Knitting Rules! (17 page)
Authors: Stephanie Pearl–McPhee
Use them as coasters. (Work with me.)
Save them up to make a blanket of all the different squares sewn together.
Keep them in a box in the closet, intending to sew them up, but don't. Every time you clean the closet, take them out, feel guilty that you haven't done it yet, and put them back in. Repeat for 20 years, then â maybe â throw them away.
(A Cautionary Tale for Knitters)
My friend Emma recently knit a sweater, or, to be precise, my friend Emma recently intended to knit a sweater. She took her hand-spun and an appropriate pattern and launched. Now, Emma is what I would call a typical knitter with a side of independence. She's conscientious when it comes to her knitting: She knows and understands the ways of the swatch and respects the mojo of the swatch. I've watched her swatch. Emma understands, as most thoughtful knitters do, that even though swatches are an imperfect system, they're all we have.
Emma knew all of this, and even though she wanted a sweater that would fit, she maintained she didn't mind being messed over if gauge didn't work out quite right. She was feeling flexible. If she had to rip back, so be it. No problem. Like millions of knitters before her, Emma understood that in simply beginning a sweater, even though thousands of patterns had warned her not to,
even though millions of knitters have suffered before her, even though the first page of every knitting book is about knitting a swatch, she was turning her back on gauge, predictability, and the mysteries of tension, and instead accepting consequences, hours of possible reknitting, and yet another funny-looking addition to the wardrobe of sweaters that are in the “sack” family of styling.
There come times in every story where you realize that things could have changed, a place where the plot could have turned right or left, toward darkness or light, bringing on disaster or insight. Writers call these places in a plot “turning points,” and beginning a sweater without any regard for tension is one of them. Emma began to knit her cardigan, casting on for the neck and working downward, increasing as the pattern directed. She did become aware that the sweater was perhaps going to have a little more ease than she intended.
Note:
This was the first turning point. Despite the way the sweater was running toward the big side of things, Emma didn't measure anything, so she could perhaps stop increasing and make the sweater a little smaller. No, no ⦠Emma kept going. She turned toward the darkness, the snare that gauge had set for her.
Emma kept knitting, and as she knit, the sweater spread across her lap like a lava flow. The thing was looking big. Still, eternally hopeful (ever
reluctant to rip out the monstrosity at yet another turning point), Emma kept it scrunched up on her circular needle and bravely went on knitting.
Circular needles can be particularly deceptive, as the whole work stays curled up in an innocent-looking circle. If you have suspicions, use a darning needle and thread the live stitches onto a length of yarn so you can have an honest look at it. Naturally, this will destroy any illusions you have, but as painful as that sounds, it could help. If you're really emotionally invested, try a glass of wine beforehand. It doesn't fix gauge problems, but who cares?
Emma kept knitting, putting aside some stitches for the armholes, where she would later pick up stitches for the arms and knit them on. She kept knitting but she started revising her plan a little. Because the sweater was obviously a little “roomy,” she decided she wasn't actually knitting a cardigan sweater â it was now a jacket. Yeah, that's it. A jacket. A big, bulky jacket. Emma bought a zipper.
Emma kept knitting, even though she was starting to wonder why she seemed to be running out of yarn. She absolutely had enough yarn to knit herself a sweater when she began, so where was it all going? At the rate this jacket (note that Emma has assimilated the new project goal seamlessly, allowing her to believe that this thing is still the right size) was going it wasn't going to get two sleeves. She began to wonder whether there was such a thing as a short-sleeved bulky-wool jacket.
Emma kept knitting and eventually came to cast off the largish jacket, and here's where the story gets incredible. She cast off the body of the jacket, saw that it was big, knew the gauge was off, knew it was too big ⦠and then sewed in the zipper.
It was astounding. It was like she had so much invested in it that she couldn't see the enormousness of the sweater in front of her. When people saw it, they asked her odd things, like “Isn't that sweater too short?” (It's formidable width played a trick on the eyes. To appear proportionately long enough for its width, it would have had to be almost five feet long.) My favorite, often whispered behind her back, was “Are you out of your mind?”
