Yarn Harlot (18 page)

I have a new motto for the family crest:

Veni, Vidi, Steeki.

I came. I saw. I steeked.

G
ood morning, class, and welcome to today’s critique of Stephanie’s knitting last night. I’m afraid that we have some real issues here, so let’s get started. Shall we view the films of last night’s knitting?

First, our subject worked on her very attractive intarsia Eeyore blankie, even though the intended recipient is just about to head off to the seventh grade.
(One point given for stick-to-it-iveness.)
Some of you have raised concerns about the reverse side of this blanket and the multitude of ends that intarsia produces. Given that Stephanie has, in the past, simply stuffed a finished item into the back of her closet and pretended that she never knit it rather than deal with weaving in all the ends, I agree that she is a prime candidate for problematic end management.

What’s she doing there? What’s going on? Oh yes, that’s ideal. Stephanie is exhibiting the ability to learn! She has remembered the last time that she did intarsia (I’m sure we all remember that little episode), when she left weaving in each and every
single one of the gazillion ends until she was finished, expecting, perhaps, that little elves would come and save her. Then, overwhelmed with the sheer mass of weaving in to do, she suffered a fit of apoplexy and denied all knowledge of the sweater. In fact, our reconnaissance group can confirm that this sweater is still in the back of the closet, although the subject has buried it with sock yarns and a half-finished hat. This time it looks like she is weaving the ends in as she goes. Well, perhaps there is hope for her after all.
(Two points granted for not repeating past mistakes.)

After working on the blanket for a reasonable length of time, Stephanie decided to move on to socks. This was an excellent choice as her movie selection for the evening was a rather dorky comedy, and visual comedy and intarsia do not mix. Here again, we see real growth as a knitter.
(One point for appropriate project selection.)
As you know, last year at this time, she would have neglected to switch projects and suffered a critical error (like knitting a third ear on poor Eeyore) while attempting to combine chart reading and comedy watching. Always risky. Having finished the first sock of her daughter’s pair, she has actually cast on for the second.
(One point for avoiding second sock syndrome.)

As Stephanie is a little obsessive about having socks that match, she carefully found the proper spot in the self-patterning yarn’s repeat and began.
(One point for fussiness.)
Note that it did not take long for her to realize that something was amiss.
(Good catch there … two points for paying attention, despite the movie.)
It appeared that she had made an error in selecting the appropriate start point in the yarn. Perplexed, Stephanie promptly ripped back the sock, double-checked the correct starting spot, and
began again.
(Two-point deduction for starting again without changing anything. When will she learn that doing the same thing over again will not give you different results?)
She was surprised to discover several rows later that the same problem was recurring.
(One-point deduction for not seeing that coming.)

Careful examination of the yarn revealed that although she had knit the first sock drawing from the center of the ball, and she had begun the second sock drawing from the center of the ball, the colors were inexplicably appearing in a different order. After ruling out differing dye lots, (good thought), our test subject slowly worked out that in fact the yarn was exactly the same but had been wound into balls at the factory in a different order.
(One point granted for coming up with the answer; two points deducted for calling it sabotage and muttering about conspiracy.)

Stephanie then decided that what needed to be done here was either to knit from the outside of the ball, which would be inconvenient for her, as much of the center of the ball had been displaced by this early knitting process
(One point deducted for using the phrase “stupid pain in the arse.”)
or rewind the ball into the correct self-patterning order. Stephanie retrieved her very fun ball winder, clamped it to the table, and smiled a little smile for figuring out such a good solution.
(One point granted for figuring out a good solution, two deducted for not remembering that Pride goeth before a fall.)
She rewound it at great speed, chuckling to herself at the joy of ball winders.
(We’re letting this one go, ball winders are really fun.)

When she had rewound the yarn, Stephanie located the correct spot to begin her socks and then noted that she had not
solved her problem; the yarn remained wound in the wrong order.
(Two points deducted for foul language.)
Class … can anyone tell us where Stephanie went wrong? Yes? You in the back … Yes, that’s right. If one takes the center of a center pull ball, and puts that into the slot on a ball winder (hereafter referred to as the
center
of the ball winder) and winds, then you still have the former center as the current center. Good for you for figuring it out on the first go.
(Three points deducted for Stephanie thinking that rewinding it
again
center to center would fix this problem, and another one point deducted for foul language, as well as an additional point for what she almost said to Joe when he asked her what the hell she was doing.)

Eventually, it occurred to Stephanie that if she wanted the inside of the current ball to be on the outside of the next ball, she would have to do something other than rewinding the yarn perpetually from center to center, and she had a major breakthrough
(Two points for finally figuring it out; one point deducted for being, you know … “slow.”)
and rewound it from the outside to the inside. This final action meant that after a prolonged period of winding she finally was ready to begin her sock.
(One point deducted for casting on the wrong number of stitches when she was ready to continue; however, two points granted for not setting fire to the entire thing when she realized it.)

Final score: Out of a possible 14, Stephanie scored −3. Tomorrow’s class: an examination of the minimum intelligence level required to knit.

My Family, and Other Works in Progress

I
like to think of myself as an equal opportunity knitter. I will knit anything … well, I’ll knit anything once. We will not speak of terrible mistakes with intarsia in cotton, or the decision that lace-weight cabled sweaters were wise. I’ll knit anything that I like, and since I like knitting, the world is my oyster. I’m even more flexible than that, since I’ll knit anything that someone I like likes. I’ll also knit to prove a point or serve a dare. I’ll knit almost any object (though I still don’t quite see the point of woolly wine bottle covers or condom cozies or willy warmers) and I’ll knit just about any color.

