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Learning to Knit

Of Heart and Home

by Diana Weggler

The Lesson at Hand

 

People act surprised when they find out I have a brother who is only twenty. Such age differences between siblings, though not quite as rare as they once were, are nonetheless beyond the reach of most people's imaginations. Twenty-four years separates our births, or nearly a quarter century. Though we are brother and sister, it is not an exaggeration to say we are the products of two distinct generations--me a Baby Boomer, he a "Nexter." Because of this, our interests and tastes could hardly be more

disparate. Aside from one parent, four siblings, and a genetic predisposition to short stature, we share virtually nothing in common. If he were not such good friends with my son, I would scarcely know him at all.

 

So over the recent Thanksgiving break, when this young brother of mine asked me to teach him to knit, I was somewhat taken aback. He explained that he is taking a course in "Environmentalism and Sustainability" this semester. One of the requirements is to create a useful object by hand from start to finish, using natural, raw materials.

In the first weeks of the course he had learned how to clean and card raw wool, and had mastered the art of spinning with a drop spindle.

 

Not that I haven't taught anyone to knit before--I have--lots of times. I just never expected to be asked by a twenty-year-old male whose favorite hobby is wearing camouflage and obliterating tin cans with a 22.

 

When I teach adults how to knit, I usually begin with the wool, explaining how it can be spun, and about the various types and weights of yarn and their many uses. Next I demonstrate how to take a skein and wind it into a ball. I make sure they understand the precepts of tension and gauge, introduce the different types of needles, and illustrate how the myriad combinations of yarn, needle size and technique ultimately determine the weight and texture of the finished product. I answer all their

questions, and then finally I show them how to cast on and knit.

 

Because my brother had to depart for school in a couple of hours, we dispensed with the preliminaries and proceeded with the crash course. (I needed no reminding that I too had attended college once upon a time, and was therefore more than a little familiar with the art of cramming.) I quickly showed him how to cast on a row of stitches, and then gave him a no nonsense lesson in the basic knit stitch. Then I sat back and watched in

silence.

 

The first thing I noticed were his hands. I had never really looked at them before. I was surprised at how small they were, yet at the same time how masculine. The next thing I noticed was his high degree of concentration. My brother is someone who likes to talk. I have rarely seen him engaged in an activity where his mouth wasn't going a mile a minute. Instead he focused intently on his task, putting the point of the right hand needle through the first loop on the left hand needle, winding the yarn around it, pulling this newly formed loop to the fore, and then lifting the first loop off. With hardly a moment's hesitation he methodically repeated these same four steps, twenty four times in sequence, until he had completed his first row.

 

In less than five minutes, much to his surprise, he had the beginnings of a woolen scarf. A couple of times I had to correct his hand position and the angle of the needles, but basically he had the motion down from the word go.

 

It took him only half as long to complete the second row. By this time his excitement was palpable. He talked about how he couldn't wait to get back to school to show his lab partner what he could do. He was convinced that this would assure him an A in the course. By the end of the third row he was talking about knitting sweaters.

 

To hear him talk, it was as if a secret, undiscovered door had suddenly been unlocked, revealing its hidden treasure. By his own admission, he was relieved not to have to set up the warp on the hand loom that was sitting in his dorm room back at college. Even better, he now had something with which to occupy himself during the long, tedious car ride back to school. Though I didn't suggest as much, it occurred to me that this might turn out to be a great way to meet girls. She: Cool sweater. Where'd it come from ? He: Oh this? I made it.

 

I have to admit it was a defining moment for me as well--as bonding a moment as had ever taken place in the twenty years the two of us had co-existed on the planet. I was thrilled to be passing on a skill to my brother that had been taught to me by my sister, who had been taught by our mother, who had been taught by our grandmother, who had probably been taught by her mother, and so on and so forth down through the generations. I began to see the yarn as a metaphor for the continuous thread that binds

each of us to the members of our own family, as well as to our ancestors.

 

Who would've thought, after all this time, that my brother and I would connect over a simple ball of yarn. Though the course he was taking may have started out being about environmentalism, it wound up as a lesson in sustaining a family tradition. Who knows, with a little luck, he might one day get to pass it on to another branch of our family tree.

 

I can hardly wait 'til he comes home for Christmas break, so I can teach him how to purl.

 

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