Free-Range Knitter (2 page)

As you may be beginning to suspect, Annie is not the sort of child you would expect to be knitting. In fact, she’s the opposite type. Annie is fast moving, dirty, bright, thrill seeking, and loud. She’s the exact sort of child that people are always pointing out to me as an example of the sort of kid who won’t be able to knit because they have a short attention span and can’t sit still. When I suggest teaching these quick-witted children to knit, their mothers say things to me like, “You haven’t met my Marcus” and “Ruby isn’t old enough to focus.” Yet here sits Annie, who I can assure you, even without having met Marcus or Ruby, would be able to give them a serious run for whatever titles they hold in the department of mischief … and she is knitting. She sits on the edge of the chair, one needle in each tiny hand. There are about twenty stitches on her needles, and I am only guessing at that because I cast on twenty for her, but that was a while ago and things may have gone a little freestyle since then. Annie’s yarn has rolled off of the couch and under the table in front of her, but that doesn’t bother her. Her tongue is stuck right out of her mouth to help her concentrate, and concentrating is what she is doing.

Annabelle uses her whole right hand to grasp the needle and stick it into the next stitch. Once it’s in there, she drops the needle, leaning it a little against her leg so that it doesn’t fall, then picks up the yarn, wraps it around the needle, and drops it too. Annie then grasps the needle, holding it midway along its length like a baton, and swings it frontward to pull the
loop through, then way away from her to sweep the stitch off. Her movements are large, exaggerated, and awkward, and I love them. I am entirely charmed by her knitting because I know that it won’t be long at all before she has the efficiency of age and experience. The way that very young new knitters handle the needles reminds me of the crazy big feet on puppies or the ridiculously long legs on a colt.

I’m not charmed just by Annie’s knitting but because it’s being done by Annie herself. I feel that Annie and I have a connection, an understanding of sorts, and it is not only because she’s knitting, or because my mother would be happy to tell you that I was the same sort of kid (talking it through is part of her recovery program). Annabelle bears a real resemblance to my eldest daughter, Amanda, and not just because two hours ago she liberated her hamster and set off an incident involving the cat and the toaster that will likely take another hour off her poor mother’s life. Like Amanda, Annie is a seriously challenging kid. Whatever you’re thinking a regular kid is, Annie is just more. If she’s happy, she’s the happiest kid ever. If she’s angry, you will be stunned at the degree of fury her petite body can throw your way. If she’s doing something and is determined about it, she’ll define determination, and if she wants something, she will pursue it with a passion and dedication that could bring a veteran grandmother of twelve to her knees.

I’m here, babysitting Annie, because her mother has the same problem that I did when I was trying to raise my first
child. Only a seasoned professional parent can take the heat these intense kids can dish out, and usually the only thing a mother with a child like this can do is to opt not to leave her side until she can be trusted not to take out a sixteen-year-old babysitter who let her guard down for a moment. (I once had three police cars show up because my novice babysitter had made the foolish mistake of going to the bathroom for a tissue. In the seventy-nine seconds it took her to blow her nose, my darling and intrepid three-year-old had dialed 911 and then hung up. The guileless sitter was none the wiser until moments later, when six cops were bashing on the door shouting, “What is the nature of your emergency?”) Annie’s mother, Ruth, had been trying to avoid just such an event by supervising her canny progeny herself and trusting no one until Annabelle was less of a danger to herself and others, but the projected twelve years became a long time to go without a dental cleaning. Ruth had tried taking Annie with her the last time, but after the firemen had left the clinic and the gas leak had been repaired, the dentist had suggested to her that she lose his number until she found Annie a babysitter. Enter me and my experience.

My daughter Amanda’s specialty was stripping. (She minored in volume and its applications in the art of persuasion, another field in which she excelled.) My kid, wearing a full set of clothes and a full-body zip-up snowsuit with boots, could go from being fully clad and restrained in her stroller’s five-point harness system to absolutely stark naked and running the store
like a wild animal in the amount of time my back was turned to pay the clerk. I spent years wrestling a naked, furious, and occasionally wet toddler back into clothes in all manner of public places. I could never figure out how she did it, and I still have a special fondness for dressing kids in tights, layers, and overalls, as they were the strategies that seemed to slow Amanda down, even a little. (Should you have a similar strip artist at home, know that she is now eighteen and seems to have outgrown the urge, which has been a tremendous relief. For a while there I worried it would end up being her job.)

