The Uses of Knitting

THOMAS E. DOREMUS is the author of FLAW DEXTER, a novel, and many magazine articles. He has traveled widely in this country and overseas and is now living in New York.

Time was, you couldn’t get a redblooded American male to admit he liked to cook. Now it’s an accepted fact that men don aprons, feel at home in the kitchen, cook for their wives, exchange recipes with one another, and enjoy being praised for their garlic mayonnaise. Another field previously considered female territory but wide open to the male hobbyist is knitting.

This is not surprising news to the old-time British seaman or to some American surgeons, but I imagine that the idea will be met with resistance in other quarters, and it will take time and advertising to sell it. My knitting experience began as a jest, to prove a point with a woman; it was a party stunt. This is the best way for a man to start knitting. Lightheartedly. You first make an awful botch of it. The company is amused and satisfied by your clumsiness. Later, when you’re alone in the house and nobody is watching, you get down to business and figure out the mechanics of the thing. As I explained not long ago to a skeptical friend of mine, “You tie all kinds of sailors’ knots, don’t you? Well, knitting is just tying knots with the help of two pointed sticks.”

I expect what has kept many a man away from this craft is his appearance while knitting. It gives him such a housebound look. He seems trapped and sedentary. I know the feeling, but I have overcome it by standing up while knitting, keeping the ball of wool in a trouser pocket or an inside coat pocket and walking around the room. If you want to look rakish, rather than absorbed, by all means look so. Otherwise, remain seated like any other knitter, and gradually your activity will be accepted as normal. Personally, I prefer to knit in bed. There is something wrong with the way I hold the needles (an early fault in my training), and I am more proficient when the needle ends arc propped against the bedcovers. Besides, if I’m knitting something complicated, something where I have to count to keep track of a pattern, I prefer to be alone. The privacy of one’s own bed is perfect.

A warning, though. Knitting is a vice like any other. It can be carried too far. It can strain your eyesight, your temper, your reason. From apathy toward the subject, an amateur usually progresses to overinvolvement. Remember when you first learned chess, and the wallpaper pattern reminded you each night of a chessboard? You lay awake all night creating chess problems? In the kitchen every linoleum square was part of a chessboard? Same thing with knitting. Take it easy. It can become obsessive. It can also serve as an excuse to avoid honest, sustained conversation. “Just a minute, I’m counting”; how many times have you heard a woman employ this dodge when she’s losing an argument? I confess I have used it once or twice myself when I saw a discussion becoming footless and vindictive. “Sorry, I didn’t get that,” I’ve frowned. “Do you mind if I just finish this row, then we can talk?” You pout, make a few penciled notations in the margin of the instruction book, hold up the product, stretch it, sigh, scratch your back with the free needle, finally roll up your piece of handiwork, Stuff it into your tote bag and then, relaxing, say, “Yes, now where were we?” You have gained the advantage. She has cooled off, forgotten her point, changed her mind about prosecution.

The idea that I could knit first occurred to me during just such a session of invective with a young woman who had been knitting me a sweater over a period of several months. I remember she had just got to the armholes the night of our disagreement and, in a perfect fury, had illustrated her feelings by deliberately tearing out row after row of the almost completed garment until nothing was left but hundreds of yards of wrinkled yarn. A year passed, the lady had vanished, but I still wanted that sweater, and with sentimental industry I set about knitting it myself, finally producing an awkward, unsightly facsimile of that much lamented pullover.

Later, whenever I needed a justification tor knitting, I remembered that it was not unusual, even as late as the thirties, to see men in the House of Lords purling away while somebody boring had the floor. Very few present-day Members of Parliament knit, it is true, since the custom has died out on the ships where they learned it. In a less leisurely world, modern sea duty allows no time for knitting. As for the surgeons, I believe a few still knit and crochet to keep their fingers nimble with the knife. I have no upto-date information on David Windsor’s current knitting progress (another old salt) but it has been rumored that he occasionally, still, runs up something on the needles for his Duchess. Perhaps he considers knitting, nowadays, as part of a former and frivolous phase of his life like the jazz bands, Gertrude Lawrence, and experiences with the Pytchley Hunt.

I have made up a list of rules and suggestions for men who are now knitting or who contemplate it, and although it may outrage professional women knitters, here it is. My observations on the subject are most personal and arbitrary.

1.Once you have managed to break down their initial reserve, women will make excellent knitting teachers. They minimize your mistakes, are infinitely patient, constructive, and tolerant of your eccentricities. Don’t rely on those Jack Frost booklets. Ask a woman who knows what she is talking about.

2. Under no circumstances learn how to knit argyle socks. They arc very boring. All those needles and bobbins and different colored yarn. Plenty of women will knit them for you. Leave the argyle drudgery to them.

3. Buy the most expensive wool in the most expensive stores. There is no such thing as a knitter who can rise above his material. As your wool is, so is your knitting. Do not stint.

4. Never knit only one thing at a time. You will soon be bored with it. Have several things on the fire. Be working on afghan squares, a muffler, a necktie, a washcloth. Switch from one to the other to keep your interest-span from going dead on you.

5. You will find that cigarette smoking is automatically arrested after you have become a knitter. It is impossible to smoke cigarettes and knit at the same time. If smoking is a worry to you, knitting is a much better nicotine substitute than gum or candy.

6. Do not knit during the summer. The wool in your fingers feels hot, itchy, unpleasant. Knitting, like whittling, is for long winter evenings.

7. Knitting will produce smug thoughts. Both men and women assume narrow and self-satisfied attitudes while knitting. Knitting produces a superficial, bogus serenity. A “busy hands never got into trouble” type of piety. You have to make up your mind that the therapy of knitting is of a limiting variety. It does not favor largess of mind or heart. Oh, by the way, if you’re embarrassed about going into a store to buy the wool, simply explain to the yarn seller that your doctor has recommended knitting as a therapeutic hobby. Joke about it. Sound cheerful.

8. Make presents of all your finished products. The boss will remember you for that cardigan long alter he’s forgotten a box of cigars.

9. Knit for charity or for a cause if you are so inclined. You may use any one of a number of outlets. As for myself (I am serious), I prefer knitting cotton outer bandages which are used in several of our American leper colonies.

10. Since the world’s best knitting and knitters come from France, learn enough of the language to be able to translate from French instruction books. Knitting not only looks better, it sounds better in french. A cable is a torsade, a twist. All the technical terms are more to the point.

11. Don’t try to become so expert that you can knit without looking, like those women who go to the movies and knit in the dark while watching the screen. Knitting is not like touch typing. Half of the fun is to watch what you’re doing. What’s the hurry, anyway?

12. I would stay away from steel needles at the start. They are rigid, clammy, they make an unpleasant noise. Plastic is better.

13. Use your old canvas book bag from college to tote your work around. It will carry wool, needles, a novel, and if you’re going to the beach, a bottle of bourbon, as well as towel and extra pair of trunks. If you really intend to knit on the beach in front of everyone, be absolutely sure you have the bottle of bourbon along. The juxtaposition of the two vices, the one gentle, the other roistering, is strangely effective.

And remember, men, if and when you encounter moral censure or a scoffing attitude, be quick to use the arguments I have already put forth: Old-time sea dogs knit, so do surgeons, so does the Duke of Windsor. And that fiercelooking male forebear of yours whose portrait hangs on the wall in all likelihood hooked the rugs you walk on.