If you stop to think for a minute, though, you can start to pull that sentence apart, to examine it, to find questions to ask. What's the method? What's the yarn? How do you do it? At its heart, knitting is an act of creation. It's a way to take materials -- a piece of string, some pointy sticks, a few hours -- and come out the other side with something. And that just might start to explain that obsession.
The Yarn Harlot talks about this idea and the curious thing that comes over us when we realize anew exactly what we have done -- that impulse to grab strangers by the collar, shake them, show them what we've done and say "Look, look at this thing I made!" I haven't ever done that, exactly, but once when I visited a friend in Boston, I knit all through the class I attended -- a lecture on the disconnect of the modern consumer from the source of their goods. "We're disconnected from the process!" the professor cried, "Disconnected from our products! When is the last time you made something with your own two hands, something you could use?" I will admit to a certain amount of consternation experienced during that two-hour class, and a certain amount of hilarity after.
Again with that act of creation -- that act by which you, the Average Citizen of the 21st Century, can take stuff and make things. You can be a producer! You can make things! Need a hat? Make a hat! It's a strange kind of power to wield.
I tell people, sometimes, when I'm working on something that looks complicated and they're impressed, that it's actually simple and I'm just doing it to make myself look smarter or more clever. Usually it's something accomplished by a simple trick -- entrelac, for example, or stranded knitting. Of course, simple and easy aren't at all the same thing. Something simple is uncomplicated. Something easy is something that can be achieved without great effort. Stranded knitting? Simple. Even easy, once you get the hang of it. It's the getting-the-hang-of that can be tricky, sometimes, but I'm going to quote the Yarn Harlot again, from the waiting room of a hospital:
"A woman approaches me as I sit there, and she watches for a moment before she comments on my work.
"Wow," she says. "That looks complicated. I could never do that. I don't have the patience for it."
People tell me this all the time. They are simply not cut out for knitting. It's too hard for them. They aren't the type. I've prepared a speech for moments like this. It begins with a statement about the simplicity of knitting, and ends with a two-minute tutorial. I'm about to launch into this speech when I happen to glance at the woman's name tag: Dr Susan P. Rogers. Surgeon, Neurology Department.
I'm so stunned that it's all I can do to smile in her general direction. In fact, I may not be smiling; I may just be staring at her in quiet stupefaction. She doesn't think she can knit? She's a brain surgeon! A freakin' brain surgeon who doesn't think she has the skills or the patience to knit?
...
Five year old Danish children can manage it. Illiterate people all over the world can knit brilliantly. But not a Canadian brain surgeon?"
I taught a friend of mine to knit this past fall. He's a musician. He owns and can play well four different types of guitar, an electric bass, a viola, a violin, a mandolin, an electric keyboard, a dulcimer, and a drum set. And he was sure that he wouldn't be able to knit. (Truth be told, during those first twenty minutes, I wasn't at all sure he'd be able to knit either.)
It took three attempts -- about a week -- before he was able to remember how to hold the needles ("it's not a pencil; it goes in your hand."), how to tension the yarn, how to knit a stitch ("nope, that's twisted, put it back." "Ah, @#&%"). And yet -- here we are, two months later, and he's working on a Fibonacci-striped asymmetrical scarf for his mom. (It was a Christmas present. We've trained him well.)
We went to Northampton, MA, to visit my sister. Some of you already know where this is going -- for the rest of you, let's just say that there is a really big yarn shop in Northampton. Can you say "warehouse"? Can you say "too many options"? Can you say "I didn't even know they could make yarn out of that"? (Can you say "I wish it would catch on fire so I could run around with a cart and then flee while everyone was distracted"?)
He spent more money than I did.
