Yarn Harlot (2 page)

I didn’t want to be Aunt Shirley. I made a note to myself that I would try to pick something really chastely classic. I sat down with my pattern books and started thinking it over. What to do? I wanted something interesting enough that I could stand to knit it, but not so interesting that it would get tedious. A wedding afghan must absolutely be big enough to cover the both of them so I’d make the thing about eight by five feet. (Please note that I was, in fact, aware that most afghans are about three and one half feet by five feet. I have absolutely no explanation for why I chose to make this behemoth so big, except that I really love my brother and sometimes the expression of love in wool needs to be little oversized. Also, I may be insane.) That meant that whatever pattern I chose, I’d have to knit forty square feet of it. Forty square feet of garter stitch is a knitter’s lobotomy. Brain damage would inevitably ensue. I have jammed projects into permanent imprisonment in the hall closet for less. I had to be careful too. Ian and Alison wouldn’t like something frilly or fussy. They are not “doily” types, and if you can find a speck of lace in their house I’ll give you a dollar. I needed plain, but not too plain, and interesting, but not too interesting.

I settled on a pattern that started with small squares. Four squares came together to form a larger geometric shape; these
big squares were joined with vine-patterned strips in between, then a leaf border went around the whole thing. The modular aspect meant that the whole thing would stay portable until I started doing the strips and the border. I was looking forward to it. It was going to be stunning and totally doable in five months.

At the yarn store I started realizing the enormity of the project. I was going to need almost thirty balls of wool. That’s a lot of yarn. That’s so much yarn that when I told the yarn store lady what I needed, she let out a low whistle and gave me a look that told me that she thought that maybe when I’m not knitting oversized afghans I amused myself by trying to pick up marbles with chopsticks. It’s so much that she had to go into the basement to look for two cases of the yarn in question. As she stacked the yarn on the counter she seemed a little incredulous. This should have been my first warning: When a person who sells yarn for a living thinks that maybe you’re buying a lot of yarn—well, it’s a sign. A different sort of knitter would have taken that as a hint. Me? I thought she was a knitter without aspirations.

The price tag for the enormous bag of yarn was dizzying, but I shrugged it off. I wrestled my new yarn out of the shop (ignoring the stares of the new knitter over by the mohair who was buying a single ball of something blue and clearly thought I might be dangerous). Forcing the yarn through the door of the bus, trying to avoid whacking people with it, I decided that it was worth it. My brother was getting married. It’s beautiful yarn and I was knitting an heirloom that would last forever, and, furthermore (my furthermores are always a sign of really bad thinking), I do like a challenge.

At home I dumped the big pack of yarn onto the couch and looked at it. For the first time I faltered a little. This project was going to require miles and miles of knitting. I started trying to figure out where I was going to keep the yarn while I worked on it. My living room is pretty tiny and this was taking up a sizable chunk of real estate.
At least I like the color,
I thought, as I considered replacing the throw pillow stuffing with balls of yarn. I’d chosen a deep green, green enough to count as a color, but muted, like the greens in the shadows of a pine forest. It was manly enough that my brother wouldn’t get nervous, bright enough that my new sister-in-law would think it was pretty, and plain enough that there will have to be a room in their new house that it would match. It was classic.

I found my 4-millimeter needles and cast on the first square, ignoring that part of my brain that noted that bigger needles would make the work go faster. This was not a project for shortcuts. I worked the pattern, humming to myself. The yarn was good, the pattern intriguing … I bet I’d finish it next week. I wouldn’t be able to drag myself from it. Sure enough, at the end of the day I had two squares done.
Two down,
I thought proudly. I felt a pang when I finished the sentence. One hundred and fifty-eight to go.