But sadly, not all recipients of my woolly love are as free, commodious, or inclusive as I. Instead, they constantly fetter my whims with their own restrictive rules. Color, for instance. Take sage green. This morning I showed my lovely husband, Joe, who is naturally the manliest of men, a fine sage green wool; I was considering it as a possibility for a pair of felted slippers for a male friend. Joe looked at the wool for a fraction of a second and
announced that not only would he never wear it, but that it was “a funny green.”

Joe is not a good barometer for acceptable manly color-sense. He is firmly embedded at the straight-Newfoundlander-man end of the color sense scale, and it might be that he’s not the best guide to what other men might find acceptable. Joe’s personal rules for color are as follows: He will wear absolutely any color as long as it is gray, black, dark blue, or brown. Deep murky green may be acceptable if it’s so dark as to be indistinguishable as green. White is okay in small doses, but only on certain parts of the body. You’d be as likely to get him into white pants as you would to get him to wear a negligee to a hockey game. Joe will not wear a garment that combines two colors, even if both colors appear on the acceptable color list. Exceptions might be made for subtleties, like black stitching on a gray shirt, but this is pretty dodgy. There is no chance for a Fair Isle sweater within these rules, verily not even stripes. If Joe sees a man wearing even the most conservative gray-on-gray pinstripes, he will giggle to himself and mumble things like “Whoa … what’s
he
thinking?” Inexplicably, Joe owns and wears a bright yellow raincoat with a silver stripe on it. It’s just a little curveball that he throws in there to attempt to keep me confused for the duration of our marriage.

Since Joe operates on the cautious end of the male color scale, I decided I couldn’t completely trust him on the appropriateness of sage green. I called my friend Ken. Ken sits firmly on the other end of the what-men-might-wear scale. Ken actually wears color, and in combinations. He has even been known to
be a little avant-garde with the color thing. He once owned a pair of very stylish pants in yellow ocher, and he sports T-shirts in colors straight out of the crayon box. Ken owns many striped things and even dares to flaunt the occasional paisley tie. Therefore, seeking some balance in the question of manly color, I phoned Ken. I described my dilemma and the sage green yarn. Ken is a careful thinker, and he asked what I would knit from it. “Slippers,” I replied, sure that he’d vindicate my choice. Any man who owns and often wears a kilt (which Joe insists on calling “a skirt”) isn’t going to shut me down. See? The key to getting the support you want is knowing who to call.

“I dunno about sage green,” pondered Ken. “On your feet? Men don’t really wear color on their feet. There’s a line you don’t want to cross with green … how dusty is this ‘sage’?”

For crying out loud. What is this? It’s not really possible that these two men both believed that a pair of sage green slippers could emasculate someone. I know that the time I happily asked Joe what he thought of the “pretty mauve socks” for my brother, I was completely pushing it, but weren’t we starting to get a little silly here? It wouldn’t even cross my mind to judge a man’s worthiness by his casual at-home footwear. I strangle back the urge to say things to Ken like, “Big talk from the man in the skirt,” or, “You’re probably wearing stripes; what do you know?”

When does this happen to men? At what age do they generate these rules about masculine fashion faux pas? My little nephew Hank is four and he would seem to be completely oblivious about all of this. He once asked me for a pair of pink dragon mittens, since pink is his favorite color. These mittens would
replace his mousie mittens, one of which vanished somewhere in between the park and his house. (We were concerned about the winter weather and the fact that the mousie is lonely and likely cold. We took some comfort in knowing that the wee beast is wool [and a mitten] and may therefore be better prepared for his unexpected adventure than a real mouse.) I suggested to brokenhearted Hank that perhaps, simply to prevent the pink dragon mittens from slipping off unaccompanied, I could put a string on them.

The look on Hank’s face said it all. The string plan was soundly rejected. Not because he is a big boy, not because strings are demeaning, and certainly not because the presence of a mitten string speaks to a certain lack of faith in his ability to keep a dragon from meeting the same fate as the mouse, but instead … get this! Mitten strings (even on a pair of pink dragon mittens) are not “for boys.”

It’s not just about color either. Gender-based knitting rules apparently extend to texture, style, and fit. My brother is colorblind, and he’s the perfect person to help me work out the manly sweater persnickety protocol. I showed him a pattern book full of patterns for men. I think I’ve ruled out the variables here. He can’t reject a pattern because it’s not a manly color; he can’t tell what color it is. Not just that, but all the sweaters in the book are shown on men, so if anything I’m biasing him toward thinking the sweaters are appropriate. He rejected eight of the ten choices. I learned the following: Cables are manly, but not too many. Too many cables on a sweater and you start running the risk of “fussiness.” Ditto Fair Isle. Stitch patterns must travel in straight
lines. Anything “curvy” and they start suggesting a certain feminine allure. This curvy rule apparently also applies to very large sweaters, or very large cables. Lacework of any kind was right out, even if the eyelets make a very macho geometric pattern, and in case it occurs to you, my brother was also not fooled by calling it “openwork.”

I was also advised that V-necks are a little touchy, and that I’m out of my mind if I think that there is a beefcake use for mohair. Alpaca is perhaps a little soft and drapey, but tweeds and smooth wool yarns got the thumbs-up, as did any stitch pattern that had a name like “moss” or “bark” or “rope.” You could swiftly pass over “vine,” “leaf,” and anything with the merest suggestion of a bobble, should you wish to knit my brother a sweater, and just keep on walking when you get to the bouclé aisle in the yarn shop.