At my knitting group, I sit next to a woman who is doing something so complicated that it makes my eyes and brain and soul hurt just to look at it. She appears to be knitting a spider’s web, using needles the thickness of a single atom. And yarn made of breath.
On the table is her row counter. A little plastic device that counts upwards each time it is manually dialed a click further on. She explains that she doesn’t thread it on the end of her needle, as is the traditional practice, because that would unbalance their gossamer weight. So instead of being able to flick her finger each time she needs to keep track of another line of complexity completed, she has to pause, pick it up, dial it on, and return to her superfine work.
Knitting is made of numbers. It is made of discrete stitches. Digital. Patterns ask for the counting of stitches, of rows, of sets of rows. I don’t own a stitch counter. I don’t knit to my knitting group neighbour’s level of complexity, but I sometimes need to count, and when I do, I let the numbers dance in my head. I keep an idea of where I am in abstract patterns, thoughts like mathematical landscapes.
The piece I’m working now asks for measured decreases. Stitches to be lost in marked out places every three rows. And this to be done nine times. Three sets of three sets of three. On a pattern of knit 2, purl 1, that is itself, an endless repeat of tiny groups of three. Thrice times three makes me think of paganism. Makes me think of being 17 and thinking The Mists of Avalon was the greatest book in the world.
I cannot read while knitting. That’s not my personal failing. No one can. It frustrates me. I miss reading when I fall into a frenzy of making. I like to consume as I create. The hive mind of my knitting group suggested audio books. And I found myself the owner of an orange tin containing 45 CDs worth of Penguin Classics.
I made all those thrice times thrice times threes while listening to Frankenstein fall into his own orgy of creation. And discovered that, gosh, Frankenstein is so whiny. My ex boyfriend told me once that Frankenstein is all about repressed homosexuality. Frankenstein makes the masculine monster to satisfy his desires then flails with remorse for the rest of the book.
When Frankenstein is over I put down my knitting and email my ex boyfriend: Woah, so much whiny emo manpain. Dr Frankenstein is whiny about being repressed of the gay and the monster is whiny about not being able to get a girlfriend.
My smart-mouth ex boyfriend replies that Mary Shelley hung out with poets, so probably experienced a lot of male whininess.
I reply saying, surely not Byron? I don’t like to think of him as whiny…
We carry on like that all day. Little messages back and forth. Discrete. Digital.
Later, I wonder if we email each other too much. We are no longer lovers. Perhaps this is not right. I close my email client without counting the number I’ve sent that day. His name is in the to field – but I still don’t know who he is now, to me.
Last week I took my knitting to the cinema and saw Twilight. In the dark I clicked my needles, grateful for the mis en scene of continual white overcast skies that gave me light to see my work.
Knitting through Twilight made me feel like some kind of Stepford Goth – steeped in an alternative yet conservative take on womanhood. The film seemed to be about how all female sexuality really comes down to wanting a man to desire you – and only you – for nothing more than the fact you exist. And for that desire to be continually repressed in case he just starts killing you.
And I do find that kind of attractive. But only in a way that freaks me out, utterly.
I was knitting the black plastic dominatrix dress. Now stalled, sadly, because if I have to cut up another bin bag, I will probably, instead, just start cutting myself. And then I truly would be a Stepford Goth. First in line for an angsty vampire boyfriend. But perhaps my life is complicated enough. At least until I invest in a stitch counter.
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