Knitting Rules! (14 page)

I purchase only a knitting magazine if at least one of the following is true:

There is a pattern that I really like and will likely knit.

There is an article that describes a technique or approach I find intriguing.

There is a pattern for a garment that I would never knit but find inspirational.

There is a pattern or article from a designer or writer I like.

I have every other issue and don't want to break up the set.

That time, I left with seven magazines. I always leave with seven. I put them on the shelf by the books.

I admit to owning a lot of knitting books. I'm not going to offer any ideas for managing them, buying fewer, or making good use of them. I suggest you put them on a shelf (or 10) together in one room (to make it easier to find the one you want) and celebrate them every chance you get.

I'm even going to encourage you to get more books by recommending that every knitter's library contain the following five types of books:

Type 1

At least one thorough, decent book on technique. You want a book in which you can look up Kitchener stitch, backstitching a seam, which decrease leans left, and tells you how to cast on and off several different ways. You can't always call your knitting friends for help at four in
the morning on Christmas day. (Well, you can, and they might even understand, but the book will save you from needing to.)

Type 2

Stitch dictionaries. These books are pure inspiration. Filled cover to cover with ideas and patterns for wildly interesting ways to knit, stitch dictionaries are to knitters what the notes of the scale are to a piano virtuoso. Owning stitch dictionaries lets you add a lace cuff to a baby sweater, a cable to a sock, or to come up with 37 styles of ribbing.

Type 3

Books with patterns for simple, plain garments in shapes you like. These patterns will, as you move through your knitting life, become the templates for stuff that springs free of your imagination. A good sweater pattern can lead to 20 brilliant sweaters when you team it with the book on technique and your stitch dictionaries.

Type 4

Several books with brilliant, over-the-top “I-could-never” patterns in it. Wild intarsia, cables that make Celtic knots look simple, lace that drips complexity and makes your mind reel. Even if you're never going to knit the patterns, it is the stuff that knitterly inspiration comes from. Aim high. Dream big.

Type 5

A few books with stories about knitting, ideas about knitting, and tales of people living a knitting lifestyle. Although you may never fall down the rabbit hole and make every breathing second of your life from this moment forward about knitting, it's very normalizing and comforting to read about people who do.

My uncle Tupper is a carpenter. He's been a carpenter most of his life, and he has many, many tools. The last time I visited him I went into his garage and noted (with some surprise) that he had 14 kinds of saws. This shocked me. How many ways could you need to cut up stuff? My uncle started to explain them then, probably because a lot of what I'm thinking comes straight out of my mouth. This one was a circular saw, and it cuts big pieces of wood in a straight line. That one over there was a jigsaw, and it cuts scrolls and curves in wood. That one over there cuts laminates, and the big one with a table cuts sheets of plywood. He had a handsaw, a band saw, a compound miter saw, a trim saw — 14 saws, all necessary and useful. I left with a new attitude about all my knitting stuff.

Having the right tools matters, and all the knitting stuff I have isn't silly, useless, or even an odd obsession. While people are going to come into my house and let loose with a low whistle when they see my needle collection, I know my knitting patterns, books, row counters, and tape measures are the stuff of my occupation and inspiration, and having 17 stitch dictionaries and 54 circular needles in wood, metal, and plastic is no different from Uncle Tupper having 14 saws. Every scrap of pattern adds up to potential.

I really think the saws are more shocking.

O
NCE UPON A TIME
, somewhere in the world in a house full of wool, a knitter had an idea. She sat at a table with her needles and her paper and she knit up her idea, writing down her pattern as she made it up. When she was done, she measured how many stitches and rows she had gotten to the inch and wrote it down. This number she wrote down is the concept of gauge. Now, if you want to knit what she did, all you have to do is follow her pattern and match the unique tension that her knitting had, so even though you and this knitter have never met, and your knitting style will never be like hers, while you knit her pattern your work can be identical and (at least somewhat) predictable.

Simple, right?

Gauge is discussed more than any other knitting idea and this is probably because it's the most important concept in knitting. Needles, yarn, patterns, technique … these are all ideas that relate to gauge, and very few things in knitting (except maybe, and only maybe, what color you knit with) don't relate back to gauge. It's also the thing that gives knitters the most grief.

If you go into a yarn shop full of knitters and ask them to tell you about gauge, two will tell you their current project is turning out huge even though they “got gauge,” one will tell you her current project is turning out too small even though she “got gauge,” the one by the window will say she “always gets gauge” (and everyone will glare at her), and one knitter will sob helplessly because she's cast on a new sweater six times, tried a gauge swatch nine
times, changed needle sizes more often than most people change their minds, and, still the last time she measured a swatch she was only “close.”

Because gauge is the most important concept in knitting, there are those who believe it's the root of all knitting trouble. These knitters, no matter what goes wrong with your knitting, will blame gauge. If it's too big, if it's too small, if the color runs, it's stolen by pirates and pecked half to death by a parrot before you can pull it away … when you take it to other knitters for sympathy and advice, one of them will say, “It's the gauge.”

Someone, looking at the massive sleeves or the too tight neckline or the holes from the beak of a wild parrot and then fingering the stitches and noting the running dye or the misshapen shoulders, will — especially if there is no other explanation for the pit of despair and the
nightmare that your knitting has become, even if you've just explained that the whole trouble with the sweater is coming from a stitch in the pattern that you don't understand, or you missed the directions for the sleeve cap — ignore all of this, look you in the eye, and say, “Did you get gauge? Maybe your gauge is off.”

Then there are knitters on the other side of the coin. These are knitters who can't seem to accept that gauge really does matter and that you have to understand a little about it to get predictable results. These people are forever turning up at knitting circles with enormous hats, mittens for giants, and sweaters with necklines too small to go over a poodle's head. There they stand, morosely caressing their forlorn and disappointing knitting, complaining that nothing ever works out for them. These knitters, when you come up to them and say, “Oh dear, this is a classic gauge problem,” will look at you and admit they didn't knit a swatch, don't ever knit a swatch, don't think swatch knitting is smart: in fact, their other hobby is mocking those who knit swatches and pointing and laughing at them behind their backs.

Having been both of those knitters at some point in my life, I've come to believe that there's a time and a place for everything, and that there are times when a healthy
respect for gauge, like a healthy respect for fire and floods, is appropriate. Sweaters, for example. A difference of ¼ inch in a swatch could mean a difference of four inches in a finished sweater. Bad news, big mojo, and, worse, clearly significant in terms of potential knitting disaster.