The art of crap knitting

Every evening during the cooler months, I change into my pyjamas and wrap a home-made shawl – the one in the picture above – around my shoulders.

I finished the shawl last year and now, throughout Winter, I nestle into its deep, woollen snugness.

It took me three years to finish the shawl. I began it just before my wedding which was attended, in those long-ago pre-covid times, by my loved ones from around the World. One, a dear old school friend called Deb, saw the shawl, liked the cut of its jib, and took over the knitting for a while. When Deb returned home to Spain, I couldn’t quite bring myself to continue. It had become Deb’s shawl, and I missed her, and I wanted her to come back and finish it.

Except, of course, she didn’t. So, in this second year of covid, which I refuse to dignify with a capital c, I took the shawl down from the shelf where I’d banished it, and began knitting again.

I have been knitting shawls for 10 years. The only stitch I knew in the early days was the basic one they teach schoolchildren – I'm pretty sure they even call is "basic stitch".

I can proudly declare that in the ensuing decade I have not progressed one iota. I still use that one, basic stitch and I don’t knit jumpers or socks or even hats, which are perhaps the next step up from shawls for a crap knitter like me.

Needle size is everything when you’re a crap knitter. The bigger the needles, the less work required to finish something that looks wearable, useable, worthwhile.

I use 20 mm needles (US size 36) which are as long and thick as your mother’s special dining room candles. They’re a little tricky to manoeuvre at first, but what they lack in manageability they more than make up for in effect.

To create one of my shawls, I cast on 100 stitches. Just 100, no more, no less, and that’s it. I simply knit those 100 stitches, give or take, until I have a shawl. I always drop a few stitches and, even more inexplicably, gain a few along the way. Like I said, I’m a crap knitter.

But my shawls are legend…at least in my own head. Not, of course, because they can in any way be regarded as Works of Art – there are way too many overly large holes, too many tied off bits where I lost a stitch, too many uneven edges because I still don’t know how to maintain the same tension, for that. Rather, it’s because of all those colours and textures.

This is because in truth I knit only because I am a wool obsessive.

I use perhaps five or six different colours of wool in each shawl, changing them arbitrarily every 25 rows or so, going back to the original wool in the finishing rows. I particularly love the textured wools, with their fringes and, occasionally, sparkling gold beads.

By the time I’ve knitted 75 rows on those big old 20 mm needles, I begin to feel like a creative genius. When I’ve knitted another 75 rows, the shawl is ready and it is so beautiful, so warm, so damned exotic with its multicoloured rows and bobbles (did I mention that some wools even have bobbles?) I can hardly bear to give it away.

When I moved interstate a few months back, I tried half-heartedly to sell my wools, then gave up and packed them into four large cardboard boxes. When we get to our brand new home – still a few weeks away – I will unpack those boxes and rearranged my precious wools in their new home like newly discovered treasures. I will greet each ball with a smile and a gentle squeeze, imagining how it will look incorporated into my next shawl, or the one after that....

I already have so much wool that I strongly doubt I’ll ever use it all. But I don’t care. I spend large amounts of time and rather too much money finding interesting wools, in bargain bins and end-of-season sales; in thrift stores and, weirdly, going cheap in hardware stores where the manager clearly misjudged his/her clientele.

I have colour coded my wools into shade groups. Once my husband had come to terms with my new wool obsession (the first of many) he suggested I buy a special cupboard for them. My wool cupboard has five shelves. On the top shelf are the pales – grey, white, silver and anything else that doesn’t make it onto the other shelves. Then there are the blues, from turquoise and periwinkle to strong shades of navy and royal blue. I don’t usually buy green wool, but if a particularly blue-ish green ball takes my fancy, it ends up on this shelf.

Third shelf down are the reds and oranges. I’m not keen on either of these, but they make a useful mid-tone for the shawls I’m knitting for my more vibrant friends. The occasional yellow ball – again, it’s not a favourite – ends up here, too.

And then we come to the purples. This is where my heart lies, in amongst all those delicious shades of fuscia, lavender and plum. As you can see, my own shawl was knitted from these wools, with a little deep blue thrown in.

Down on the bottom shelf skulk the blacks, browns and dark greys. Anything that doesn’t make it to one of the above shelves ends up here.

I didn’t knit much in the first year of Covid, but recently I’ve re-engaged with it.

In these days of semi-retirement, I am learning to enjoy doing very little, and knitting helps that process. When you’re knitting you’re being useful, creative, busy. I like that.

Plus there’s something comforting and restful about sitting in my favourite chair with a cooling cup of tea by my side, crap knitting a shawl to keep someone I love warm.