How to Knit Without Wit

Today I finished knitting my first pair of socks. This is sort of a big deal, at least to me. One of the activities proposed as physical therapy for me at the age of 9 was knitting. I could knit, alright, but any attempt to purl resulted in a chaotic, cobweb-like mass of holes loosely held together with yarn. Cross-stitch and crewel were the therapies that stuck with me. The next time I picked up knitting needles was back in the early 80’s; when Doctor Who first hit the US big-time, I knitted two massive Tom Baker 5^th Doctor scarves. I didn’t know much about yarn, considering neither gauge nor what the yarn I chose was made of, merely looking for exactly the right colors. The pattern was pencil-scribbled on scrap paper and was all knit stitch… perfect for a purl-challenged knitter. I vaguely remembered the simple one-finger cast-on I learned at the age of 9. Binding off? I really don’t remember how I did that, but I suspect I got it from a child’s undersized paperback book called “How To Do It,” featuring such things as blanket-stitch edging, one-stitch knitting, hemming, and sewing on buttons. One thing I did do right was to work out a way of ‘carrying up the yarn’ to keep from having to cut-and-knot for making narrow stripes. Years later I discovered that I had indeed figured out the standard way of doing that.

Maggi moved in with me about four years ago. She exudes knitting the way I exude words. Anything that can be done with knitting needles she can do, but she’s especially fond of intricate patterns and lace knitting. Most of the gifts she gives family and friends for birthdays and other occasions come from her constantly-moving knitting needles. That included me, and thus I was introduced to the glorious warmth and comfort of hand-knitted socks. Oh, how I love them!

Even that would not have been enough to get me started knitting, except that there were a few items I dropped hints for that she more-or-less ignored. One that I found increasingly important was a bright orange infinity scarf for deer hunting. Hats didn’t keep my neck warm; regular scarves were bulky enough at the neck to push my hat down onto my nose; hoods didn’t turn when my head did. I figured that an infinity scarf would solve all those problems. After one particularly frustrating deer season, I decided I really needed the thing and would just have to knit it myself.

Maggi (mostly) held in her unholy glee at hooking me at last. When I hefted the hunter-orange skein of cheap acrylic yarn at the hardware store and asked, “What else do I need?” she hastily assured me that she had a pattern and could loan me an appropriately-sized circular needle. On circulars, this simple pattern was all knit stitch… I could do that. I learned that this results in ‘stockinet’ whereas the same procedure on my straight needles back in 1980 resulted in those Dr. Who scarves being ‘garter stitch.’ Oh, well, I took her word on it even though it took awhile to figure out why it worked that way and what the differences were.

Eventually I finished the hunting headwear and it was perfect for my needs. The next item on my ‘want’ list which (apparently) Maggi found too boring to bother with was another scarf, this one a copy of the Gryffindor House scarf from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She had the pattern in a book, and I thought, “It’s another scarf. I’ve done those. How hard can it be?” Little did I know!

This came in two sizes, which turned out to be a critical point and my big mistake on the project. I chose the adult size, which worked out to being as wide and bulky as my Dr. Who scarf if a bit shorter. The sticking point for me was that the pattern was something called ‘single rib’ throughout. I’d need to learn to purl. Maggi patiently worked me through, but somehow I learned it backwards. Counting wrong, failing to count at all, adding extra stitches, I ended up ripping out the first section five times before I finally comprehended what I needed to do to get a neat single rib, and what it was supposed to look like when I did. Even so, my memory had difficulty with that purl stitch and I ended up doing the whole scarf (which took well over a year) with what Maggi called a ‘twisted stitch.’ It ended up looking correct despite that, if about half again as wide as it should have been. This is how I learned the importance of something called a ‘test swatch.’ “For a scarf? One size fits all!” had been my initial reaction to wasting time and effort on a test swatch. Live and learn.

By that time it began to dawn on my that, if I planned my projects cleverly, I might possibly aspire to knit a pair of socks for myself someday. I could now purl, had learned a little about yarn sizes, and figured the next steps would be to learn to decrease, increase, and read pattern notation. The two other projects in the Harry Potter set, a beanie and a pair of gloves, would teach those skills. In addition, it seemed both would be done on multiple double-point needles, another skill I’d need to master.

