There must be another way...

NOW THAT SPRING seems to have really and truly sprung, even in the frigid Northeast where I live, I am struggling not just with finishing my knitting projects, but with getting them started, at all. I blame the garden.

This year, I’m trying, I really am, to make something of the space between my front porch and the street. When my mother decided to move in with us, she held out a carrot: She’d help me plant a garden, yet another skill set she possesses and I (utterly) lack. (My husband will gleefully tell strangers in the nursery that I have a black thumb. Now that’s true love.)

Indeed, bit by bit, row by row, a garden seems to be emerging. Where I once had just lawn, I have raised beds full of rich black earth. Packets of seed crowd my kitchen counter, and I even have tiny green seedlings unfurling toward grow lights from their wee pots in my basement. I am, it seems, finally going to grow something.

But what I am not going to do, now that my rare free time is spent pulling dandelions and misting seed trays, is actually get this cast on. Read that again, and let me be clear: I haven’t even finished casting on. Granted it’s 176 stitches wide, and the needles fine, the yarn even finer…but–nothing. Is it possible that I am destined to be just a foul-weather knitter? Have any of you achieved a balance between growing things in the earth and growing fabric on your needles? I’m looking for help, sisters. (And if you haven’t yet joined our Sister Project group on Ravelry, where this lovely shawl is our next knitalong…clearly, you’ve got plenty of time to join in!)

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I HAVE MENTIONED BEFORE that I have a problem with finishing. When it comes to knitting, this tricky admission has a double meaning. I have more unfinished knitting projects lurking around my office than I care to count, or even see, and part of the reason I don’t finish them is because I don’t like finishing, that is, the tasks of weaving in ends, sewing seams and blocking that are critical to a successful sweater, or even, for that matter a purse. (And trust me, I am  highly motivated by purses. I LOVE purses.) The problems started, along with the knitting, back in high school. I’d like to blame those nice ladies at the local yarn store, but I expect I just wasn’t paying attention.

I’ve always liked diving into projects more than I cared, really, about how they turned out. I am not, it turns out, as much of a perfectionist as I might like, and I am able to reap a whole lot of enjoyment from “doing,” without caring much about the outcome.

I fear that this is the hallmark of a selfish knitter. That so-called sweater above? That’s my response to the Rock’s request, sweetly and politely made two years ago, for a purple hoodie. Well, purple, yes, but hoodie? We’ll see. There’s a whole lot of knitting to be done before anything resembling a hood appears.

This is like the baby blanket I began 10 years ago for the daughter-to-be of one sister-friend that ended up going four years later to another. And meanwhile, I pretend not to see all that soft purple yarn lying forlornly under my desk (it’s right next to my knees, even as I type this) and instead think lustful thoughts for the teal blue alpaca that’s waiting for me downstairs, partially cast on to begin this incredible shawl.

Is there a cure for this disease? I’m hoping that the sisterhood over on our Ravelry group can help, but I’m looking for suggestions from other knitter/crafter/project-y types: How in the world do you finish everything you start?

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AS I’VE MENTIONED before, my mother is a major needleworker: sewing, knitting, quilting, embroidery. Some of her skills came my way, but most did not. When I stopped working full time a few years ago to stay home with the River, who was then almost 2, I started knitting like a lunatic, making baby sweaters and blankets galore. Desperate to feel a different kind of productive after leaving a successful and demanding career, I trolled eBay for vintage knitting needles and patterns, and even (in yet another triumph of hope over experience) bought myself a sewing machine (on which, five years later, I have yet to sew a stitch).

I did not, however, pick up a hoop and floss, the key tools of the needlework I knew and loved best as a girl. Maybe I was inspired  by history, by the finely worked samplers made by little 18th-century girls I saw in books. Maybe it was the closest I could come to my mother’s incredible skill and productivity. But I remember spending hours working in both cross stitch and crewel, perusing the racks of brightly colored embroidery floss at the dime store, begging my mother for new patterns before I’d managed to complete the old. (That tendency toward unfinished projects still, sadly, plagues.)

I grew up, and stopped embroidering; in high school, as I’ve already written here, I took up knitting and have pursued that hobby intermittently ever since. Pretty much any time I’ve got my needles in hand, the Rock will ask for a turn. She’s just turned 4, and though her fine motor skills are excellent, she definitely cannot knit. She twists the yarn here on there on the needles, gets frustrated (with me–clearly it’s MY fault the stitches won’t magically hang together) and usually pitches a fit so that NEITHER of us can knit.

Given this history, I’m not sure why last week I decided that a fun project for us would be to embroider our family members’ initials on some dinner napkins. This is a project I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, ever since I gave up paper napkins, for good, in the interest of saving planet Earth and honoring my longstanding crush on Al Gore. Now, we all use cloth napkins, at every meal. The result, though, is lots of napkins to wash, and napkins sent to the wash when their condition is, in fact, still pretty pristine. I thought if we could identify our OWN napkin, we might be encouraged to use it at more than one sitting, and wash it when it needed it, instead of every day.

