How I learned to knit- the version in which heroine and heroin swap needles

Do you remember that horrible apartment I lived in - on E. Hyde Park Blvd at the north edge of Hyde Park, in Chicago, as a first year graduate student at The University? It was student housing - a converted hotel. We lived on the 9th floor, in a north facing unit. The entire apartment had a floor of brown linoleum, and metal cabinets in the kitchen, radiators under the windows in the living room.

So, I was sitting in that miserable living room, with my feet on the radiator, watching the snow blow across my window, and wondering how I was going to keep from going further insane while waiting for my husband to return from his forays to the west side, with my car, and whatever might be left of my money. I read a lot of emotionless academic journal articles. I read a lot of distractingly emotional novels. I drank a lot of tea, and coffee, and alcohol.

One of the books that I read, huddled there against the radiator, in my cozy salvation army recliner, was The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx. I loved this novel for many reasons, but I was particularly inspired by the knitting in the novel. It seemed like the perfect thing - to be surrounded by bright, warm wooly yarn in front of a warm fire (substitute) on those blisteringly windy days. And to be busy with something other than waiting, or pacing, or making deals with God, or making deals with myself about how long to wait before I started calling jails and institutions.

Actually, what seems most incredible to me about this today (with its reprieve from that sadly credible insanity) is that when I went back through The Shipping News to methodically locate these descriptions of knitting that so inspired me, I found out that knitting is hardly mentioned at all. The first mention that I could find was on page 251, where Bunny tells Quoyle that Beety is teaching her to knit, and that she is making him a scarf. Later, Wavey gives Quoyle a sweater "the color of oxblood shoe polish". There is a longish section about knitting fishermen, for whom knitting and net-mending were closely related, and a joke about a knitting truck driver. When Wavey is in St. John's with Quoyle, she sees "a lovely Shetland wool that would make a Fair Isle sweater". I think that was the line that inspired me. I could imagine the feel of it, and the muted colors. But now I like best what Bunny says - "It's kind of a trick, Dad, because it's just a long, long, fat string, and it turns into a scarf".

Remembering that I had, sort-of, knit before, I put on my Sorel boots and coat, and walked over to the Woolworth's that was by the grocery store, near the 53rd st. train station. It must have been one of the last Woolworth's open. I bought a ball of white wool-acrylic blend yarn, and one of those pamphlet books, "Teach yourself to Knit and Crochet". I guess I must have bought needles too. I remember a woman in line saw the yarn, and asked me if I knew how to make pompoms, and I apologetically showed her the booklets by way of explaining that I didn't know anything. And then I went back out into the cold, and back up to the ninth floor, and made a big tangle. I actually wrapped my purls wrong for about 7 years after that, because it's hard to learn to knit from a book.