All Wound Up

by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

  Is 7 x 7 always 49, as Mr. Franco told me in grade seven? Nope. Not even close, and I have a hat so small it won’t cover a baseball to prove it. Seven times seven is usually forty-nine, but, in knitting, it could be forty-eight, fifty-two, or six. Accept it, and know that knitting would have made Mr. Franco crazier than a one-needled knitter at a yarn sale.

  THE POINT SYSTEM

  here is an unfinished sweater in my closet. Actually, that statement is sort of untrue. There are several unfinished sweaters in there, but most of them have a fate that’s sealed. They will never be finished sweaters. It has been my experience that every once in a while a particular yarn and pattern combination has an effect that culminates in the project equivalent of a terminal illness, and, despite the best of intentions and through no fault of the knitter, it can’t work. The sweater has the wrong gauge, it doesn’t look right, the yarn obscured the cables, you realized that you must have been drunk when you bought that shade of green because even knitting it makes you look like you’ve contracted a tropical disease with permanent consequences… something happens and it tips the project over into that abyss where you know it won’t ever be finished, but it won’t be ripped back either. Those projects sit in the closet, marinating with the other yarn and stash, and it doesn’t bother me at all. Every now and then I go into the stash for something else and I see those projects, and there is no pang of guilt, no feelings of loss or failure, no negative feelings at all. I mean, I wish they were finished sweaters; It would be great if they were finished sweaters, especially if they could be finished sweaters without the problems that consigned them to the closet in the first place, but it all just sort of feels like having those sweaters is impossible. It’s like seeing a woman in her forties who has perky breasts, is a steady size zero, and struggles not to be “too thin.” It’s just not something that’s ever going to be in my life and I don’t even expect it. The unfinished sweaters and I are pretty reconciled to each other.

  Right now, though, there’s one in there that’s lurking at me. I don’t know any other way to explain it. I know it’s there, because it’s practically oozing out a frequency of guilt and abandonment that I can feel all the bloody time. I walk by the closet, and I don’t even have to see it; I just know that it’s in there, and I feel terrible about it. See, the sweater in the closet isn’t terminal. It was going pretty well when I put it in there, and it turns out that it is one thing to put a sweater that you know is never going to make it onto a metaphoric ice floe and watch it drift out to sea, but to wander off from a sweater that’s got nothing wrong with it… it’s not a mercy killing. It’s just murder, and that makes me feel guilty.

  I’ve been trying to figure out for weeks what happened between me and that sweater. What snapped in me that made me take the thing, bundle it up with its needles, and shove it into the back of the closet. I know I can be a pretty unfaithful knitter, but really, a project has to at least give me a reason before I go. I don’t usually dump a good sweater like yesterday’s coffee grounds unless there’s at least a better sweater on the horizon, but this time it was very cold and calculating. I just put it in a jumbo Ziploc and walked away. Didn’t see a better yarn that made this one look ratty, didn’t find a new pattern that looked like a thrill a minute, didn’t have a buttonhole come out too big and give me an excuse. The yarn didn’t bug me, the pattern didn’t have an error, it wasn’t time to do the buttonbands. (I hate buttonbands. A truly civilized world would have found a way past them. That’s all I’m saying.) Nothing happened, I was knitting along, everything was going well, and then I just snapped, stuffed it in a bag, and consigned it to the closet as if it was where the thing was born to be.

