Yarn Harlot (10 page)

I have pulled all the cushions from the couch. My baskets of projects and yarn are overturned and the contents scattered. Balls of yarn have rolled everywhere. The credenza that the TV sits on is opened and trashed, and I am in the process of dumping every single thing out of the drawers. My hair is wild, my face is red, and I am completely furious. Incensed. Enraged. Why would a grown woman shred her own living room? Especially a grown woman who has not yet met her lifetime goal of teaching her children to pick up after her? Why you ask? Why?

I’m looking for a tape measure.

I estimate that in my thirty-year knitting career, I have probably bought/been given/acquired at least two tape measures per year. Some years, I manage to procure three or four. I purchase a tape measure every time I think of it in a sewing shop. Then I buy them whenever I can’t find one. I have never, ever thrown one away, and I don’t pack them off as gifts. This means that I probably own about eighty tape measures. So, I beg of you, just where the hell
are
they?

The house should be filthy with them. We should be tripping over them. It should be that every single time you turn around, there is another stinking tape measure. Joe should be forever asking me to manage the tape measure problem. We should be having long conversations that start with statements like, “Holy cow, Steph, do you really need all these tape measures? Look at this place, for the love of wool—there’s one in the bathroom and two on the landing. Get a grip.” Think about it: At least eighty tape measures in this tiny house—that’s about eleven and a half per room. I should have whole boxes of tape measures wrapped tenderly in colored tissue paper with little shrines above them. When people come into my home, they should start to think that I have a real but unhealthy obsession with knowing the size of things.

Instead, I have been looking for one skinny little traitorous tape measure for almost an hour and I’m starting to think that it’s a plot.

That’s it. It’s a conspiracy. There’s a club of hostile knitters who sneak into my home and take knitting notions. No—knitters wouldn’t be that cruel. Would they?

I hate even to contemplate accusing my brothers and sisters in wool, but since the crime is not limited to tape measures but also includes a mind-boggling number of darning needles and stitch markers and a frightening array of double-pointed needles, it is clear to me that our perpetrator, whoever he or she is, has an interest in the needle arts.

Joe wanders into the living room and surveys the damage. Wisely, he keeps his mouth pretty much shut whenever we are having a tape measure episode.

“There are eleven and a half tape measures in this room,” I fume as I dump the contents of the DVD shelf on the floor, “and I am going to find one of them if it kills me.” Joe watches as I open all of the cases and look inside. “Steph?” he says. I glance up from my mission. He gives me a look. We’ve been married long enough that I know that look. It’s his “you are starting to get a little crazy with this” face. I take a deep breath. I know that he’s right.

Looking in the movie cases is a little unreasonable. It is highly unlikely that anyone who lives here would have gone to the trouble to
coil
up a tape measure, then take a case from the shelf, open it, meticulously flatten the tape measure inside, and replace the case in order simply to hide a tape measure from me. As much fun as it is to watch me completely melt down every time I need to know how long my knitting is, we are talking about a family that can’t be bothered to put dishes
in
the dishwasher instead of
on
it. No, no … a member of this family would not hide my tape measures in such a labor-intensive way.

“I bet the kids took them,” Joe offers. I try to imagine what the children would need eighty tape measures for. Some strange
club? An invention? An extremely precise Maypole? It seems too implausible. I imagine the kids in a darkened corner. They have candles and they are muttering. Around them are all the tape measures, stacked in little piles.

“What would they do with my tape measures?” I ask Joe.

“What do the children do with anything?” he replies. He has a point. Anyone who has kids knows that it is not at all unusual to find three spatulas and a plastic turkey baster in the Lego bin. Children sometimes have plans that are … abstract, to say the least.

I start upstairs to check the Lego bin. The Lego bin turns up nothing but Legos, three Barbie shoes, a butter knife, a button off a sweater I knit last year and the screwdriver that Joe looked for all last week. I do a little better in the toy box, where I find all six pairs of my scissors. Maybe they take the tape measures and cut them into tiny bits that are easy to dispose of. It’s tape measure murder. It’s possible that I’d notice a whole tape measure in the garbage, but who’d see it a little at time? Perhaps they take the thousands of little snipped bits out into the world and throw them away in stages? One at the mall, two at a friend’s house, three in the garbage can of the lunchroom, where the bits join all the other things that children take from their parents in order to try and put the parents into an early grave or an institution. It’s possible—but again, my children are untidy enough that it’s impossible that there is no evidence. There would have to be a few incriminating fragments of tape measure in the bottom of the toy box to support my theory.

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.

T
here 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.