The twins will be eight next week. I started these patches, in a knitting class, shortly after they were born. The point was to learn as many decorative stitches as were in the pattern book, about 12 as I remember. The rust and yellow, above, were for Jacob. The blue and citrus green were for Olivia. While I have now nine altogether, they do not an afghan make for even one eight year old. It has been so long ago since I worked on them that I can’t remember when I lost my steam.
I’ve always been a slow knitter. My mother coerced our next door neighbor into teaching me when I was eight or nine. I have a picture of the two of us, Mabel Shaw and me, sitting on her front steps. I am knitting a patch, not unlike the ones above, except it was knit in a simple garter stitch (knitting every row), and was supposed to be a pot holder for my mother. I don’t remember my mother ever using it — it probably wasn’t protective enough from heat .
I learned the U.S./United Kingdom style of knitting, holding the yarn to be knitted in my right hand. The Continental style, requiring the yarn to be held in the left hand, is generally much faster. But I digress. After this first attempt, I don’t think I knit until much later, in my advanced teens perhaps.
I knit some sweaters for myself with very fat yarn and easy patterns, so they went pretty quickly. Another fallow period followed while I had children, finished college and did housewifely things.
When my grandson was born, 17 years ago, I thought about knitting again. He was two or three when I knit him a red wool cap and matching scarf. I think he wore them exactly once. My daughter might have been embarrassed that they looked so home-made.
As more grandchildren arrived, I knit a baby sweater for my oldest stepson’s first born. Little did I know that the baby’s maternal grandmother was a creative seamstress and knitter. She produced the dearest vanilla colored sweater — she’s British, so jumper — with feathers knitted in. I had to have the local knitting store crochet the button placket on mine.
You can see that I’ve never been an expert. When I brought my knitting to my sister-in-law’s house for a weekend visit, she was so frustrated by the rate at which I knit, that she tried patiently and mightily, to teach me the Continental knitting method. My fingers just wouldn’t do it. I’d start a row with the yarn in my left hand, and revert to the right by the time I was mid-row. Gert, my sister-in-law, had knitted and crocheted several blankets that grace our beds. The very idea of knitting an adult-size blanket fills me with dread.
I’ve just finished reading Tom Vanderbilt’s new book, beginners: the joy and transformative power of lifelong learning. In the book he tells of learning to play chess, surf, swim long distances, and sing at the age of 49. He wanted to do these things with and for his 7 year-old daughter, and, because he is a journalist, to write about them. The point of the book is to learn things as adults for the fun of it. For him, it also meant learning alongside his child, and, being a beginner at a time when most adults are happy to give up learning to do what they didn’t learn at the “appropriate” age. Skiing brings fears of broken bones to those of us over 40 and almost any new learning brings fears of embarrassment.
Since I’ve already told you that I have knit since I was eight or nine, I’m obviously not learning to knit. And yet I am, over and over again. When I made the baby sweater, I was in a knitting class. When I made the squares for the twins’ afghans, I was in a knitting class. I am currently knitting a scarf for my 53 year-old daughter. I thought I was knitting it for myself,from a beginners pattern, but she liked the colors so much that I said she could have it.
Here’s what I’ve learned at 77.
- I keep coming back to knitting because I like the finished product, even if no one else does.
- Knitting requires concentration. When I was nineteen, I could watch television and knit, knit in my college classes, and easily do these two things at once. Sometime after my 60th birthday I realized that I couldn’t do anything else if I was knitting. If I didn’t concentrate, I lost track of the pattern and when I was supposed to add or subtract stitches, I just lost it. My husband found me pulling out the knitting I’d done on my latest project. There was a pile perhaps four inches tall on the floor next to me. He was horrified. I was too, but only because I knew how long it would take me to reproduce what I’d already done, without mistakes.
- I need to consult the pattern almost every row. My short-term memory is not what it used to be.
- I’ve gotten no better at knitting than I was at perhaps 18. I’m still very slow. People who don’t know how to knit are impressed with my product in process. They shouldn’t be. Periodically I am willing to concentrate on knitting to produce (slowly) a scarf, a sampler, a sweater (two are in process). This is because, as I’ve said, I like the product, and I think knitting is good for my aging brain.
- I don’t think this fits into Townsend’s model. He writes that, as adults, we can become at least marginally competent at most anything we put our minds to. I have been marginally competent at knitting most of my life, but I have never gotten any better!
I just don’t seem to be able to “up my game.” Still, at least one member of my family wants what I’m knitting, and the twins’ mother wants me to teach them how to knit. Since they are eight, perhaps they will whip up mittens and socks and sweaters in the blink of an eye. This will make me enormously proud that I have passed on my passable skill.
