I Am a Knitter by Kristina L. Martin

Last spring I dusted off my knitting needles and started a project. For weeks it traveled with me, gracing waiting rooms all over the city. One day while I was busily knitting as I waited for my son, a stranger approached me. "I see you're one of those," she said.  When I raised my eyebrows she added, "A backwards knitter."

Before that I  had never thought of myself as a backwards knitter. Slow and under-achieving, yes. Coveter of cable knits and Fair Isles, of course; but backwards, no. However, I suppose she was right.

I learned to knit from my mother who learned from her mother. Somewhere there came a bit of confusion between the left-handed knitter and the  right-handed knitter. But is backwards the right word? Why not simply different? After all, a knit stitch can be a purl from a different perspective.

But perhaps to her I am backwards because I went about the business of knitting wrong and was far from proficient. Perhaps she thought she was helping me. That if she could only pull me back before I went too far astray, then I too could achieve mastery. Perhaps more than anything she wanted to take my skein of yarn and fix my work, as if by fixing those stitches, she could also fix me.

Perhaps. But I don't think I need fixing. Because I am a knitter, knitting my way.

My mother showed me how to knit when I was seven or so. I can still hear the wool catching on her calloused fingers and the needles clicking together on that cold winter afternoon.  My mother guided my stitches for several rows of knits and purls and then handed me a pattern book. She merely smiled when I turned past all the practical beginner's scarves. Oh no, my first knitting project was to be a beautiful sweater. And I knit and knit and knit on that sweater. I must have knit a million stitches before pulling them out, over and over until my pretty white yarn turned brown and no longer held together. I declared my first knitting project a failure and it became my last.

Years passed and my best friend decided I must take up knitting again. It would be good for my "anal-retentive self" she decreed. It would be calming and provide a sense of acheivement that would be good for my soul. So we headed to an antique store to pick up used knitting needles. Hours passed, the two of us sitting on her couch -- her needles smoothly clicking away in the afternoon sunlight while mine lurched along at a ungangly pace as I attempted to make my first scarf. She'd look over and chide me, "Relax, relax!  Keep your stitches nice and loose. Just relax!" And then time would pass and she'd look over again and praise my nice and perfectly loose stitches. Over and over again the process continued until I decided I was incapable of even making a beginner's simple scarf and set it aside.

Years later I picked up that project--a skein of beautiful purples, greens and golden variegated hues. I was determined to finish that scarf. Row after row I knitted stitches--some with perfect tension and some impossibly tight as if my knitting self vacilated between two extreme personalities. Finally, I stopped--not to give up, but to investigate. It turns out I had a mismatched set of antique knitting needles. No matter how hard one tries, one cannot make size 11 stitches easily slide across a size 13 needle. My beginner's scarf was not meant to be.

Over the years I started and stopped innumerable knitting projects, none of them scarves. I'd find myself called by a skein of yarn, begging me to turn it into something beautiful. And I'd turn past the scarf patterns and be seduced by a flashier project. Projects too advanced, too complicated, too hard. In the end, that collection of half-made knitting projects is a colorful tapestry-like testament to both my determination to be this thing I call a knitter as well as my nature of dreaming big.

And yet, I am knitting still. In fact, just last night I sat by my fire and knit. It is a scarf. A scarf filled with errors and bits of my own hair inadvertently woven into its pattern. It seems I have accepted that I must knit scarves before I can ever dream of knitting a sweater. Lots and lots of simple scarves designed to warm the wearer. Scarves made with fewer and fewer errors but just as much of myself. And I will need to send them into the world, just as they are, errors and me and all.

Because I am a knitter. Others might argue my use of the word. But I use it without guilt. For I am a knitter of stitches and yarns twisted into something bigger than dreams.

And in addition to knitting woolens, I knit words. My experience knitting words mimics my knitting of woolens. I have started off too big, too complicated, too hard. So many projects have languished in drawers and hard drives and notebooks until now. My first novel, if it were in a pattern book, would not be in the beginner's scarf section. But I am determined to finish it. So I am using what I learned as a knitter to make that dream a reality. I will finish this novel the same way a knitter finishes a scarf--one stitch at a time. Slowly and carefully, correcting errors as I go, watching the tension and dreaming of the finished project. Pulling the threads together until it creates something beautiful.

Someday soon, I will give it away. And it will be like the scarf I worked on last night. It will be made with mistakes and hours and hours of effort. And it will be woven with bits of myself. Hopefully it will warm whomever receives it.