Stitch by Stitch

I learned to knit when I was 17. My mother, Eileen, didn't teach me to knit, because she hated knitting. It was hard to believe that this jack-of-all-trades, this champion seamstress, didn't knit. She told me once that she couldn't bear the thought of creating a garment one stitch at a time. One stitch. Another stitch. Another stitch. Finally, one row completed. No, this was not for my mother. She needed the whirr of her Singer sewing a fine seam in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

 

It just occurred to me that Eileen's sister, my Aunt Lil, was a crackerjack knitter. I'd forgotten. When I was born Aunt Lil knitted a white snowsuit for me: white wool leggings, a little jacket (with a zipper front), and a hat. I don't actually remember wearing it, but I have it on in an old family movie, and I remember the snowsuit making the rounds of my younger siblings. The next three of them were born in the fall of the year, so they were perfectly sized for that snowsuit come January and February. Indiana winters demanded snow suits for babies.

So I'll bet Aunt Lil's knitting skills contributed to Eileen's dislike of knitting. Don't know why it took me so long to figure that out.

 

It's clear that Eileen didn't teach me to knit. But Mary Lynn McCorkle did, my first year at university. I chose a complicated stitch and made myself a pair of beautiful yellow mittens that were perhaps a little tight because of my beginner's very tense tension. It was cold in Greencastle, Indiana, and I was thrilled to have those wonderful mittens. And it wasn't even a month later that I lost them. I had gone to the local college eatery—called what? The Double? The Den? The Dive? Something with a D. When I got back to the dormitory I had no mittens. I called the place, frantic, but no one ever found them. The fact that I still mourn the loss of those yellow mittens shows how special they were. Or how bizarrely selective my memory is.

 

But—give a man a fish, etc. So even though those particular mittens were lost forever, I had been taught to fish—that is, to knit—and my knitting career was launched.

 

I knitted sweaters for our children when they were small. I remember a set of three: a teal cardigan for the oldest, a yellow pullover with a cabled front for our middle child, and for the youngest, a camel-colored pullover with a pouch pocket and a hood. Oh, he was so cute in that. Some forty years later I still have the pattern for that kangaroo-pouch sweater.

 

Just after we had moved to Kansas for my then-husband's next round of graduate school, I decided to buy a knitting machine. I found a used one in Kansas City and spent the next three years making the ugliest items imaginable. The learning curve of the knitting machine was too steep for me to climb. But I kept the machine.

 

I have no glittering tales of my life in knitting? Does it all really come down to "knit a stitch; knit another stitch"? Was Eileen right all along?

 

Years later, I bought a Brother Bulky knitting machine and found my machine-knitting comfort level doing intarsia work. For the next ten years I used it to make one-of-a-kind sweaters. I became a craftsperson. Several of my articles were published in (can I say "international"?) fibre arts magazines. All day every day I sat at my table, improvised from a door and a couple of large wooden boxes, and "painted" intarsia sweaters on the knitting machine. I bought yarns until my stash dwarfed the inventory of many yarn shops. Once a year I held a crafts sale with half a dozen other craftswomen and we sold everything we'd spent the year making. I made just enough, at these sales, to finance my yarn purchases, and then I'd spend the next year knitting again, all day, every day. Evenings were devoted to hand-finishing whatever I was working on, knitting or crocheting ribbings and button bands by hand.

 

After ten years of constant knitting I suddenly said, "No more. This is the end." And it was. I sold off most of the yarn at a garage sale. I hated to say good-bye to my Brother Bulky, my workhorse companion for so long, but I gave it away to a group that was creating a crafts space for homeless teens. While I was demonstrating for them how to use the machine, I realized that it was indeed time to let it go—the carriage was so heavy I could barely move it across the needle bed. I had obviously grown too old and feeble to use my favorite knitting machine.

 

 

So now what? I could still knit by hand if I wanted to. My

friend Sally knits constantly, follows several knitting blogs, and enthusiastically turns out garments and baby blankets. Why am I not doing this? H'm-m. I think it's because I don't want to. Any projects I've started in the last fifteen years have been abandoned after a few inches. It just seems overwhelming to try to create a garment stitch by stitch, one knit stitch at a time. Does that sound familiar?

 

Could I knit a sweater now? I don't think so. My fingers ache just thinking about it. It was fun while it lasted, but my knitting days are over.

 

Copyright 2010 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com