The knitting muse visits me again.
written on September 25, 2000 @ 10:30am

Dave and I are both wearing shiny new Emily-brand sweaters today. Mine is a V-necked cardigan, lots of cables, in an undyed gray mohair-wool blend. Dave's is the "Little Rivers" pullover in a dark brown with lots of heathery flecks of black and red and yellow. Two finished projects in one weekend. Both have been lurking since last weekend. Once I fix the collar on my sister's cardigan, I think I'm going to allow myself to start a completely new sweater.

I like finishing knitting projects.

Okay. I like fall because the sweaters come out. There are a lot of gorgeous sweaters out there in the world, but nobody sees them between March and September or so. I think most people look good in sweaters, especially if the sweaters look good themselves. I'm not talking about the nasty, pilled, acrylic sweaters that people buy for $4.99 at Wal-Mart and that go through the wash and get stretched out in all directions. (I won't knit with a material that is also used as a driveway sealant.) I mean the beautiful sweaters: usually wool, sometimes mohair or alpaca, maybe even a bit of silk. Rich colours, carefully matched. Elegant cables. I stare at good sweaters. Sometimes I'll deliberately sit behind someone on the subway so I can stare at a sweater's pattern and try to figure out how hard it would be to duplicate.

I've never quite understood why people who don't knit seem to hold machine knits as their ideal of good sweaters: sometimes someone will look at a project of mine and exclaim about how good it is because it looks like it's something I could have bought in a store. If you've ever said that to a knitter, think about what you're saying. First, honey, you are never going to find a machine-knit Kaffe Fassett Tapestry Leaf Jacket or an Alice Starmore Inishmore pullover.

Second, why is it that mass-produced sweaters, sweaters that take very little time to make and are manufactured by machines, are considered the standard by which an artisan's hundreds of hours of work should be measured? Yes, the stitches are regular and even. But handknitters can do that too, or at least the good ones can. Handknitting enables a knitter to choose everything about a finished product: the texture and drape of the fabric, the colouring, the shape of the garment. And knitters get to spend meditative time making beautiful things. Knitting teaches patience.

I love knitting. I love feeling the soft yarn move through my fingers, love turning lengths of yarn into warm garments, love making beautiful things with the hands I used to damn as clumsy. And in the fall, when the sweaters come out, I get to see the handiwork of people who share my affection for this craft.

prev - next