Annie, on the other hand, specializes in escape and liberation. (Like Amanda, Annie has also chosen not to limit herself and works at a subspecialty of destruction and vandalism.) Annabelle unties dogs, opens cages, releases ferrets, and has poured fish in the pasta water. She removes babies from cribs where they have been wrongly incarcerated, serving under the cruel régime of naptime, which Annie herself has seldom succumbed to. (Like many intense and challenging kids, she seems to need less sleep than her parents.) Continuing the liberation theme, Annie will, if the possibility presents, instantly make a break for it herself. She has gone missing everywhere her mother has taken her for the last four years, and from the moment in her infancy that she gained the ability to roll over, and thereby roll away, her mother has spent half of every day saying, “Where the hell is Annabelle?”

Despite the obvious downsides to trying to parent a kid like this (constant vigilance takes its toll), I actually think that
having a kid of this type is a wonderful thing. (I think this especially now that mine has grown up without either of us going to prison, and I have accepted the premature aging, gray hair, and twitch over my right eye as necessary costs for her survival to maturity.) I like kids who are hard like this in general, and I like Annie in specific, because I’ve come to believe that a lot of challenging behavior in kids comes about as a result of these particular little ankle biters being too darn smart for their own good, and I have respect for that, just because I knit.

It is my considered belief that the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting. Knitters are so compellingly clever that they simply can’t tolerate boredom. It takes more to engage and entertain this kind of human, and they need an outlet or they get into trouble. I think you could probably get a surprising number of the mothers of knitters to admit that they are grateful their child knits now (even if their child is forty-five, not four) because they know that their child’s brains cause trouble without constant occupation and that knitting probably prevents arson, prison, theft, and certainly mischief. I think knitters just can’t watch TV without doing something else. Knitters just can’t wait in line, knitters just can’t sit waiting at the doctor’s office. Knitters need knitting to add a layer of interest to the world so that they can cope without adding a layer of interest in other, less constructive ways. I can tell you that if
anyone in the world thinks of me as charming, calm, or productive, they should try me without my knitting.

Mothers of ordinary children have always found them busywork to keep them entertained. Mothers of challenging and ferocious children have turned to busywork to occupy their kids for the additional benefits of crime prevention and safeguarding what little is left of their property or sanity. Teaching these demanding and adventurous kids to knit can be a lifesaver. Once taught, many of them catch the spark and approach the goal of knitting with the same ferocity they do anything else, and as it engages mind, body, and soul all in one go, it’s often enough to hold their quick minds and bodies in one place to a remarkable degree, and that’s how it’s worked with Annabelle.

Mothers like me and Ruth, given the challenge of kids like Amanda and Annabelle, should be very proud of ourselves that we’ve turned to knitting as a tool instead of other, more coarse coping techniques. The cruel truth is that kangaroos under stress will remove young from their pouches and abandon them, that some birds will eat their very own eggs if they are overcrowded, and that some overwhelmed and inexperienced hamster mothers have been known to kill and eat their own young. Ruth and I (along with any mother who has ever had a kid whose nickname was “Houdini” or “The Volcano”) should give ourselves a little pat on the back each and every day that despite being very much under stress, profoundly inexperienced, and
helplessly overcrowded, we have turned to no such maternal crimes, although I think if you got us a glass of wine or two we would all be happy to tell you that we certainly understand the urge. Instead, clever parents that we are, we took a kid like Annie, a kid who ten minutes ago was trying to shave all the fur off the cat to make her more comfortable in the summer heat, and we taught her to knit.

