Our Knitting Heroine

KnitLit (too)
by Linda Roghaar, Molly Wolf

Knitters are a breed unto themselves. They speak their own language, and they harbor a passion for their craft that takes a strong hold, blocking out troubles and worry, whenever they pick up the needles. But knitters are not exclusionary — all are welcome into the warm circle once you appreciate the beauty of hand-spun and dyed yarn, the sense of focus that comes with starting a new project, and the joy of creating something beautiful to share with a loved one. In their first book, KnitLit: Sweaters and Their Stories, Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf brought together a heaping stash of stories by knitters and for knitters that spoke to the power of knitting in people's lives. Now, without a single dropped stitch, here is KnitLit Too: Stories from Sheep to Shawl.

Featuring another rich array of contributors, KnitLit Too includes folksinger Christine Lavin and writers Perri Klass, Lesléa Newman, and Suzanne Strempek Shea. Featured as well are stories by a third-grader who picks up the needles for the first time, a mother waiting to wrap her soon-to-be-adopted child in the blanket she made for him, a sister upstaged by her Merchant Marine brother who just so happens to be a natural knitter, a man who is forced to admit to the new woman in his life that, yes, he knows how to knit, and a young girl living with her mother in a battered women's shelter who is brought back from the brink when she learns to knit. Rounding out these heartwarming true tales are original poetry, meditations, fiction, and even a mystery, all about knitting. KnitLit Too features more than 70 pieces, some sweet and touching, others inspirational or hilarious, and all woven together by the dedication and devotion that knitters feel for a cherished hobby that is for many a way of life.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Our knitting heroine is a Canadian. This means that she must skate, whether she likes it or not. Let us assume that in this case, the operative word is "not." She is, however, married to Darling, a Newfoundlander, and this means that the offspring of this union must skate, and often, and in inclement weather. Newfoundlanders are a hardy breed, and their only concession to the cold seems to be thrummed mittens. This particular Newfoundlander has yet to put on a hat or do up his coat this winter, despite severe cold. Our heroine only thanks her lucky stars every day that her children are girls, and she is thereby excused from taking them to hockey. (While girls are more than welcome to play hockey, it is still only mandatory for boys. With girls, people ask you if your girls play hockey, not on what team.)

It is Darling's life's work to teach our heroine to skate backward, as he considers this a vital skill. Our heroine does sometimes try to imagine the circumstances under which her life could be saved by skating backward. Thus far, she has not succeeded. Still, because she is eager to be a good mother, she skates, if only frontward and as infrequently as possible.

Let us imagine for a moment, then, that our heroine is going skating, since it is only 15 C. (25 C. with windchill) and therefore "warm."*

Now, what would you do if you had to go somewhere you didn't want to go, in order to do something that you find boring — but that leaves your hands free?

Thank you for your instant understanding. Our heroine packed the bed socks that she's currently working on because they are on 6-millimeter plastic double-pointed needles that aren't likely to freeze to her fingers, as metal needles would.

When her skating party reaches the pond, dependable Darling ties up all their skates and they stand up to head for the ice. Our knitting heroine reaches into her backpack, assembles her knitting, tucks the ball of yarn into her coat pocket, and takes a step, airily acting for all the world like this is perfectly normal.

She glances at Darling and her girls. All four are struck speechless.

"You have got to be kidding me," says Darling, eloquent as always.

"Moth-ERRRR!" say the daughters.

Now, our heroine has faced criticism before. There are those who think her odd. But her love of knitting and lack of time to do it make her uniquely qualified to answer these concerns.

"What?" she asks blandly. She is going to slide this right past them. She is the queen of cool. They don't know what's normal for knitters, after all. Yes, this could be her being weird. It could also be what all knitters do in the winter. It's all a confidence thing.

"That can't be smart!" Darling replies. But he and our heroine have been together a long time, and he knows that she is not easily coerced. She can be tricked, but she can rarely be convinced to detour from her chosen path without a really good reason. Apparently "logic," "good sense," and "an impending sense of doom" are not really good reasons.

"Isn't this kind of like running with scissors?" her eight-year-old chimes, looking concerned; you can see her making a mental note to skate far away from her mother. That's it, kid, bite that hand that feeds you.

Our heroine smiles, brushing off the comment; mere child, what does she know?

Our heroine walks down to the ice. She's not really worried, not being one to cloud the issue with facts and logic. Still ... this might be another one of those moments that, retroactively, she should have seen coming. Such things do happen. She decides to give the idea a second thought. There: second thought done. Skating and knitting seem a perfectly natural combination. After all, she can walk and knit at the same time, and she's skated enough that she's not likely to fall while knitting. She can knit socks without looking, so she can keep eyes front to avoid skewering people at random.

Furthermore (I'd like to point out that despite what happened later, our heroine did have a "furthermore," an indication that she really had thought this through) if she did fall, she was unlikely to run herself through with plastic 6-millimeter double-pointed needles. Just to make sure, she gives her coat a test poke with the needle.

Reassured that knitting while skating really was an idea whose time had come, she steps gracefully onto the ice and meanders around the edge, knitting away.

Now, with some stories, there is a moment where it all starts to go wrong — a moment when you look at the character and think, "Uh-oh" or "Look out behind you!" or "He's in the basement" or "For God's sake, don't go into the forest!" In this story, that moment is subtle. It is not obvious.

Our heroine reaches into her pocket to pull out another length of yarn.

This is when the ball of yarn falls out of her pocket.

It is acrylic yarn, chunky, white. Which is a shame, because if our heroine had been a huge fan of neon pink, she might still be welcome to go skating.

The aforementioned ball of yarn is on the ice, and our heroine is blithely skating away from it, still knitting merrily along. Darling, who (quite frankly) has just been itching for a reason to be right about knitting and skating, picks it up. Darling trails our heroine, about 15 feet away, holding the yarn aloft and making excellent points about how the yarn has got wet, and he knew something bad would happen, and didn't he tell her that this was a bad idea? Our heroine, chastened, is about to tell him that he is definitely right, and that this disaster could have been averted if only she had listened ... when they simultaneously spot the trouble.

Copyright © 2004 by Edited by Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Linda Roghaar is a literary agent and an obsessive knitter based in Massachusetts.

Molly Wolf, writer, editor, spinner, and frequent sock knitter, is the author of White China: Finding the Divine in the Everyday. She lives in Kingston, Ontario. They are the editors of KnitLit and KnitLit (too).