I had plenty of that cheap hardware store yarn left from the scarf, so forge ahead! One test swatch later, I had chosen a needle size and was ready. The first thing Maggi needed to show me was a stretchy ‘long tail’ cast-on. I still have not mastered this. It’s about the complexity of hand whip-finishing a fishing fly, which took me over two months of patient coaching by my fly tying mentor for me to learn. However, every fly gets a whip-finish, while casting on yarn happens only at the beginning of a project which may take months. Even worse, there are two distinct finger movements to learn for knit and purl stitches. I’ll probably be still pathetically asking her for reminders for casting on when I’m 70. Next, she showed me how to handle four needles without twisting that first row, and how the stitches progressed from needle to needle, but that was pretty obvious even to me. The beanie brim being double rib rather than single was also no problem. I did most of the hat while travelling last summer.

However, although I understood that “ssk” meant “slip, slip, knit,” the actual mechanics of the stitch eluded me. I figured I slip stitch 1, slip stitch 2, knit stitch 3. That didn’t decrease at all; I was left with the same number of stitches. I knew I was doing something wrong. Once again Maggi had to demonstrate. Doing it her way worked, and I was delighted to see the crown of my beanie narrowing. I could decrease!

Hat finished, it was time to try the gloves. By now I was getting the hang of reading patterns and had a couple of reference books. I’m still not sure how or why the glove got wider above the wrist when I followed the pattern, but it did. Since I despise mittens and prefer finger-free gloves, for the first time I modified the pattern, although at Maggi’s urging I decreased one row before binding off at what I felt was the right length. The bind-off I chose gave a nice rolled edge and I was proud. The thumb gave some problems; I wasn’t sure whether to start knitting clockwise or counter-clockwise after joining the yarn (which also caused a big problem). Of course I did it wrong the first try, but had accumulated enough know-how to realize it. I’ve become quite adept at ‘tinking,’ or taking out my mistakes. In addition to increasing, joining yarn, and modifying a pattern, I learned about what Maggi calls ‘single sock syndrome’: Start #2 of any pair right after finishing the first one.

Okay! A little roll on the drum… I didn’t feel ready but I’d learned everything I could without actually knitting a sock. I felt great anxiety about ‘picking up the stitches’ along the heel, and a bit less about ‘turning the heel’ and ‘grafting.’ It turned out that the anxiety was merited; even though I have now picked up stitches twice I still am not sure how the heck I figured out exactly which ones to pick up how and with what needle. As for turning the heel… follow the pattern and a miracle occurs. Don’t ask me why it works. Grafting turned out to be a simple matter of following directions in my beginners’ book step by careful step, no sweat there.

It was a ‘simple sock’ pattern. That’s what the book called it. I’m positive there is not actually such a thing. I did end up discarding an entire section of the first sock and starting over, but once I got to the ‘simple’ part, it was fascinating to watch the self-striping yarn do its thing, and relaxing to just knit without counting rows, working until the length was right. It took three months (‘simple,’ eh?) but today I proudly laid my first pair of socks on my dresser ready to put on tomorrow morning.

Maggi’s already starting to talk about me doing a lace shawl next. Whoa, girl. You may love those intricate patterns, but it seems I only really find knitting relaxing when there are long sections of tedious (to you) stockinet or garter stitch between the necessity of puzzling over the pattern, counting stitches, and swearing. Let’s just find some shawl pattern that fits that description, okay? At least there is sure to be a ‘next project.’ I am still a product knitter, but I’m beginning to enjoy the process as well. Let’s keep it that way.

Aging Gracelessly

Sometime in your late teens you usually discover that you are not immortal. Shortly after that you notice that time is not what is used to be; the endless summers and interminable school terms are gone. Instead, every time you turn around you’re buying calendars. You barely have time to notice what one month’s picture is when it’s replaced by the next month’s. Children (and grandchildren! When did that happen?!) grow up as if they were being inflated by air compressors.

At some point in the late 40’s or early 50’s you begin to notice your formerly-reliable body just does not respond to your wishes as you’d like it to. The deterioration has been going on pretty much from Day One, but has only now progressed to a noticeable level. For me, it happened early, although it was hard to tell with all the work injuries, early-onset arthritis, allergies, and what might have been diagnosed as ADD if that had existed in the 50’s.

