Knit On, Knit On

" But even if all the experts don't agree, I'd still know what knitting does for me...when I knit, as when I write, I find myself in ecstatic participation in a divinely animated world." - Bernadette Murphy, Zen and the Art of Knitting

My mother was an accomplished knitter, and she taught me the basic Continental knit/purl when I was eight or so. Although I never produced much more than rhomboid- shaped scarves as a child, I started knitting with commitment in college. I thought it might come in handy if I survived Armageddon and was called upon to rebuild civilization (I thought about those kinds of things a lot when I was in college).

I've gone in knitting bursts since then - one year, I knitted a shawl for everyone I had ever met. Another year, everyone's baby got a beanie shaped like a pumpkin. I knit. I don't knit. I knit again.

I take breaks in between because I find knitting very stressful. My daughter will attest to the fact that I am a psycho when I knit. I'm preoccupied. I'm irritable. I'm mean. A cloud of blue smoke envelopes me because I am screaming the most profane curses imaginable at my knitting. I have been found standing next to the garbage can (still cursing) with scissors snipping an almost completed sweater to bits because I discovered, belatedly, that I had spent weeks knitting two fronts instead of one front and one back. Knitting brings out the worst in me.

I have had more knitting failure than success, so I don't know what seductive power knitting has over me. My best guess is that knitting, like love (which also brings out the worst in me), is the triumph of hope over experience. No matter how many times I swear I'm going to give up the needles and the wasted life, all I have to do is walk by a yarn shop and I've got three pattern magazines and a bag full of some ungodly expensive exotic yarn before I ever think of calling my sponsor.

But it is always so intoxicating at the beginning, isn't it? This is where I lose my head. There are no problems, and it all seems so promising. Surely, you are the same as I. Does a light of recognition flicker on when you read my words?

You have beguiling needles from Bali hand carved with tiny forest creatures on the top. You have $400 worth of Baby Alpaca yarn in your bag (Pre-Natal Alpaca being illegal and very hard to come by, unless you know someone who knows someone who knows a guy that just goes by the alias "The Peruvian"). You have a complex pattern written entirely in Finnish, but you had a friend who has Finnish ancestors translate it for you, and you are relatively confident you can follow the instructions.

This is the purest moment of knitting bliss you will ever enjoy. Like romance, everything about your future sweater is perfect. The stitches are beautifully even. You have plenty of yarn. The potential of this sweater lies before you, filled with glowing promise. Knitting will be effortless. You already know that you don't need to check the gauge, because this sweater will be an exact fit.

Oh, the things you and your sweater will do! The places you will travel together - the intriguing people that you will meet! And everywhere you go, people will approach you - tentatively - with fingertips outstretched. They will inquire, with a glance, if they may gently stroke your sweater. Did you make it yourself? You did? It is magnificent. They acknowledge that they could NEVER make anything so fine and, even if they could, they would never look as lovely as you do at this very moment.

This would be an excellent place to just quit. Don't wind that alpaca yarn into balls - leave the skeins. Admire your whimsical needles, and put them back in your needle case.

There are so many things that can and will go wrong when you actually start knitting this sweater that you would be better to simply delude yourself with the fantasy and leave off the knitting part all together. But you don't believe me, do you? I can see you already beginning to rationalize - beginning to fan the tiny flame of hope.

You tell yourself that this time will be different - this pattern and this yarn are not like all of the others. You learned so much from your last sweater. You learned to express your knitting needs: "I took out an equity loan to buy 15 skeins of yarn that's 90% bamboo and 10% panda." You learned to establish firm pattern boundaries: "I will bauble; I will not cable." Your creative juices are flowing; you will knit outside the bag. You can approach this new project stronger, with eyes wide open and free of unrealistic expectations.

Uh-huh. Well, I wish you the best. Maybe, for you, it will be different. Maybe you won't be sobbing on Christmas Eve night when you discover that the sweater you made and were going to put under the tree for your beloved has sleeves so long it will only fit a mature orangutan. And your partner is not an orangutan.

I wish I had the grace to concede that I might be wrong about the inevitable harsh disappointments that will result from your knitting. But I'm a realist and an experienced knitter, and I caution you from falling under the spell of false prophets who offer you encouragement.

