KNIT-astrophe!

I’ve written about my exploration of knitting before and honestly reflected on the lack of prowess in my finished products…beanies either too voluminous or tight, scarves with wild variations in stitch numbers, socks were the toes and heels are misaligned and generalised chaotic tangles with little to show for the amount of time spend pondering the patterns.

But I’m not one to give up so I decided that I should forget the piddling trifles of small projects and take on the challenge of a garment. I’m saying garment because at first I wasn’t sure if would be a vest or jumper…thought the sleeves might not be in my wheelhouse of skills. And hence I proceeded.

I bought beautiful yarn. Autumnal colours in baby alpaca. Tender wool, fluffy strands in Donkey, Bark and Bisque (such enticing names for the shades). My hopefulness, my ambition at its peak. So confident was I that I’d even dug out several pairs of my mother’s knitting needles that been reverently tucked away for such an aspirational moment. I’ve mentioned before that I come from a family of knitting queens. My mother could have made the Olympic team if such a contest existed. I grew up on the sound of the click clack of needles rhythmically turning out garment after garment. And in my heady excitement I had a sense that the needles would have been imbued with her crafty magic and I too would create a thing of wearable beauty.

This, however, is not a knitting story as such. Perhaps it is a cautionary tale about arrogance or an extended metaphor about life and the paths we follow. Or a lament for longed for success.

To the story. With the pattern well read, the needles primed and the yarn celebrated I cast on my stitches as commanded by the pattern. And it began. Easy clickety clacking as I made a magnificent ribbed band. Showing off by getting up a head of steam, powering into the music of craft. Then change needles, go bigger…and start the pattern proper. And I mean PROPER! Fair isle, Nordic fair, Icelandic lopapeysa…intricate patterns interweaving strands of aforementioned glorious woollen filaments. Sounds good doesn’t it! And it was, and yet something felt troubling. But I was on a roll with my traditional geometrics and traditional motifs and didn’t want to take notice of the one observable problem, despite it gradually making its presence felt. After shaping the arm holes and the neck I could behold an entire back of a garment.

And the tiny problem that I had stoically ignored could no longer be so. I had not knitted the first part of something allegedly wearable…I had knitted something the size of a sleeping bag! Yet I was utterly sure I’d followed the instructions to the letter but in my enthusiasm for the wool and magic mother needles I’d not understood that size matters. In consultation with the knitting cousins I learned that there was a definite correlation between number of stitches and the equipment. Something called gauge or tension. Of which at this point I thought I had plenty of. But it’s a measuring thing…some knitting witchery that I had ignored…to my peril. I had followed a pattern for 8 ply wool not my much loved 14 ply. My weapons of choice much larger that the recommended size. Quite the lesson.

The whole work had to be undone and re-knitted with tension in mind. But I couldn’t bear the thought of it so I pressed on with the front, with tension considered. Hours of recreating my special designs…a mysterious alchemy of crosses and waves that could have been a spell. When finished it had to wait for its sister side to be deconstructed and remade. Band, pattern, arm holes, shoulders and neck. It was intoxicating. But again my enthusiasm outpaced the reality. Still she, the garment, was huge. A tunic or short dress perhaps. So huge in fact the weight of the two parts sprained my wrist…I kid you not. I’m not sure if a knitting injury had ever been recorded but this beast had wounded me. But I’m nothing if not determined. So onto the next step.

Seam sewing. I may skip over this bit as the consequences of my over zealousness will become apparent soon. But with seams, let’s call it sewn up, I tried on the weighty ‘thing.’ Without a shred of hyperbole…it was a knit-astrophe. Somehow, despite my diligence the back was shorter than the front and it had formed some kind of hunchback arrangement between the shoulder blades. And the armholes might have allowed a small vehicle to pass through. But I’d come this far and thought if nothing else it would keep me, and possible a family of small creatures, warm on a winter’s night. So I went on to knitting the bands for the voluminous arm and neck holes. Some kind of ‘making stitches’ occurred and while I was initially joking about witchy enchantments some very strange transmutation occurred. All places were once limbs and head languished in bizarre openness now had shrunk to the size that might have allowed twigs or a tennis ball to pass through.

How? Why? What was this thing I’d conjured up.

But the yarn was so lovely…and not cheap. It had to be salvaged, it had to be rescued and the only way forward was the ignominy of the unpicking. Allegedly call frogging in knitting circles. I called it despair. Because I’d not thought about how I’d secured the sides and shoulders with knots and stitches so indestructible that I had to employ scissors….knitters stop reading now because you know what disaster comes when you cut knitting. Suffice to say I was left with hundreds of quite short strands of my beautiful wool that had I been a better person I might have been able to reclaim it.

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So to my opening hypothesis...a cautionary tale! Yes, start small and read the instructions. A lament…most definitely for the loss of something with so much potential. A metaphor for life…perhaps simply that one should not be overly ambitious in fields of endeavour where there are no natural gifts or inherited talent. Stick to what you know. And stop when there is an inkling of a looming disaster before you are neck deep in the falling sorrow of it all.

With a cold tea cup of tears, and a halo of fine fibres, I concede defeat. I shall ponder the greatness that could have been and will be content with the click clack of the keyboard and make mastery of one skill and certainly not the other.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Hippocrates