I haven’t been obsessed with my appearance for a good long time. After all, heredity blessed me with a high forehead, horsey face, rounded chin, and chunky body. I long ago faced the fact that there’s only so much that can be done with this. Yet, I recall clearly one day in my mid-fifties when I was squinting into the bathroom mirror and noticed distinct lines between my brows and across my forehead! Horrors! I ran from room to room, examining my face in every mirror in the house. My anxiety just deepened the creases. Now it’s a matter of course to see the crinkles around my eyes and those faint lines (less prominent than when I first noticed them because I’m not scowling at the mirror anymore) across my brow.

Last week when the stylist handed me the hand mirror to evaluate my haircut, I told her the right temple was longer than the left. She gently stretched out both sides and suggested, “It only looks longer because grey hairs are more wiry.” When did my light sprinkling of silver become an entire clump? Did the white hairs migrate from other parts of my head for a solidarity rally?

It does bother me that my body develops more limitations with each passing year, but not as much as it does some people my age or older. All my life I’ve been finding ways to circumvent the arthritis, tight tendons, very poor balance, and a lack of muscle memory. I’ve never let these stop me from doing what I wanted to do, from skiing to playing musical instruments. Admittedly, some things I never did well, but if I persisted through a learning curve vastly longer than normal, I became quite good at activities I truly love. Mechanical aids, such as stools to reach high shelves, wheelbarrows or hand-trucks to lift heavy objects, and innumerable do-it-myself devices to enable me to actually do otherwise-impossible things myself, have enabled me to remain proudly independent.

However, a few things have gotten too painful or tedious to do at all anymore. Others, I’ve had to modify my approach and my expectations. Also, I seem to have grown some common sense. I hike half as far as I think I can; I consider the route down before I go scrambling up a bank or rock-face; I look for the easiest access to a fishing spot instead of sliding down the nearest bank. I tell someone where I’m going on my lone forays in the surrounding state forests. I wear sturdy boots, carry a staff, and use strap-on cleats or snowshoes in winter. If this is what I have to do to keep on fishing, geocaching, hiking, and enjoying the wild places, I will do it.

Last year I entered the phase of life where appointments with medical professionals began to take up a significant portion of my time. I put my foot down with my dentist; after the first extraction, it was a good long time before I had to face losing more teeth. But, since the loss is inevitable, I refuse to waste time and money (Medicare covers none of this) on more than four visits a year or seeing a specialist. In consequence, although my parents promised I’d be able to eat apples and corn-on-the-cob to a ripe old age if I just took care of my teeth (They promised! They lied!), both foods are a distant memory and I have problems just biting into a sandwich, especially one with lettuce, tomato, or thick lunchmeat. Once these next two molars are gone, I can’t imagine how I will chew, either.

Last spring my glaucoma, diagnosed twenty years ago and comfortably dormant, flared suddenly acute and I suffered over three agonizingly-anxious weeks with a high probability that I would go irrevocably blind before the initial surgery; then two more weeks of worry waiting for the second eye to be done. Now I’m on three-times-a-year monitoring in addition to my regular exam. This experience really made me think how quickly a person can go from happy-go-lucky to being unable to do anything they did before. For all that this emphasized the fact that I am on the downhill slope of the famous Hill, it also made me appreciate that I can still do most of the things I love most in life.

The important thing is to keep stubbornly trying, keep actively searching for ways to do those important activities, and never, never give up. My thinking has changed a bit; I understand that my days are numbered and those ahead are considerably fewer than those behind. But I intend to make them count. I learn new things daily, balancing out the things I’ve forgotten; the latter are mostly trivial things, like where I put down my iPod and why I walked into a certain room. I retain my enthusiasm, eagerly going out to fish or find geocaches, visiting people and performing my volunteer work with diligence and energy. What I lack in ability to focus or multitask, I balance out by being organized and working hard. When I come up short in physical strength, I’m not afraid to delegate or ask for help… when not using one of my unlikely devices to make the difficult easier. As for pain, it’s an old, life-long friend. It slows me down, but it does not stop me.

