Yarn

I went to a yarn shop recently, to take up knitting, yet again. Upon seeing a shawl pattern on Instagram, I ignored my internal doubt of possible sweaty hands that may occur during the hottest days of our Los Angeles summer. I had knitted in the past, many years ago now, with crucial guidance from mom at each step. My hands, now, needed, wanted something to occupy with so that they could leave each other alone. I had also been feeling the need to cover and envelop myself in cozy items more and more: socks, sweaters, shawls. Knitting one would be all the better for as soon as one put the first stitch on the needle, one would be covered, cloaked by the yarn and the stitch, the shawl on the way to its becoming.

O. accompanied me on this yarn shopping trip. I had been to this shop before, a few years earlier, to buy some yarn to mail to my mom so that she could knit me a cardigan. It didn’t make sense even back then. There were, are, yarn shops all around where she lived, with a specific one we had visited since my childhood. But me choosing a specific yarn and mailing it to her, despite the international mail cost and time wasted in between, somehow made it all more personal. We couldn’t go yarn shopping together. But I had picked the yarn and, on her end, she had knitted and picked the buttons. So, in a way, we perhaps did.

O. was here to help me pick the colors for the shawl. I was to get four, maybe five colors. I hadn’t touched knitting myself in many years, so I readily said “yes please,” when the shop owner asked me if I needed help. I shared the printouts of the pattern with her to make sure that I was reading the amount of yarn correctly. Through the masks we each had over our faces, we communicated in knitting jargon. She showed me the rows of prettily colored yarns that would be appropriate for my shawl. I asked her which ones made more sense price-wise. I hadn’t knitted in a long time, after all, and I had never knitted without help, so this was going to be partially a meditative puzzle project. Hopefully I would also end up with a wearable item.

With the yarn weight and price point selected, now I was to choose the colors. O. was diligent in his intention to help, so he found an online color wheel out of habit through his painting practice. I placed one color next to the other, and then another, no, not that one, how about this maybe, and with this instead of that, well, actually let’s start over for this gray would be better as the main color. Once we were done, once I was done with my selection, the shop owner lady recommended I took the yarn outside to the daylight. The shop’s light fixtures had more of a yellow hue, she explained. So I did. I took the yarn outside in bright Los Angeles daylight. A so called perfect summer day. Me standing with a summer dress in scorching heat with wool-linen mixture yarn in my hands, already sweating and yet holding the hope of cooler days here or elsewhere. Elsewhere really, with the intention to, once again, stitch a present for myself, a present worth being in as gift, a gift to wrap myself in that now, that present.

I went back inside with the yarn, pleased with my selection. Now was the time for the small talk, the casual conversation that I had managed to avoid for months with the help of the pandemic. O. was in one corner, now in charge of the comfortable silence of this little scene, fulfilled over the completion of his end of the mission, at ready if duty called back. I approached the cash register which provided more than 6 feet between me and the shop owner. “What do you think,” I asked her, showing my selection of yarn. She said they would make such a pretty shawl. I wasn’t planning to make any changes anyway if she happened to have another answer, and yet, it felt important to ask her opinion.  After all, she was the only person in the shop with me who had any knitting experience.

She asked me if I wanted the yarn wound. What? “Good question,” I said. But what did I want? I hadn’t prepared an answer as I hadn’t considered that part of yarn shopping. “No, thanks,” I blurted, “winding it at home will be part of the experience, it’ll be meditative, calming.” Winding the yarn was a part of the knitting ritual I had always enjoyed. When mom was knitting the first stitches of anything, I would be nearby, preparing the next ball, getting tangled, undoing the tangles, unknotting the knots. No wonder that image of tangle was one I kept going back to to better explain myself, my inner self. The shop owner nodded in agreement as if that was the right answer, surely that must have been the right answer, and she slowly turned around the start bagging the yarn.

“I also need needles,” I said. “Do you want wooden or metal,” she asked with her back turned. Another choice? It was another question I hadn’t prepared for, so I asked her what she suggested. “It’s up to you,” she said, “everyone has their favorite.” I paused. Here was a moment that I needed to have a personal preference and it hadn’t worked when I reached for a suggestion, a piece of advice. This was meant to be a simple interaction on yarn and knitting needles, small talk while shopping. Somehow it turned into a deep inquiry, an examination of choices, personal selection, of avoidance. And yet, the memories of sound I had kept inside unbeknownst to me had the answer: “Metal,” I responded, “they sound better.” Another nod.

No more questioning over yarn and choices. O. was still at his phone, scrolling, safe in his comfortable silence. We, the shop owner and I were at the cash register, in our uncomfortable silence, with her moving her fingers leisurely over the cashier, the yarn and the needles, me staring at the paper bag, the notions, the knit samples hanging from the ceiling.

I broke it, the silence, somewhat sheepishly: “Now all I need is a cat.” She looked towards me with a vague smile: “That’s such an interesting thing to say, I never heard that before.” Feeling both embarrassed and regretful for breaking that precious silence in the first place, I had to explain: “You know… a cat to play with the ball of yarn?” “Come on,” I said inside my head, “I can’t be the first to comment on cat and yarn combination?” Could I?

Perhaps I had done well by breaking the silence. Perhaps she was heartened, or rather felt uncomfortable herself from this second chapter of the silence, for she, next, asked if I had shopped there before. In reply, I recounted the story of the yarn and the cardigan that travelled across continents. She asked after my mom, and expressed her condolences, told about her mom, about her daughter to be married in return. Between the scanning of the needles’ price tag and the bagging of the yarn at an unhurried pace, I heard about the arthritis in her hands and her neck, her soon to be son in law and their relief over genuinely liking him, for otherwise “how hard it would be!” I said, “that’s the most important,” knowingly, in feigned agreement. The pace of he arthritic hands gave us both permission and time to linger at our conversation. Her words filled the space created by momentary pauses of her movements from the top of the register to the insides of the paper bag. Her daughter’s wedding was to be in six months in that other state where the young couple met while doing their doctorates. That was why they weren’t planning any other trips or vacations although she really wanted to go to the Mediterranean. She had a day job at the university nearby so she didn’t have time to sew along with knitting, but how pretty was my dress. Her words, her thoughts, our silence and discomfort had come untangled like the yarn in our middle.