The best part is that we don’t think of it as a tool we’re giving our kids to cope with their extraordinary and potent natures for the rest of their lives, and we don’t think of it as a way to help them learn to manage their intensity. No, no, my knitterly friends, as I look at wee Annabelle, who has been sitting in one place and knitting quietly for a whole seven minutes now, no, no. We think of it, now that those seven minutes have elapsed without our kids trying to take apart the stereo, paint with glue, or escape the confines of their homes, as pure, unadulterated, and mercenary self-defense.

Dear Designer,

I want you to know that I’m very much enjoying your beautiful sock pattern. The panels down the sides of the legs are fetching and rather remind me of wings, if wings were stacked on top of each other, which they almost never are, but you know what I mean. I knew the moment that I saw it that this design was exactly what I was looking for and that my search for the perfect sock pattern to use with this particular yarn was over.

I really love it. It is perfection in and of itself, and I have no idea or explanation for why I was compelled to
bastardize modify
personalize the design. I believe I have a disease for which I cannot be held accountable. I stood there and talked about how darn ideal this pattern was, and then despite my every intention to just haul off and knit it, I lost control of myself. It appears now that I am incapable of knitting a pattern all the way through
without changing something—even if, and I stress this, even if there is absolutely nothing lacking in the pattern whatsoever.

I have modified the finest Aran sweaters in the land (they tend to be a little wide for my frame, and I don’t care for bobbles—no offense intended), and I have altered classic Norwegian colorwork sweaters that have stood the test of time and been knit millions of times by perfectly satisfied knitters who didn’t find them at all wanting. (The neck was a smidge too round. I can’t believe no one has noticed before me.)

I tell you all this as a way of explaining that I am an equal opportunity despoiler, that I do not discriminate on the basis of reputation, talent, or design experience. Nay, I feel free to mess with any and all patterns that strike me as needing a little improvement. If it is any comfort to you at all, these improvements frequently result in a certain
je ne sais quoi
that renders the garment unwearable, so perhaps you shall have your revenge yet, when I alter my way right out of a pair of socks that can be worn on human feet. In any case, I didn’t want you to think that this was in any way personal, which it certainly was not.

There’s nothing wrong with your design. It needed nothing done to it at all, and I didn’t want you to take my string of rampant alterations personally. It means nothing that I have changed everything, except that I am a difficult person with odd taste. Again, I beg your forgiveness. I would tell you that I’ll try to stop, but I’d be lying. And I don’t want that to be between us.

In the spirit of that honesty, I do feel that you have a right to know what I have done with this pattern, the fruit of your needles, and I have enclosed a photo. It is best that you see this, since I have a terrible habit of telling people that it is so-and-so’s pattern (in this case, yours) even though I have altered it beyond recognition. (Again, I feel dreadful about this, but until there is some sort of recovery program for me I think it somewhat likely that both of us will continue to be tormented by my behavior, and warning you up front and admitting to my faults is all I can do.) Please don’t take any of this personally; the work was indefectible, masterful, and sublime before I took a fancy to it.

Thank you,
Stephanie

P.S.: I have also taken to referring to the panels as “openwork” rather than using the term “lace.” These socks are to be a gift for my brother, and I think it sounds more masculine.

P.P.S.: After I changed the stitch count, reworked the heel, continued the panels, and opted to widen the panel, the stitch count isn’t quite working for the toe decreases. Please advise.

I knit in the summer. All the way through the hot, steamy days, wool slips on my rather sweaty needles. Although Canadians are a northern people, and the summer here is very short, it can be so hot that it seems to produce a sort of amnesia in us. People come up to me while I’m knitting this time of year, and they stare like they can scarcely believe it’s happening. “Isn’t it a little hot for a hat?” they quip, and I get where they are coming from. The long and dark Canadian winter demands a certain fortitude, and the only way to build that fortitude is to have a few months where we deny its existence at all. “Mittens?” my countrymen wonder aloud. What on Earth would we need mittens for? It’s summer! As long as the flowers bloom and it’s a hundred degrees in the shade, our collective psyche sits on a patio in a sundress, drinking cold beer, going to the cottage for barbecues, and diving into the lake to cool off.