someone I love … maybe Lene. She’s always been my favorite person to knit socks for, since she doesn’t walk in them and wear them out. The softest yarn—yarn too soft to knit socks from, really—makes perfect socks for Lene. She’ll never wear through a heel. There are advantages to not walking. You get the best socks.

Lene has always appreciated the socks that I knit her. A Knitter herself, she knows how hard-won the vine lace borders on her latest pair are. She understands the sacredness of her dragon
socks, because we had a long talk about the difficulties of knitting the tail that curves around her ankle. Lene is Danish, and the Danes know knitting. She learned to knit as a little girl in school where (be still my beating heart) knitting was a
subject.
She often mocked non-Danish Knitters like me and laughs at our patterns. A Danish pattern, she told me, doesn’t spoon-feed the knitter. It might say “After the leg, make the heel,” with no further clue as to what might be required. “Make the heel?” I asked her. “Just ‘Make the heel’?” That doesn’t seem like a lot to go on. As a matter of fact, it seems a little scary. Danish Knitters expect you to have more nerve. They expect you to know how to make a heel. Even if you missed that day in school, your friends know, your mother knows, your neighbor next door can teach you. My head is filled with little Danish girls turning out socks that rival my own. I know about the Danish love of candles and family, and I imagine a whole country of cozy Knitters quietly turning heels by candlelight in the long mild winter. Lene is Danish, and I wonder how she feels, thwarted by her tired hands, having to give up knitting.

Lene and I don’t talk much about this, this huge scary Not Knitting. When the trouble started, it unsettled me so much that I tried to fix it. Shorter needles, bigger needles. Plastic, then metal, then soft, warm wood. I counseled her against cotton, telling her that it was too inelastic. “Switch to soft wool,” I suggested. “It’s easier on your hands.”

Nothing worked. Knitting hurt.

I tried hard to absorb these two words. “Knitting. Hurt.” That couldn’t be right. Knitting couldn’t be hurting her hands. Knitting soothed. Knitting was magic. Knitting took idle moments and
made them worthwhile. Knitting made stupid moments smart. Knitting was whole hours spent turning dumb useless string into shawls and scarves and mittens that warmed hands and proved love. Knitting could
hurt?

My struggle to understand was nothing compared to Lene’s struggle to accept. Her body was antagonistic. Its goals weren’t the same as hers. She wanted to go; it wanted to stop. She wanted to travel; it wanted to stay home. She was about speed and quickness and cleverness, but her body disagreed. It was too busy turning itself into knots to take up her causes. It took away walking and dancing and skating. It took away running and climbing trees and getting Lene out of bed in the morning. It took so much, but it left knitting. Knitting was the one thing her hands would still do. They might be knotted and tired, but they could still make stitches. The body that wouldn’t skip or waltz or do stairs could still take a ball of soft yarn and two needles and take the time to make neat, even stitches in order. Mittens, scarves, and baby things came away from Lene’s needles, as perfect and orderly as she dreamed. Lene took this as proof that her body was not all bad, not completely the enemy. As long as she could knit, there was still this one thing, this small proof that she was not simply a marvelous brain atop a useless carriage.

Now, suddenly, knitting hurt, and no modification of the art helped. I gave Lene better and better wool and she bought heaps of it herself, both of us somehow thinking that temptation would lead her rebel hands back to the art of wrapping wool around needles and leaving socks in their wake. But nothing worked, not one thing.

Now, months after knitting her last stitch, Lene is giving away her stash.

Ken and I are torn. We both want to make her laugh, to forget that this is the end of making things. We want to forget that this is the moment when we all admit that her arthritis has, in this matter, gotten the better of her. We fight over the wool, but neither of us wants to take it. We get two bins, mine and his, and we start to divide the yarn. Lene tells us the story of each yarn as we take it, and slowly, we start to feel better. For the moment we are soothed, lost in the tale each yarn has to tell us.