  In the beginning, the relationship between that sweater and me was so charmed that if there were sweater knitting romance movies, we would have gotten the leads. I got gauge perfectly, bang on, the first time I tried. I took my wee swatch and washed it to see if the gauge stayed the same, and it did. The yarn didn’t change at all—didn’t bloom and get bigger, didn’t have the body wash out of it and suddenly turn up flaccid. There was no change at all, except that the yarn was wet and then it dried. Then I started knitting and the yarn was plain and good, worked perfectly well, was comfortable in my hands and made a nice fabric. It was neither too flimsy nor too bulky. It was exactly as I had hoped it would be. As I continued, the pattern was accurate and clear, and the pattern writer had thoughtfully put any difficult or unexpected directions in the proper order so that there wasn’t even a chance I would miss an instruction and screw up. I carried on, and as I did I measured, and I’ll be damned if the thing wasn’t coming out exactly the right size. I even, and I cannot stress enough how unlikely and unbelievable this is, I even got both row and stitch gauge. That never happens. Until that moment I actually thought that achieving row gauge was an urban legend, like alligators in the sewers, or cats sucking the breath out of babies. I have heard of it, people talk about it, but nobody can ever show me an example, and stories of people getting both kinds of gauge always seem to happen to a friend of a friend. I’ve simply never seen it, and here it was, effortlessly turning up on this perfect sweater that was going wonderfully well. I can’t stress this enough. There were no problems with that sweater, not a one, and unlike its deformed, unlucky, and misadventured brethren already in the closet, I think maybe that’s why it got the chop. It was going so well, so wonderfully well, so completely without incident, so painfully undistinguished in its ordinariness, that frankly, the whole thing just about makes me weep casual tears of tepid boredom to think of it.

  This realization may mean that I have figured out something important. I’ve hung in there with sweaters that have pulled all kinds of crap on me. I have had whole sweaters pull terminal stunts on me mere centimeters from finished, and I have still completed the sweater. You wouldn’t believe what I’ll put up with. I have been the victim of some knitting-related crimes that would have resulted in life sentences for the yarn involved, were it not inanimate. (It is extremely difficult to prove motive and intent for a crime if everyone keeps telling you that the perpetrator isn’t alive.) I’ve re-knit a neckline upwards of seven times, but this sweater is pleasant to me and it gets the chop? The evidence is pointing to a slightly troubling conclusion. It turns out that I might be the sort of person who likes my projects to be trouble, or difficult, or to mess me up for sport, and what, really, does that say about me? This project wasn’t hurting me; it was nothing but vague pleasure, and I dumped it. It would seem that I like my knitting to jerk me around more than a little, and I have to stop and wonder if I am the knitting equivalent of a masochist—someone who’s enjoying taking a challenge too far and now only likes it if it hurts.

  I thought this over and realized that, really, I don’t like knitting to hurt me. True, I’ve stuck with yarn that seems bent on deliberately crushing my spirit, but there are lots of projects in the back of the closet that ain’t never seeing the light of day again because they obviously had an antagonistic nature and no intention of becoming a sweater. They were projects that crossed an invisible line and took it too far, and they got canned and stuffed in a Ziploc for the offense. Their presence in long-term incarceration has got to mean that I do have some sense of self protection, which is somewhat comforting. If, however, I’ve been known to can a project for either being too much trouble or too little challenge, I must be operating in a range, a mystical, magical zone of satisfaction where the knitting scores enough points somehow to stay in my zone of acceptability without crossing over into a place where it rises above challenge and into the realm where it’s personally stupid to continue.

  I’ve wondered at something like this before. Perhaps what’s happening is a highly personal interest and ability threshold. Like how we all choose a plain knit if we’re going to be watching a complex movie. This is partly because the movie will have most of our interest, but I suspect that it’s as much for the sake of the plain knit. Unless you’re a particularly meditative
person, most of us think of the idea of a huge, plain, garter stitch blanket with some sense of creeping ennui. Once you’re past the beginner phase of knitting, it’s just not enough of a challenge for your clever mind. If we were to add up its points toward that interest/ability threshold, an ocean of garter stitch is going to score a one on the scale of challenge. This doesn’t mean that you won’t knit it; it’s just that now it needs something added to it to bring it up to your minimum level.

  After careful reflection, I think my personal minimum score for anything I’m thinking about doing—knitting or not—is about a seven on the interest scale. If something’s scoring a five, like a movie, then I need to add at least two points of knitting to it for me to be able to hang in. If it’s something gripping, like a conversation with a charming and entertaining friend, I may not need to add much knitting at all. If my friend scores a nine, I might only toss in a plain sock, with no patterning or anything, just round and round on autopilot while we visit. (I can only think of one thing I do with another person that really has no room to add any sort of knitting to, but let’s not discuss it here.) A plain sock by itself is terribly boring, but it could score points by having a clever stitch pattern, or maybe by being made out of a very beautiful yarn that’s an enchantment to work with. (Sadly, it is still infuriatingly true that being beautiful without being clever is almost always worth more points than being clever without being beautiful, but such are the rules of life and knitting—they are cruel, but there anyway.)