Emma kept knitting. This impressed the heck out of me; you really have to be deluded or demented to miss the fact that you've knit something as big as this jacket. It also impressed me that she could sink this deeply into denial. It's boggling that she looked that monstrous sweater in the eye and then picked up and knit the
sleeves, but that's exactly what she did. She knit and knit, and we were all appalled. We thought about an intervention. We wondered whether she would wear it when it was done. We wondered if we should take her aside and say, gently, “Emma, it's not going to work. You have had a gauge accident. You need to step away from the knitting.” We didn't, though. We let her keep going. Even now I don't know why we didn't intercede. I think it was like she was sleepwalking and we didn't know if it would hurt her to wake her. My husband says that's what we tell ourselves so we don't have to own up to being horrible people who thought it was really, really funny.
Knitting things that gradually increase in size instead of decrease in size is one way to know you're in the uncertain world of gauge. If you're increasing and things are bigger than expected, stop increasing sooner and perhaps you'll save your item. If things are smaller than expected, increase for longer and maybe you'll still have something you can wear. If, however, you cast on and decrease, nothing short of “the big rip” will save you if the thing is too big or too small. It's something to consider if you're going to dabble in the dark art of swatchless gauge.
Emma kept knitting, and we all waited to see what would happen. Would it hit her all at once? Would she cry when finally she saw it with her own two eyes? When was she going to see what we could see? Maybe when she tried it on and realized she could be leaping from a plane with only this parachute of a sweater to save her â¦
Mistakes with gauge are painful and difficult to accept. This is largely because there is absolutely no one else you can blame. Nobody. It's not the designer's fault, it's not the yarn's fault, the editor didn't miss an error, it's not “just one of those things.” It's not because your mate annoyed you while you were knitting and messed with your concentration. You can't blame it on an unhappy childhood or an inability to cope with a fear of emotional commitment. There is no-one to blame but you â and this happened because you didn't spend a wee bit of time knitting a tiny square.
In the end (as Emma kept knitting), it was the sweater that stopped her. Finally, unable to see the truth, blinded by her love for wool and her faith that anything knitted was good, finally, Emma ran out of yarn mid-sleeve.
Altering your plan is the first sign not only that you're not knitting what you thought you were, but also that you may not know what you're knitting at all. This, combined with a nagging sense of doom that you have to ignore, is a sign that the knitter may be experiencing a gauge problem of some significance.
This story ends here only because Emma was knitting with hand-spun. For reasons I can't fully explain, reasons to do with pain and knitting and hope, if it had been a yarn that she could have gotten more of, she would have kept going. I know this because when Emma brought the sweater to our knitting night for us to help her rip it back for a do-over, she explained (as she lay what looked like a brown, woolen, hand-knit, five-room, cabled refugee tent on the table) that the sweater was “not fitting.” We were stunned by her language. Not fitting? This sweater was “not fitting” exactly the way apples are not motorcycles. Not fitting? It was time to wake her from the dream, and quickly, before she cast on again. Thinking fast, we did the only thing we could. We asked her to try it on, and then swiftly â before she could get the shameful thing off her â we zipped a whole other full-size knitter inside with her.
It was cruel, but gauge is a vicious mistress, and all is fair in love and war.
You know, sometimes I just jump in. I don't swatch, I just start, and there are times when this is appropriate, or at least I delude myself into thinking it's appropriate. Really, I tell myself, I have a shot at getting gauge right enough that it's worth saving the time. Yes, it's possible that you or I will nail gauge right out of the gate. I like to think that there's just as much of a chance as not that I'll have gauge
the first time I cast on for a project. This delusion is what lets me put 299 stitches for a shawl on the needles without knitting a swatch â because this time I'm convinced (no matter how many times I've had to rip out things in the past) that things will be different. That this time, I'll get lucky. Sometimes that actually happens.
Really, though, when you think about it, there's very little chance that you or I will get it right without a few attempts. (Think of this as you swatch and swatch and feel stupid for not being able to nail it.) There are, all things considered, and with the world being as bright and varied as it is, many ways to get it wrong, and only one way to get it right. Statistically speaking, your chances are not good.
This used to bug the wool off me. I want to start now. I don't want to knit a swatch. I don't want to wait while I wash and dry it, I don't want to delay while I hunt up a tape measure. That's me: Even instant gratification takes too long.