The next day dawned bright, and so did my enthusiasm. All day I knit, wrote, and did laundry. At the end of the day, with really very little effort, I had three more squares. The pang eased. If I kept this up, this was going to be a walk in the park. The wedding was in about 150 days, and I had about 150 squares to knit, and I was managing at least two a day. No problem. That meant
that all the squares would be knit in half the time, and then I’d have the rest of the time for the strips between the squares and the border. I stopped just short of giggling. (Those with experience in these matters would recognize my overconfidence at this point as “foreshadowing.” You know, like the moment in a horror movie when the attractive young man turns to his girlfriend and mocks her for worrying about the ax murderer on the loose. You just know he’s got a date with destiny.)

The next day, well, the next day I didn’t knit any squares at all. In fact, since I had so much time, I didn’t knit any for a week. I did, however, make a really cool pair of socks, and then a hat, and then I started a new sweater … Suddenly a month had gone by. My mother dropped by and I decided to tell her about the afghan. Maybe if someone else knew about it I’d feel pressured. When I explained my plan to turn the mountain of green yarn into squares just like the five on the table, she laughed. I ignored her. She doesn’t knit, and she doesn’t know about these things. She thinks that
all
knitting was “a lot of knitting.” This was still a doable project. I just needed motivation.

After she left (still chuckling), I went and got the big bag of greenness and settled back in again. It turned out that a change was as good as a rest. It was at least, oh, four or five more squares before it started to wear a little thin on me again. (By “wear a little thin,” I mean that I felt the urge to have a drink or five to take the edge off the way my teeth itched when I worked on it.) I began to dream in green.

When I had knit thirty-four squares I realized that I’d managed to commit the pattern to memory. This was a small victory,
but one that at least reassured me that no matter how it felt, the impression that the afghan was melting holes in my brain must be an illusion.

By the sixtieth square I’d started to play little games with myself. I could knit a round of my sock when I finished a square. I could work on the sweater for an hour when I had four squares done. I raced myself to get the best possible time on a square. The afghan lurked in its enormous, ominous way all the time, especially when I tried to ignore it. I beat down the first waves of resentment. After all, it was not as if I’d been forced to knit it at gunpoint. It was my decision to knit the biggest freaking unmercifully huge afghan in the universe. I was the one who thought it would be fun. I was the one who was going to stick with it. I was no quitter.

When I woke up one morning and discovered that the thought of knitting another green square made me feel inexplicably sad, I put it back into the closet. I had three months to go, and there was no reason for this to get ugly. I apologized to the children for the swearing they may have heard as I looked for a space big enough to put the afghan in. I apologized under my breath to Ian and Alison. I had to try harder to put good karma into this. I wanted something enduring, comfortable, and reassuring. Now I was knitting all these “I can’t stand you; when will this nightmare ever end?” vibes into it. That couldn’t be the sort of sentiment you’d want to wish on a marriage. I’d work on the sweater until the involuntary shudder that I felt each time I thought of the afghan went away.

A month passed, and the afghan and I began to forgive each
other. It stopped leaping from the closet each time I tried to get a towel out, and I stopped saying curse words while I shoved it back in with my foot, hoping that moths would get it. My mother inquired about it occasionally, so I spent some of my knitting time looking in the mirror and perfecting a blank, unknowing stare that said “What afghan?”

When I could no longer justify pretending that the green amorphous blob in the linen closet was a pool cover, I started working on it again. I was careful not to overdo it, since I felt that my dislike of the thing was like frostbite: Once you’ve had a dose you are very vulnerable to it. I knew that if I caught the green flu again, there might be no way back. I wouldn’t dream of not finishing, so I worked out rewards. I tried pairing the afghan with things that I enjoyed, but mixing it with red wine was trouble (friends don’t let friends knit drunk … that square was, well, not very square). I tried bribing myself with chocolate, but quickly realized that if you promise yourself a bite of chocolate after every row of a five-by-eight-foot afghan—well, let’s just say that it might not be such an oversized blanket after all.