The development of common sense may tend to impose limits on me, but as long as I occasionally stretch those limits so I understand I can indeed go beyond them, I will never see myself as ‘old.’ I’ve proven I’m more capable than I usually let myself be on numerous occasions, and intend to keep surprising myself (and others) to the very end.

Most of all, I think a sense of humor is a veritable elixir of youth. I laugh while standing in the middle of a room, wondering why I’m there. I get a chuckle out of some of the mangled sentences that come out of my mouth when I forget a word, and some of the euphemisms I substitute. When my knee refuses to lift my weight up a tall, steep stream bank, I cheerfully say, “Well, that ain’t gonna work!” and look for an easier way up. When I fumble with a needle and thread, I giggle at my own clumsiness and put the hemming aside for a warmer, less humid day. As long as I can laugh at myself and the foibles of age, I feel that my teenage self might have been right: perhaps I am immortal.

It's Not Just About the Numbers

This year I found my 500^th geocache. Unlike many cachers, I didn’t choose a particular special cache for the milestone. In fact, due to miscounting, I achieved it one find sooner than I’d figured on. My milestone was a simple lock-n-lock that was part of a trail of similar hides. I’m pleased that it belonged to a first-time cache hider and was in one of my favorite local parks, but that was not planned, nor have any of my previous milestones been.

Milestone finds are special among geocachers. Each is featured on your geocaching.com profile, and there is a special commemorative geocoin-and-hat-pin set for 500 which I, of course, ordered right away and proudly have on display. Some other cachers, though, would wonder why it took me nearly three years to reach this milestone.

The reasons are many and complex. I guess the main one is, I approach geocaching like a fine wine to savor rather than raw liquor to get drunk on as fast as possible. I’ll take quality over quantity, thank you. That doesn’t mean I’m above park-and-grabs… I love them, especially when I’m travelling or in an area for some other purpose than caching. Since I don’t have a Smartphone, it’s not easy to cache spontaneously, but when I find Wifi and locate an unknown cache in my vicinity then track it down, it’s a special find. That elevates a skirt-lifter or guard rail clinger to a quality cache to me. It is a bit of a challenge for someone without the instant access of a Smartphone, as well as an unexpected pleasure on a day devoted to other things.

Living far out in an unpopulated area, mostly public forests, caches of any kind are few and driving distances are long. It’s environmentally responsible and also saves me money if I devote entire days to geocaching, pre-load my GPS for an area, and drive there. Therefore ‘streaks’ of any length are not something I normally strive for. When I do take a caching day, the amount of driving time between caches still limits how many can be done in a day, and rural caches also usually involve hiking and/or climbing. A reasonable number to expect on a normal day in this area would be four to six finds. I’m happy with that. I’d rather enjoy a few caches, looking at the scenery, wildlife-watching, taking a few photos, and generally having the kind of adventure that makes a good found log.

There are those that do power trails (I’ve done the four relatively short ones locally) and rack up huge find counts in a fairly short time. I feel that newbies that do this are missing the learning experience of really understanding what geocaching is, how it works, and all it has to offer. Some of them may have found over 1,000 caches in a very short time (it’s possible to do in a couple of days), but what do they actually know about the game? Do they understand swag trading etiquette, how and why to write a great find log, what trackables are and how to deal with them, or even something as simple as how to reassemble a microcache and place it exactly where it was? I’ve heard some of the damnedest crazy-newbie stories and not all of those people by any means had single-digit find counts. Yes, we’ve all been there and I’m not dissing beginners… welcome, and have fun! But there will and should be a learning curve. (My first skirt lifter took me twenty minutes to find. You mean those things slide up?!?)

Another reason my find count isn’t higher than it is, is that the way I most enjoy caching is with a partner. My most frequent caching partner is my housemate Maggic. Since she badly broke a shoulder, our caching excursions are a lot less frequent that they once were. She is timid, often in pain, and tires easily. Neither one of us is under 60 and are far from the boldest cachers around anyway. I do go out on my own but prefer her company, for my own safety among other good reasons. Living in forested mountains in a snow zone, we also do little caching in winter.

