RECENTLY, I BOUGHT YARN. I preceded this rather unremarkable event by checking my bank account, thinking over what I could afford to spend. I then forked over the cash. Then I read something from the World Bank that shook me up pretty badly. The population of the world at the time of this writing is apparently about 6.7 billion. According to the World Bank, 3 billion of those people are living on less than $2 a day. Of these, 1.3 billion are making a go of it on less than $1 per day. These facts stayed with me as I squirreled my new yarn away among its compatriots in my stash.
I have a stash. It’s a good one too, and I don’t feel bad or guilty about it. In fact, to be entirely honest … I love it. There’s yarn in there that I would totally take with me in a house fire. Knitting has taught me that there is a deep and grand satisfaction in having the means around me to occupy myself and to make things for the people I love that keep them warm, both literally and spiritually. I think that knitting is profoundly satisfying and worthy and it’s enriched my life tremendously. I wouldn’t want to be without it even as it takes up most of my extra cash and closet space.
I admit that my love for yarn means that I’m occasionally frustrated when I run out of space for my yarn collection in my tiny house — and I’m way more than occasionally frustrated when I can’t afford to buy something like the worsted-weight cashmere from my favorite hand-dyer. I have to be reasonable, though, because like just about every knitter, I have a yarn budget. I have to make choices about paying the rent, buying food. I must remember that when the bills for my daughters’ educations start rolling in, the fact that I have a well-appointed yarn closet and they have very beautiful mittens won’t mean a thing if Mamma blew the whole household savings on stash enhancement.
The World Bank indicates that most North Americans fall into the 1 percent of the world’s population that has about 80 percent of the world’s money. Even though that gives me a pang of guilt, I don’t think the World Bank is out to make me feel horrible about how much I have. In fact, I don’t think they were considering knitters at all when they came up with that statistic. The goal is simply to point out inequity, and I’m sure they hope that reading their statistics results in at least a small shift in the way people like us think sometimes.
It turns out that knitting is a luxury, and buying yarn (even cheap yarn) or having time to knit (even five minutes) or simply sitting in my house (even my very small house) with that warm, soft yarn in my hands is a sign that I am extraordinarily rich and fortunate. Knowing this means that I’m going to try to remember the very best things knitting has taught me so far. Sitting here screwing up this sweater means something. It means I lead a very good life. I am lucky. I am fortunate.
I am a knitter.