I dug out the only embroidery supplies I still have, a kit I bought a couple of years ago (from the wonderful, uber-cool Jenny Hart, of Sublime Stitching) and explained the project to the Rock. “What color is mine going to be?” she asked, just as I pulled the floss out of the package. “Oh. Pink.” Problem solved. We printed out her first initial, in the font she chose (Courier, if you’re wondering–she is the child of two writers, after all) and I used carbon paper and a pencil to transfer it onto a clean-ish dinner napkin. I used a simple back stitch to make the letter’s outline, and then showed her how to do a satin stitch back and forth within the outline to fill in.

We started this little project at 11 a.m., and by 4 p.m. (with an interlude in the car to pick up her brother at school) we had five napkins done. But productivity isn’t really the point. The point is–she loved it. She sat in the armchair in my office, head bowed, looking up only to ask for better lighting so she could see her stitches. She took the hoop and needle with her in the car so that we could finish Daddy’s napkin before he got home from work.

Her intensity made me wonder about the needleworking little girls of the past. Granted, many girls weren’t educated formally in those days, and they had to do…something. And this work is both productive and beautiful. But I was struck by how quickly my daughter was able to focus on, and really enjoy, this simple task that connects her to generations of women. What is it about handwork that appeals to us, soothes us, allows us to shut out the distractions of the surrounding, chaotic world?

Whatever it is, my dinner table is grateful. And my mother, when she returned home in the afternoon, was amazed to see what we’d created. “I didn’t know you could do that,” she said to me. “I learned it from you,” was the only possible response. In our home, it seems, the sisterhood of needlework has made it to a third generation.

Are you a needleworker or crafter? If so, you should check out the TSP group over on Ravelry. We’re about to begin (some of us have already started!) our second knitalong project, a gorgeous lightweight shawl perfect as a summer wrap. Won’t you join us?

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THERE WAS A particular sweater that became the high-water mark of pre-grunge, post-hippie preppy fashion when I was 15. It wasn’t particularly pretty, or soft, or from a status brand. Nope, that sweater fell into fashion because it signified ability, ability to commit and follow through, and having enough free time to do something other than school work, sometimes a rarity in the academic pressure-cooker that was my high school experience. If you, or better, your boyfriend, was wearing this sweater, it meant you were a knitter, and, believe it or not, then as now, that was cool.

I learned to knit along with a couple of friends, by visiting the town’s local yarn store. The women there were extremely tolerant of the influx of adolescent girls (no boys, then, though now, there are plenty of cute, cool guy knitters) fluttering around, fingering yarn and patterns, erupting in mysterious, inside-joke laughter as only teenage girls can.

Those women taught me to knit, and in spite of my best efforts to be self-taught in everything, they succeeded, to a point. (I’m still a little vague on some basic knitting skills, and often find myself referring to references in print and especially, online.) We’d hang out in the store for instruction and inspiration, and then return to our dorms with our projects. It wasn’t uncommon to see groups of us gathered around, knitting in hand, watching afternoon soaps together (the only televisions were in common areas in the dormitories) during our rare down time.

Flash forward more than 25 years (ow, that hurts to type) and I still knit. I still knit in front of the TV, or on long drives where I’m not the driver, or while waiting for my kids to finish an activity that doesn’t require my participation. I have had long hiatuses from the hobby, but I always circle back to it. I love that it keeps my hands busy, that it allows me to be productive even when I’m sitting still, and that is an instant connection to other women.

When I moved to my new, rural home, one of the first things I bonded about with new friends was knitting. We traded patterns. We all played Hat Attack, a knitters’ game of assassin, aka Killer, together. None of us really has time for a regular knitting get-together (and oh, how we long for a Stitch N Bitch to call our own) but we see each other enough–picking up, dropping off, waiting at karate or ballet, grabbing coffee or tea in between–to check in with our projects, and one another.

A few days ago, I was at an ice-skating party with my kids, and another mom slid over to me to ask about the neckwarmer I was wearing. “Did you MAKE that?” she asked.

It’s beautiful, all earthy tans and reds and greens, and though I’d love to take the credit, I had to answer, no, that my friend made it for me because I had so admired hers. “But do you knit?” she persisted. It turned out that she was trying to learn, and what she really wanted to know was if I had a regular knitting group.

I wish I did, because I know how much fun and sisterhood it would offer. (If you don’t believe me, check out TSP’s profile of knitters-extraordinaire Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne, over in the Galleries.)For now, I have to stick to my fly-by, impromptu knitting sessions, and the virtual knitting sisterhood offered by Ravelry. (If you knit, and you’re not a member–you should be. It’s an amazing community and resource, and you should sign up for the site, and our our little TSP gang there, a group named “TheSisterProjectKnits.”) You’ll even find a few people there still making that long-ago sweater.

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