ONCE YOU’VE BEEN A KNITTER for a little while … like, say, ten minutes … the odds are very good that you will have been screwed over by knitting enough to be able to see that some of the ways it messes with you can be pretty funny. Admittedly, as Mark Twain said, “Humor is tragedy plus time,” so the more time has passed since you got screwed, the more likely it is that you’ve been able to move through the pain and find humor in it.
Knitting teaches us quickly that our screw-ups aren’t the end of the world. After all, it’s only your time and sanity that are wasted when you make massive mistakes in knitting. As a matter of fact, knitting can help teach us all to manage mistakes better and learn to laugh at ourselves. For most of us, knitting will provide more than ample experience and opportunity for learning how not to take our errors too seriously (no matter how stupid they are).
The problem, though, is that time. If you have been the victim of your own temporary lack of intelligence, then the amount of time it will take to recover and laugh at your mistake is going to be directly related to the amount of personal pain you endured as a result of that error.
I once entirely botched a hat at 2 AM on Christmas Day. It was supposed to be a gift that would be unwrapped later that day, and I didn’t read the decreases right and while I was trying to knit my father-in-law an elegant winter hat, I ended up with a thing that was more like a massively mutant cone-head headdress. (Hint: My father-in-law isn’t a mutant cone-head.) I still can’t explain how it got so far out of hand without me noticing, but I blame fatigue and eggnog. It was horrifically traumatic. Christmas Day was dawning, all the stores were closed — I couldn’t buy another gift to replace it. No matter how I looked at it, or how fast I worked, there really wasn’t going to be time for a re-knit. I had to go gift-less with a bad hat and an explanation, and the embarrassment of that awful day has stuck with me. I confess: I still don’t think it was funny.
If, however, the bad thing that happened to you happens to someone else, even if it wasn’t then (nor is it now) really, really funny that it happened to you, most knitters will be unable to control themselves. They’ll have at least a wee chuckle at their fellow knitter’s pain. I know several otherwise lovely knitters who still giggle when they think about that mutant hat I made. Even I think (through my pain) that watching somebody knit sleeves that don’t match without noticing until she tries on the finished sweater is like watching a version of the Keystone Kops or the Three Stooges. It’s knitter’s slapstick, and it can be darned funny.
All we ask of each other as we knitters navigate this sometimes weary path is that if it’s a really big knitting boo-boo and the pain is fresh, maybe all of you could laugh behind our backs … just until the pain fades a bit.
4 things
THAT ARE REALLY FUNNY WHEN
THEY HAPPEN TO OTHER KNITTERS
1 A knitter comes to knit night and, for diagnostic purposes, shows her rather stunted heirloom lace shawl-in-progress, and all of you watch in horror as she comes to understand that she’s missed an instruction. Although she’s worked every row of the chart meticulously, she’s somehow missed a line of the pattern: “Chart shows only even numbered rows. Purl all odd rows.”
2 A knitter proudly displays the parts of her finished sweater, all ready to be sewn together. As she smooths her hands over her work in satisfaction, she realizes with increasing distress that she has knit the front in a size large, the back in a size small, and sleeves that are neither.
3 A knitter (who shall remain nameless, but it might have been me) pops her brand new tank top over her head and realizes that if the neckline falls so low that her breasts (both of them) are entirely visible, there may be some issues with strap length.
4 when, after six hours of cursing and attempting to sew together his new cardigan, a knitter discovers that the reason it won’t go together right is not because he can’t figure out where the seams go … but because he has knit a back, two sleeves, and two right fronts.