Knit Happens

Hello-o-o out there...if indeed anyone still comes by! I realize there's been nothing new happening on this website lately, but I have returned and hope to see you. The project that has consumed all my writing and creative energies is done and in production–-it's a book, and I'll tell you about it soon. So I'm shifting my attention back to other things, including the blog, and I'll try to be more consistent. I've missed this sharing space.

Anyway, after months of dancing my fingers on the computer keyboard, I decided to see if I could get them to move some knitting needles. Knitting is something I have occasionally taken up at various points in my life, never with any long-term dedication and never moving beyond fumbling beginner. But when my friend Carey invited me to go with her to a class in the back of a knitting store in Santa Barbara on Sunday I said sure, why not?

The shop was in an old house on a side street. It had the feeling of a secret hideaway, but we knew we'd found the right place because there was a tree in front adorned with knitted scarves and patches. We went into the back room and seated ourselves at a table with three other women, all of them quietly and industriously knitting. I overheard one woman say that she wanted to make a "simple cardigan" which sounded like an oxymoron, but Carey and I selected what we were told would be the easiest project: hand-warmers.

Hand-warmers are basically gloves without fingers, and are thus intrinsically absurd. As someone who lived for years in the Northeast, I can tell you based on experience that while your fingers are stinging with cold you are not at all concerned with the meatier parts of your hand. I am told, however, that hand-warmers are good for activities such as typing in chilly houses, and some people think they look cute. I decided to make a pair for my daughter in England. I can picture her using them.

I chose a beautiful yarn in various shades of blue blending into one another. It was about the price of a decent pair of gloves with fingers, but I knew that wasn't the point. The instructor showed me how to cast on and then I began knitting rows of thirty stitches each. "You're speedy," said the instructor, as the old motion came back to me. There's something very satisfying about it.

Alas, I'm afraid it's going to be very much like swimming. As soon as you get one part straight, new complexities are introduced. Hand-warmers will involve purling, thumb openings, stitching, and then replicating the whole damned thing for the other hand. "Maybe I'll just do a long, skinny scarf," I said.

"That's a defeatist attitude," said the woman next to me. "Just take it one stitch at a time. That's the thing about knitting. You'll get there."

I knew that was a metaphor for life, of course. But I'm still not sure how far I wanna take this hand-warmer thing. We'll see.

And here's a poem I wrote many years ago about my knitting history.

KNITTING

What thoughts did I loop into each stitch
of the scarf that grew so wide and unwieldy
knitting in the dorm yarns burgundy black
my clumsy creation mindlessly distending
my first my primitive offspring graceless
but substantial presented to a boyfriend
who wore it like a shawl across his back
tucked beneath a military issue overcoat
from the army navy store and who later
lost it somewhere in Chicago left behind
on a bench or on the el perhaps he observed
with relief a new lightness at his shoulders
then the old dismay of a small sudden loss
and followed by the need for explanation
how could you lose a scarf your girlfriend
gave you her first attempt at domestic art
a cloak to wrap you in commitment and
protect you from the cold a kind of pledge
thick and slurred like words spoken in sleep
from which we both soon enough awoke

and thirty years later I again
take up the knitting needles and my fingers
soon recall the simple dance of knit and purl
my style unchanged uneven loops that start
out tight and loosen up into a happy chaos
this one for my daughter and I now and then
drop a stitch thinking of
how crazy people in my
family really are how weird it would be to
fall that far and then I tighten up aware of
the present loving even the bumps and
inconsistencies that make no pattern but
continue hopefully and even if this scarf is
lost or left behind someplace my daughter
knows a kind of comfort on her shoulders
that has nothing to do with yarn

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