  We all stomp around with our knitting, assessing whether or not it’s enough to hold our interest and then adding whatever points the thing can’t provide. Reading a book while you knit, listening to music, watching a movie, adding a friend.… or removing one if we need to. We’ve all knit something fussy enough, so high on the interest scale, that to get through it, nobody was allowed to speak directly to you. I once worked a start to a shawl that was so high on the interest scale that I silenced the family, locked myself in my room with a calming cup of tea, and still just about blew out the section of my brain I use for counting, screwed up three times, and came down with a shake. Everybody has their own threshold, deeply personal and intimate, and this sweater, the perfect sweater, just didn’t come near mine. It wasn’t enough of a challenge, and there was nothing I could add to it that would bring it up to the point where it could stay.

  This theory means (rather comfortingly) that it isn’t at all that I enjoy pain. It’s instead a universal part of the way the human brain is wired. Human beings are the only animals that seek challenge. All other mammals respond to a challenge if it’s presented to them or because they need to, but we are the only animals to seek danger, adventure, and challenge for fun. We are the only species that is able to put interests that are not genetic out front. I assure you, there’s no way that a fellow mammal would understand the urge to run a marathon for no reason other than the feeling of accomplishment it gave you. The local band of mammals would want to sit you down and ask you what the hell was wrong with you. How could you waste all those calories? You don’t know when your next meal is walking by or ripening, and here you are, running for no reason so that you’re too tired to protect yourself? Aren’t you worried a lion will eat you? They’d stare at you with wonder, trying to figure out why on Earth you would be making your life so much harder than it had to be. Imagine the look an antelope would give you if you tried to explain skydiving for a thrill. We’re the only species that invents all of this stuff to make our lives easier—like a car so that we don’t need to walk—then invents something else to take the place of it, like running on a treadmill. We’re challenge junkies. Our bright, vivid minds mean that we want and need things to do, and that they need to be challenging and interesting. If we replace bright, active, challenging activities like hunting and gathering with mundane, unfulfilling activities like going to the grocery store and watching TV, then we’ve got to find a way to up the ante for ourselves, and we have to add stuff to up the interest level without making ourselves crazy with overwork. We are the only species that aspires. The only species that dreams of making beautiful things. That dares to try to be better than we were before, to aim higher, to cable where once we could only do garter stitch. We’re unique among the animals, and it’s not that we like things to be miserable. The sweater didn’t get the boot for being miserable. It was kicked to the back of the closet for being… well, boring, and humans hate boring.

  We, as knitters and as people, are all looking for our own deeply personal middle ground. We hate jobs that are boring and are demoralized by things that are genuinely too difficult, but watch us magnetically slink over to something that can hold our interest and challenge us without becoming too punishing. Watch us, if we can’t find that thing—watch us create it. Watch us take a boring thing and make it tolerable by adding another layer. We put on a movie while we knit garter stitch. We take a sock for a boring commute. Confronted with something that’s not a challenge, something too perfect, we deliberately up the ante right to the spot just before it has to go to the closet for being too hard, and if we can’t get it there, then it could get the closet for that too. Personally I think I can prove this with my choice of a husband. Now that I understand why that beautiful sweater hit the showers, I think I know how my Joe is keeping this marriage going. I’m staying with him because he’s constantly walking the fine line where he’s challenging enough that I’m interested in him, but not so challenging that I end the relationship because he’s’ driving me beyond wild and into crazy. He and I have a lot of conversations about where that line is, and how he might want to keep his eye on it. I keep him even though he drives me wild, because humans have unique brains. We like a challenge. We have an intrinsic love of hard work (though I find it hard to believe when the work ahead of me is cleaning, but I suppose every theory has its sticking points) and we will add interest to an activity to make it more challenging, right up to our own personal threshold. Therefore, I maintain that I boosted a boring sweater into the back of the closet not because I lack stick-to-itiveness or the ability to follow through, but because my brain is a wonder, I have a need to be challenged, and I was, frankly… too much of a human to knit that sweater.

  UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

  ear Second Wrap Cardigan,

  I feel terrible writing this to you, but I have to.

  I’m leaving you. Right away. I’m going to ravel your knitting, wind you back into balls, and pass you along to another knitter so that there can be some sort of future for you, because I assure you, there isn’t one here.

  I know that you’re going to think this is harsh, and perhaps unfair, and who knows, maybe it is. I just know that I can’t work it out with you. I’ve tried, heaven knows I’ve tried, but all this time we’re spending together is a lie. You’re just not ever going to be a sweater that I like, and I can’t keep knitting on you like that’s not true, because it just gets both of our hopes up that someday there will be a real garment between us, and it’s time that we both admit that’s never going to happen.

  I wish I could define the certain something, the thing or the moment that’s coming between us, but the truth is that I just hate your stinking guts. I’ve tried not to hate you, but despite how millions of couples are staying together for the sake of the children, a relationship filled with hate just isn’t something I need to do, because, dude, you’re yarn. Just yarn, and I’ve got lots more where you came from.

  If it seems to you like I’ve led you on, I apologize. I know it’s been confusing. I did buy you. I did stand in that yarn shop in New York City on a beautiful spring day, and I did look at you, knit up into that wrap cardigan, and I did say, “Wow, I freakin’ love that sweater.” I did say it. I even remember saying that I thought you would look great with jeans. I know I said it, I know you have witnesses. The thing is, I think maybe I had wine with lunch that day, or maybe I was coming down with something, because now that I have you here in my hands, I cannot, for the life of me, figur
e out what I saw in you. You’re pretty colors, I give you that, but—and I’m sorry if nobody’s mentioned this to you before—you’re a novelty yarn. I tried to pretend it’s not true, but you are.

  You’ve got a big stinking bobble on your strand every thirty centimeters, and I don’t know how to talk about that. I thought when I saw you that the bobbles were interesting. I thought you were funky. I thought you were hip and fun, and I didn’t just overlook your bobbles, standing in that yarn shop, I embraced them. Now that we’ve been together a while, I can’t explain what I was thinking. I am not funky, or hip, and I think jeans and a clean T-shirt should be acceptable clothing for every occasion, and what’s further, I’ve never seen a reason to own more than one bra and four pairs of shoes, and that counts skates. What about that vision says “funky” to you? When people talk about accessorizing, I think about carrying a cup of coffee. Is that hip? No. No, my woolly friend, it’s not, and why on Earth some other feeling came over me while I was in that shop is beyond me. (I blame New York. There’s something about that place that makes you imagine you could dress better, and it’s best not to shop while you’re conflicted like that. It’s just confusing).

  I know that after that day, the day that I stood in that shop, admired the sample, and then bought you, the friend I was with was skeptical. She didn’t say it, but I know what she was thinking. She was trying to figure out how a woman who wonders whether her outfit is too “flashy” if it has buttons was really going to reconcile herself to a handpainted, multicolored, bouclé yarn with bobbles strung along it. I could tell that my friend saw it then that it wasn’t going to work, and some of these evenings that we’ve been together, you and I, the ones where I look at you and I think, “How did I end up with you and, my God, when will we stop pretending to like each other,” I wonder why she didn’t say something. Why she didn’t steer me straight past you and say, “This is like when you wanted to date Prince. He looks like a lot of fun but we both know it would end up pretty freaky”? That’s what friends should do for each other. Long before it all ends with tears, a bottle of Shiraz, and a ball winder ripping back a relationship, your friends should come to you and tell you they think this yarn won’t work. They know me well enough to know that any sweater plan that begins with a novelty yarn and ends with the intention of something I would wear is a frank impossibility. Why didn’t they say something before you and I got serious? At knit night, at the shop, why not a few words sometime when I came in without you? The whole lot of them could have said, “Hey, Steph, that yarn isn’t for you. It’s got bobbles, and you know how you feel about that,” and then maybe I would have said, “Holy cow, you’re right. I remember the last time I had bobbly yarn. I made fun of it for knitting up into a surface that made it look like I had a million nipples on my chest. Right you are. Thank you for saving me all that time and money. You guys are great!”