Friday, May 11, 2007

Knitting in the Late 80's



Here is the cover of my first knitting pattern magazine. I can’t explain the power this German knitting magazine had over me then. Twenty years later, it looks decidedly goofy: more than 100 variations of the long tunic cinched with a giant belt slung loosely around the model’s hips over stirruped leggings and metallic flats—“perfect for ‘lustig’[1] weekends”—and sparkly v-necks perched atop bulging shoulder pads for “office chic.” None of these knits was even remotely “my look” and yet I was strangely entranced by this publication. Perhaps the fact that I was living in a foreign land and couldn’t speak the language adequately is part of the explanation. My life in Tübingen was surreal and cockeyed because I could never be sure that anyone understood what I was trying to say or that I really understood what anyone was saying to me. Of course I got things accomplished—I paid for things, managed the washers and dryers, even answered the house phone (and took a message!) but I was always aware of a profound disconnect between myself and everything and everyone else. I could not even be sure that anything was real. It seemed perfectly possible that one day I would simply fade away and then cease to exist. These knitting magazines presented themselves as a key to making this world make sense. The gridded patterns, the stitch glossaries, the sloganized poses: if I could master these, Germany and all the Germans in it would be comprehensible.

It was agonizingly slow work. Learning how to make a particular cable, collar, or shoulder seam required spending hours poring over mysterious scripts and working through my German/English dictionary. (So “senfstrick” is mustard stitch. So far so good. But what does mustard have to do with knitting? I later figured out that mustard stitch is called seed stitch in English. But I can never remember that and still think of that stitch as mustard stitch. Just as “knit and purl” is really “rechts und links”.) German patterns always come with patterns pictorially represented in coded grids.[2] And the key to cracking these grids required learning dozens of new stitches, all auf Deutsch.

In the end, I made my choice for my second ever sweater. I picked this men’s ski sweater. (But why? I have never liked ski sweaters—I still don’t—and I particularly dislike white clothing. I don’t trust anyone that can wear white all day long and still be clean by the end of it.)


Certainly the confident posture of the model partly motivated my choice. He certainly seems to know what he is doing as he stands there casually inspecting the implied slopes. (But where are his skis? And why is he wearing light gray corduroy pants to go skiing? We’ll never know, since he is obviously in no mood to talk to us.) I picked out a cranberry yarn for the main color, and light cream for the snowflakes. I was very excited to tell my housemates that my second sweater was going to have a two-color pattern throughout. I expected them to be impressed with my bold choice. I did not expect them to shout protests. I was told that maintaining proper tension with two yarns is "unmoeglich" (impossible) and that attempting it when a “mere beginner” (that hurt) was evidence that I was "Wahnsinn (insanity)." I was disappointed at their negativity but I was determined to knit those flakes. I don’t remember much about working on this sweater other than one evening, when I was alone in the kitchen working my way through the larger snowflakes across the upper back, one of my housemates came in and checked up on my work. After scrutinizing the stitches—from both the right and wrong sides of the sweater (no one told me before beginning that the truly well-knit sweater is regalmässig[3] on both the inside and outside)—she said, “Hmmm...nicht schlect[4],” got a drink and went back to her room. Well, with praise like that, how could I not be pleased? As with Sweater 1, Sweater 2 (as I affectionately call them) was not perfect. But knitting with two colors was not the hellish ordeal that those doomsayers made it out to be. I did an admirable job keeping the tension even while knitting the large snowflakes across the chest (if I do say so myself), but the section below that part, around the abdomen and lower back, was much looser and pooled out rather unattractively. And it was really, really, big, despite the fact that I made a swatch and figured (and refigured) exactly how many stitches to cast on. So here was the first time I learned a painful lesson that I have relearned many times since: swatches are really important for getting the sizing right, yet you can make a swatch, measure it exactly and the sizing might still come out all wrong. Perhaps for that reason I almost never make swatches now. Like calorie-rich desserts, they more often disappoint than deliver all they promise. Yet despite it being merely not bad I nonetheless I regard Sweater 2 as a success not because I made a sweater I would wear (I couldn’t, it was big—really, really big) but because becoming moderately good at controlling the tension for two yarns meant that controlling the tension for one yarn was a snap. (And it was. My next sweater, in navy blue and with a “bretzeln[5]” pattern that I think is pretty nifty, turned out to be "echt tragbar" (genuinely wearable--about the highest compliment I think I heard my housemates give to knitwear). Yet, if I am honest I must also admit that knitting with two colors is not pleasant and it was not for another eighteen years that I attempted to do so again and then, though I used five colors, I was knitting a small child’s cap.


[1] best translated as “fun” but much more amusing if translated as “lusty”
[2] I love these grids and am still amazed when I find a knitting book in English that provides only verbal knitting instructions for patterns. I am convinced that half the reason that so few Americans knit is because the patterns are so poorly and illogically presented. How can anyone think that 100 or more line-by-line instructions (usually of the sort “work like #2”) is better than a 3” x 3” grid that also includes directions for making the necessary adjustments for sweaters of 5 or 6 different sizes?
[3] “regular” as in even, that is, having perfect tension
[4] not bad but also not good
[5] pretzel