We pay attention to Lene’s wishes. That blue mohair, the one the color of baby eyes, it was supposed to be a shawl for Lene’s friend Michelle. I take that one. I lay it in the bin and make a mental note: Shawl for Michelle. Ken gets the discontinued Aran-weight tweed. Lene had planned an intricately cabled pullover for herself with that yarn. I watch Ken; he’s making the same note-to-self, recording carefully what Lene’s intentions were. The chocolate milk alpaca (a scarf for Lene’s mother, Bea) goes into my bin and we laugh at the collection of bright, plain good wool in crayon colors that Ken puts in his. Lene has no idea what she was thinking for that. Sock yarn, mitten yarn, needles, and patterns, Ken and I sort them according to who likes what.

Getting this much free yarn should be a blast; I should be loving it. But it’s horrible. It’s a wake for Lene’s knitting.

When the evening ends, Ken and I each have a big bin of Lene’s wool. A whole knitting career divided into two big bins and a couple of bags. There is no evidence of Lene’s life as a Knitter left in the apartment. I try hard not to feel like we are taking
all hope with us. Rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive disease; Lene knows she will not knit again and I understand her urge to see the wool meet happy and productive ends. Ken and I make a couple of lame jokes on the way out the door (“We’d like to thank arthritis for making this stash enhancement possible.”), but I’m pretty sure Lene cried when we left.

Months later, it’s almost Michelle’s birthday, and the baby blue eyes mohair is on my needles. Ken’s got a hat for Lene’s sister on the go. Lene’s yarn might be in my stash, but it isn’t my stash. I knit it for birthdays and Christmas and special events, and on the tag it always reads “from Lene.” We are proxy Knitters, Ken and I; we are making up for what her hands won’t do.

N
ot too long ago, shortly after Christmas, when I was feeling generous, I was approached by a friend with a knitting crisis. I now feel confident that he chose his victim and his timing carefully. He knows me too well.

First, he knew that having been pushed to the edge of sanity by “IT” and then barely rescued by sleep, I was bound to be vulnerable and weak. Second, he knew that knitting crises are second nature to me; since I am usually plagued by disaster and upset, I might not notice this one. Third, he knew the secret words and was not afraid to use them.

“I need you to finish this. I can’t knit it. It’s too hard.”

There they are, the magic words: “It’s too hard.” Ya got me. I know, I know. I’m going to get a T-shirt that says “Pride goeth before a fall,” and wear it every day for a month.

Since I was still riding a high that came from blocking a lace shawl, I took the bait.

He dragged out his knitting bag, and dumped the knitting reject
onto the floor. I recognized it immediately. It was the Bird Jacket, from Debbie Bliss’s
Bright Knits for Kids.
It’s a really lovely thing. If you are a new knitter, or the type who feels a little woozy with color projects, then read this slowly, perhaps while sitting down.

Ten colors. Cotton. Intarsia.

Now I’m an experienced knitter, but even the surest of needle persons knows his or her limits, and while I love the Bird Jacket, those three elements are the bane of my existence. I should have remembered that ten colors is a lot, that I hate weaving in ends, and that intarsia in cotton is a particularly difficult thing for me. I’ve seen lovely examples, and I bow to knitters who can make intarsia in cotton look even and smooth, but every time I do it, I end up half crazed. For reasons that escape me even now, it takes a superhuman effort for me to end up with something that looks respectable. Cotton makes me curse.

But all of self-knowledge went straight down the tubes in the face of the challenge on the table. He claimed that this sweater was “too hard” for him? Well, without being unkind, from the look of his knitting, he had a point. He claimed that Debbie Bliss should read Elizabeth Zimmermann. He was livid with her for having the gall to put four colors in a row.

“Nobody can do four colors in a row,” he claimed angrily. He seemed to feel that Elizabeth’s dictum (“two colors in a row”) should be a law, not a suggestion.

I murmured supportive things, discussed the benefits of patience, and suggested other strategies for making this work. He was unmoved. He had a hate on for Debbie Bliss, her Bird Jacket, cotton, and knitting in general. His rant only served to motivate
me further. After all, I am superknitter, and “It’s too hard,” and “Nobody can do four colors”—well … them’s fightin’ words.