Lastly, there are many geocachers that, for one reason or another, devote the major share of their caching energy to other aspects of the game. I am a caching socialite and evangelist; I attend (or host) a good many events. I also run geocaching programs for local festivals, kids’ organizations, the local library, and the like. This usually involves a lot of preparation, laying a temporary trail of waypoint hides, providing prizes, printing information sheets, and toting along my computer to demonstrate how the geocaching.com website works. This kind of outreach is important, not just to recruit new cachers, but to give geocaching a positive public image in the community. This makes it easier to get permission for a hide, makes caching events welcome activities in parks and towns, and informs the police exactly what those suspicious-looking individuals clutching GPS or Smartphone are doing in the shrubbery. In addition, I’m increasingly interested in hiding my own caches. This can become an absorbing, creative, and time-consuming hobby in itself.

I’m in no particular hurry to reach milestone 1,000. It may well take even longer than the first five hundred did. When I do, I’ll celebrate and take pride in the achievement. More importantly, I’ll know a lot more about geocaching than I know now, and will have had the kind of experiences that I’ll be telling tales about for the rest of my life.

Alas, Poor Bus!

            When I first saw the Bus, instantly a fantasy popped into my mind. I saw it, much younger, brightly painted with flowers and peace signs, bouncing down the road from Cherry Springs. Rock music pours from open windows… King Crimson or The Who… and the sweetish aroma of marijuana mingles with the exhaust smoke in its wake. Suddenly the bus coughs, sputters, and the engine dies. It keeps coasting down the hill, until the driver notices a dirt road on the right and a grassy spot on the corner and steers the bus to a safe halt there.

            “Hey man, what’s up?”

            “I think we’re out of gas.”

            “Bummer.”

            “It’s pretty here.” A girl with long hair and a billowy skirt floats down the bus steps and whirls around on the lawn. “Why don’t we just stay?”

            “We could homestead here,” another girl says dreamily. “Like a commune. We could live off the land and be organic. Hey, is there any of that pizza left?”

            “Yeah.” An arm passes a slice out a window.

            “I think we’re meant to be here,” the first girl says. “The bus stopped, like karma, man.”

            Two bearded guys come out. One gathers rocks for a fire ring, one waves the girls along as they collect firewood. Shortly they’re lying around a campfire, passing a wineskin, playing guitar, and nibbling pizza. “We’ll live in the Bus. It’ll be groovy.”

            I felt a very real connection to these people from the depths of my imagination, born the instant I saw the rusty, whitewashed old bus with its rickety attached plywood side room. Of the many RVs, shacks, and eccentrically-built camp buildings in the area, the Bus captured my imagination, and that of any other visitors that rounded the curve of the road from Galeton to Cherry Springs and saw it on its grassy corner. Six miles from anywhere in either direction, it was a landmark for decades. A photographer did a photostudy of it; his research showed it was some very rare model of bus from the late 30’s or early 40’s, and his beautiful photos were snapped up by collectors.

            That is why the community reacted with horror when the latest owners of that property demolished the plywood shack and began dismantling the bus itself! Car traffic increased because people drove by just to look at the slowly-filling dumpster as the bus disappeared, back to front, a little at a time. We mourned. This was a piece of Potter County history (or possibly Potter County fantasy) vanishing as we watched. Personally, I felt like I was losing the connection with my own hippie roots, although I’ll be the first to say my theory about the Bus’s origins is completely out of my fertile imagination. But I was not alone in my grief. The loss of this venerable landmark was the hot topic of gossip in Galeton’s cafés and taprooms all summer.

            When nothing was left of the Bus except the cab, the dumpster vanished. A month later, a pre-fab white aluminum structure, like a very large shed without windows, appeared where the passenger section of the bus and the side-room used to be. The gutted cab sits a yard from one wall, looking forlorn. It appears to be turning its back on the characterless aluminum monstrosity behind it. In shock after its massive passenger-section amputation, its windshield has the vacant, blank look of a skull’s eyes. Where have the dreams gone?

            Yet, as sad and pathetic as the Bus’s skull is, I hope the landowners have plans to restore and preserve it somehow. Will they connect it to the aluminum shed in the spring? Will it get new window glass, a cheery paint job? This may not revive the old Bus’s soul, but it would at least keep the memory of a long-time Potter County landmark alive. The era that brought the Bus here is long gone, but it’s worth remembering.