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Over several days last summer (2015, that is) we cleaned the basement. I helped, but we did it together. Part of it. And then I quit, leaving my poor husband to deal with the endless bounty of empty boxes. They multiply faster than cockroaches—and are considerably bigger.
During the cleaning I came across a square basket of yarn. Now, finding a cache of yarn anyplace in this house is not too surprising. Even though I "got rid of" the yarn fifteen years ago, I couldn't let go of certain beautiful skeins. But what I found was not my good knitting yarn. This square basket (12x12x12") was full to the brim with needlepoint yarn, given to me by a long-ago friend. The yarns are in tiny hanks, about four inches long and half an inch in diameter, each secured with a printed paper wrapper. Their palette is soft colours of olive and dark olive, light blue, mint green, seafoam green, dozens of shades of tan, and various dark blues. Nary a red or an orange in the bunch, though there are three little skeins of bright yellow!
For years I have switched this basket from one room to another. After I found it in the basement I gave it a final move upstairs to the sewing room, where it sat for several months. But then came either the ultimate or the penultimate game of the 2015 World Series, depending on the outcome, and I really wanted to see it.
Often I let the whole Series slip by—I'm too busy, too tired, whatever—in the totally delusional belief that the Series will go on forever and I can watch it later.
I knew from experience that I couldn't watch that game without something in my hands to work on. I also knew from experience that I have no interest in a big or complicated knitting project. Whatever it is, these days it has to be dead simple.
And then I remembered the basket of needlepoint yarns. So I started a scarf. Some 40-odd stitches on a favourite circular needle (not joined—i.e., not a circle; the circular needle is just for comfort). Garter stitch, so I can knit every row—and so the scarf edges won't curl. And the name of the game is this: one after another I would use up the little packaged hanks of needlepoint yarn. But probably not the bright yellow.
As I watched the Royals cream the Giants (a 30-minute bottom of the second, with the Royals playing my favourite kind of baseball: base hits and smart running rather than the long ball), I knitted. Each skein gave me about two inches of garter stitch scarf. And as I neared the end of a hank, I began to muse about the colour of the next stripe. There is no "design" to this scarf. It's just one colour after another.
Imagine my surprise when I found that after a run of the soft bluish-green, the colour that best suited was the bright yellow. And through the whole length of the scarf (the knitting of which lasted well beyond that World Series and into a number of episodes of "In Treatment") I discovered the delight of punctuating those muted and somber colours with a couple of bright yellow rows.
The most exciting thing of all is that I rediscovered my love of knitting and have since made three garter stitch scarves and used up every inch of that needlepoint yarn.
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