Do not be persuaded by Bernadette Murphy (see above), that knitting is the portal to "ecstatic participation in a divinely animated world." How she extracts so much bliss and sacred meaning from an activity that is, at best, an exercise in controlling seething rage is beyond my ken. I can only guess that she switched to new anti-depressants when she wrote that and everything she saw was suffused with goodness for a couple of weeks.

Do not fall prey to those who promise some sort of religious awakening through knitting. In "Knitting Into the Mystery", authors Susan Izard and Susan Jorgensen had the audacity to write, "While I knitted, I prayed to enter her grief. I prayed light into every stitch. I prayed that she be comforted. I prayed that she be healed." Me? When I knit, I pray that everyone, everywhere, will just shut up and leave me to my misery.

I don't mean to sound too judgmental - I know that one person's path to inner peace is another person's highway to Hades. I'm usually a supporter of navel-gazing, even if it manifests in some odd forms. Maybe, when all of the stitches drop off your double-points (because the dog caught her tags on your yarn and then went running off to bark at squirrels and dragged your knitting with her), maybe you do whisper, "I am offering a blessing to end the suffering of humanity while I start this fair-isle sock all over again."

Maybe you do compose, like Maria Fire in "Knit One, Haiku Too", a hand-wringing, exceptionally bad knitting haiku: "Night full of crickets, confusion and broken dreams, Skein of Russian Blue." Never mind that there is no logical connection between crickets, broken dreams and yarn (and why are there so many crickets in haiku, anyway? And, isn't "Russian Blue" a type of cat?). Here's my own: "Near the breaking point, I lift my pointed needle, and impale myself." (That's more like it.)

If these women were real knitters, they'd be embittered; they'd have carpal tunnels syndrome and they would be cursing the fisherman of the ancient world who came up with knitting in the first place. They would understand that knitting is a soul crushing activity, rather than a Zen meditation.

There is plenty of excruciating pain on the knitting path. Much of it does not lead to everlasting peace or global unity. Before you lose yourself in "ecstatic participation" again (or for the first time), pause for a moment to consider the shadow side of knitting. Consult your runes. Consider Jungian analysis...whatever. Remember that knitting is bad. Do not be seduced by a Debbie Bliss shrug pattern in a cashmere/silk medium weight. It will end in tears for at least one of the following reasons...

1. Hand knit sweaters look awful on you.

If you stuff almost any man into a hand knit sweater, he magically transforms. His shoulders widen, his jaw line tightens, and his eyes take on a commanding intensity. Even the wispiest of men seemed touched by the wand of rugged masculinity in a hand knit sweater. A man in an Aran just looks like he can master the wilderness, tame the turbulent sea and carry you to safety should you swoon. In a hand knit sweater, a man always smells like wood smoke and a whiff of cognac.

Children and babies are similarly enhanced by lovely hand knits. Their perfect complexions and rosebud mouths are made still more adorable by soft cotton kimono sweaters and sturdy crew-necks with a parade of ducks across the front. Even your pug or dachshund looks more fetching (no pun intended) in a hand knit garment than you do.

In fact, everyone except women old enough to actually know how to knit sweaters looks fabulous in hand knits. We, on the other hand, look like we are wearing small yurts around our torsos. The sweater that looks so fine on the whisker-thin knitwear model gives me the general proportions of a plus-size Yeti. It's extremely unjust.

Hand knits are gorgeous, but unlike thinner commercial knits, they tend to have bulk. If cables and baubles and ribbing are added, the sweater becomes even thicker and stiffer. The sweater accommodates the widest point of the female body and then settles there giving you, not an hourglass, but a trapezoidal figure.

Over the years, I have collected hand knit sweaters from thrift stores. These are masterpieces of needlework that some highly skilled knitters, somewhere, spent months and much expense making. Although attention and experience went into these sweaters, no one wears them. The sweater adds 5-7 pounds to the wearer's silhouette. The knitter, or the recipient, gave the sweater away in disgust. I keep them safe (sort of as a memorial to the unknown knitter), but I don't wear these sweaters either. I would look like I'm walking around in an intarsia bubble.