As the deadline neared I began to worry. (By “worry” I mean I obsessed about it every waking moment of my life.) I was almost done with the squares, but I hadn’t started the strips that joined the squares. We weren’t even discussing who I thought was going to sew this thing together. I was starting to feel like maybe when I knit on it I was giving myself an aneurysm. It was horrible. Licking a yak would be more fun. The evening that I realized that there wasn’t a circular needle in the world big enough to hold all of the border stitches just about finished me.
I didn’t quit, although I did start to hallucinate a little. As I glared at the ocean of green in my lap, I thought about orange. Orange merino, orange like tangerines; yellow like canaries sitting on pomegranates outlined against the bluest sky and sea. I tried to think of anything not green. A bowl of red grapes in a cerulean bowl, set on a terra-cotta table. Persimmons laid on a quilt of gold and white. Strawberries, blueberries, lemons. Pink roses.

I kept knitting. I started sewing. I bought four circular needles for the innumerable border stitches. I knit green until walking by grass annoyed me and salad filled me with hostility, and then I knit more green.

Weeks later I watched Ian and Alison open their wedding present. I was filled with pride and joy on this special day. I knew that I’d done the right thing. They opened their gift and beamed at me across the room.

Everybody needs a punchbowl.

March 18
Starting the Sweaters.

This week has been some of the most satisfying knitting of my life. In November my good friend Ken took up knitting. In a massive show of love, he knit me a pair of socks and now proudly wears the title “knitter.”

This past week some friends announced that they were taking the plunge and getting married in June. Ken decided that we should knit matching wedding sweaters for them. We bought the yarn, and happily cast on. Even though the pattern was complex, it made sense; it had a logical progression that was easy to follow. One repeat of sixteen rows and neither of us needed to look at the chart anymore.

I cannot express the delight I’m taking in sitting beside my dear friend, knitting away on a cool pattern with yummy yarn, and discussing the whole thing with him and
actually having him
care!
He’s always had the grace to pretend that he cared about knitting, but it’s different when you know he’s just not being polite. I’ve been raving about it all week. This is going to be so much fun!

Now, if we could just stop competing for who’s farther along …

April 7
An Open Letter to a Famous Designer, AbFabFibers, Inc.

Dear Famous Designer,

Straight off the bat, let me tell you how very much I admire your work. My friend and I are knitting a matched set of his and her sweaters for our friends who are getting married in June. The pattern is inspired and the charts are very clear and easy to work from. You are truly a knitting goddess.

This genuine admiration of your work makes it all the more shocking that I have now been plunged into anxious despair.

I painstakingly read your instructions and carefully followed your chart and made my way through the back of the sweater. It ended, as you instructed, by decreasing purlwise across a right-side row. This finish looked a little odd, but I decided that the purl stitches across the shoulder look charming, especially given the inspired sleeve shaping with the strap that will knit into the shoulder seam
—
yes, you are clever, dear designer. Truly, an innovative design feature. You are my guide and I will follow your genius wherever it may lead.

That said, I embarked on the front, knitting ahead of my less experienced friend, taking careful notes so that our work will match. I gleefully approached the neck shaping, dutifully stopping fourteen
rows short of where I did for the back, just as you said. Except… now, Designer
—
not that I would doubt you for a moment, surely it is just that your own aptitude for this exceeds my own
—
if I follow your instructions for shaping the neck, I end up running that charming row of purl decreases across the wrong side, not across the right side as in the back. I also had to fuss with the number of rows to make it end on the wrong side, but let’s just deal with the bigger issues here.

It could very well be that you do not like the front and back to match. This must surely be the case, as you specifically instruct me to work the purls across the right side on the back, and the wrong side on the front. It seems to me that this will make knitting in the shoulder strap odd-looking indeed, but this may all be part of the creative process, and part of the wonder of knitting a sweater of note.

I have (very briefly) considered the possibility of a mistake in the pattern, but I can’t be sure, as the artistic photos of the sweater being worn by very attractive people show off the feel of the sweater to its best advantage, but they don’t let me compare front and back to figure out what’s up here.