2. One sock is the size of a hamster; the other could fit on a water ski.

Most knitting requires duplication. A pullover has a front and a back. A cardigan has a right side and a reversed left side. If there is one sleeve, there is usually a second sleeve. Somehow, more often than not, the complimentary piece will not match the first, second and, perhaps, third time you knit it if you ever get that far (see trash can and scissors above). I don't know why.

3. You will run out; you will not be able to buy more. Not ever.

You have spent six months working on a sweater with intertwined dragons for your beloved. It is so complicated that you need to be fluent in Gaelic just to read the pattern. This will be a flattering sweater; a sweater like this will make his chin seem more chiseled, or her auburn hair appear even more Titian. You bought the heathered tweed at a tiny yarn shop in the charming village you visited on your tour of Celtic Castles. "What a perfect souvenir," you said, as you dumped most of your vacation money on the counter. "I'll make him/her a sweater from wool grown right here! "

If you are a knitter, you have done this at least twice and you know what's coming next. The last piece, a sleeve, is 8" too short. You need just one more skein of that rare yarn that you bought somewhere in the Highlands last spring. Do you have a receipt? Do you remember the name of the shop? Do you even know what village your bus stopped at on your way to which castle?

Let's say you do. Somehow, you have enough information to email the yarn shop. Do we score? No, we do not. That wool was a limited run from a local spinner who a) developed an allergy to wool and b) sold her small herd of rare arctic musk ox and c) moved to Sardinia for the sun. It will be much easier to have your sweetheart's forearms surgically shortened than it will to find just one more skein of this singular yarn.

4. You can't read the pattern until you learn Old Norse.

On your Norwegian fjord cruise, you became enamored with a traditional sweater (and, perhaps, the Norwegian wearing it). Somehow, during your tour of Oslo, you found a yarn shop and a copy of the sweater pattern that dates back from the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872. This will be such an interesting challenge to knit.

If only you could. But you can't, because the pattern is directly translated from the Old Norse. Hardly anyone can translate Old Norse except for a handful of Viking scholars. You think you can figure it out anyway. See trash can and scissors, above.

5. It will not shrink to fit...you, anyway.

Some yarns are made to shrink down after washing and result in an ideal fit. That is true, but the sweater will shrink to perfectly fit a total stranger. It will not fit you or anyone to whom you intended to give the sweater.

6. The yarn is so good, you can't have any.

Along with the recently converted enthusiasts who claim that knitting is as spiritually transforming as, say, traversing the Camino de Santiago de Compostelo, we old-school knitters are facing another, insidious threat to our traditional way of unenlightened knitting, The eco-knitters have begun to overtake the yarn shop.

Back in the day, we knitted with Red Heart 100% acrylic yarn and metal needles, and we were grateful because we couldn't get acrylic or metal during the War.* The whole panorama of "green-knitting" is too broad and complex to review now (although, stay tuned - a whole article on cruelty-free everything is coming your way, eventually), but I'm here to tell you that you simply aren't ecologically pure enough to own sustainably-harvested rosewood needles.

You are not conscientious enough to buy a 100% soybean yarn that helps support UNICEF (I swear on my #5 circular needle, I am not making that up). You will never be knit-chic enough to acquire even a skein of yarn made from organic cotton and milk fiber (I don't know...maybe it's the casein?). And if you think that you can waltz in with a knitting bag made of rubber salvaged from abandoned trucks and tractors, you aren't fooling anybody. I snort, derisively, in your general direction, you eco-knitting wannabe.

So. What? Despite all of that you are still compelled? Ah, well. I hear you. I, too, am powerless when I hear the Siren call of knitting. As Rumi once said, although, I don't think he was referring to knitting, " Ours is not a caravan of despair." Even though we lose our faith over and over, we find it again at the bottom of our bag, in a tangled jumble. Our hope is renewed each time we pick up a single skein from the clearance basket and believe, much like the Jews with the oil in the temple, that there will be enough yarn in the one leftover skein to make a cardigan.

Knit on, knit on, with hope in your heart. You'll never knit alone. I'll be knitting, and swearing a blue streak right next to you.

*An excerpt from my mother's proposed biography entitled, You Couldn't Get Cheese During the War.

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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