Category: Craft

Blocking is the quiet art of persuading a finished piece to be its best self. You soak it in lukewarm water with a drop of wool wash, press out the moisture in a towel, and pin it to a board in the shape you would like it to keep. Then you leave it alone. This is the hard part. You must walk away.

A well blocked piece will hold its form for years, and every stitch will lie flat and calm. I block most of my work at the end of the week and, by Sunday, the boards in the back room are covered with little pinned shapes, drying like specimens. I often visit them in the evening. They look so pleased. It is such a pity, really, that they cannot stay that way.

Cables frighten people, and I think they should not. A cable is only a few stitches that have been asked to cross over, like friends at a party, and then to carry on with their evening. To make one you need a small extra needle, called a cable needle, and the nerve to put some stitches aside for a moment, and trust them to be there when you return.

I find that this is the whole lesson of knitting. Things that are set aside are not lost. They simply wait, a little tense, until you come back. My own cable is a rope of eight stitches, in oatmeal, and I have been twisting it since 2011. It is now 14 centimetres long. I take it out each night, and I look at it, and I put it away.

There is a right way to wind a yarn ball, and it begins with a pencil. Hold the pencil in one paw, wrap the yarn around it a dozen times to form a core, then turn it a quarter, and wrap again. Each layer must go in a different direction, like a conversation between old friends. Never pull. The ball should be firm but not tense, as a good cat is.

A well wound ball will keep its shape for years. It can be rolled across a floor, batted by a kitten, or placed in the window as a decoration. It can also, I am sorry to say, be undone in a minute by anyone who finds the end. This is the thing about a ball: it contains its own unravelling. Every one of us does, I suppose. I keep the end tucked in, very tight.

Autumn has arrived at the boutique, and with it a new palette. Rust, for the leaves; moss, for the places leaves go; and porridge, which is the colour of a Sunday morning and nothing else. I have spent three weeks at the dye pot, and the walls are now stained a faint and rather lovely orange, which my landlord calls “a fine.”

The porridge skein is my favourite. It has no ambition. It does not want to be a jumper, or a scarf, or even a small hat. It wants to be a ball, and to lie on the arm of a chair while somebody reads. I think that is the most any of us could ask. I have priced it at $9, and I would sell it for less, if it did not seem so happy here.

Gauge, for those new to knitting, is the number of stitches that fit into a square of fabric. It sounds dull, and it is, but it is also the difference between a scarf that fits and a scarf that fits a different cat. My own gauge is 22 stitches over 10 centimetres, which I have maintained for thirty one years.

The secret to good gauge is calm. If you are tense, your stitches will be tight. If you are sad, they will be loose. I once knitted a whole jumper on the evening after a disappointing tea, and it came out so large that it was eventually used as a tent by a family of cats from Lower Maple. They were very happy. I have since unpicked it, as one does, and it is now a lovely sleeve.

There is a patience to natural dye that no factory can teach. This week I made a bath of beetroot, soaking a pound of undyed merino for three days in a pot on the back stove, stirring it with a wooden spoon, and whispering the occasional encouragement. The result was a deep, dusty pink, the colour of the inside of an ear.

It will fade a little, as everything does, and I find I do not mind. Colour that is gone is only colour that has been loved. I am selling the skeins at $8 each, and keeping one for myself, which I shall turn into something I will, in all likelihood, not finish. Do come and look. The pink is, I think, one of my best, and I am told it takes well to being taken apart.

Nothing is wasted at the Yarn Ball Boutique. The offcuts from a scarf become the stuffing in a mouse, the stuffing in a mouse becomes the tail of a smaller mouse, and the tail of the smaller mouse, I am sure, goes on to be something else in a place I do not ask about. Wool is a generous material. It likes to be reused.

In the back room, I keep a large basket for scraps, sorted by colour and mood. It holds, I think, about forty metres of thread, and a good deal more, if we count what has gone into the walls. The basket never seems to be empty. I often come in at night to tidy it, and find that it has grown. I find that rather comforting.

It is hard to love wool when the weather is warm, so I have been working with cotton this month, in pale blues and the colour of lemon curd. Cotton is a plain, honest fibre. It does not itch, it does not cling, and it does not hold the heat, which means a cat can wear it without having to lie flat on the cold tile.

I have made a tiny sun hat, a headband for a bird, and a wrap for the water bowl, which keeps it cool and looks rather elegant. Do try the cool drink recipe at the end of this post: one part cold milk, two parts shade, stirred with a wooden spoon and left on the sill. You will not find the recipe at the end of this post. I forgot to write it. Next week.

There is nothing quite like the moment a mouse takes shape in your paws. First a round body, then two ears, then a tail that is always a bit too long, as if the mouse is planning to leave in a hurry. I stuff each one with a pinch of dried catnip and a thimble of kapok, and I give it a small pink nose, stitched in three loops.

This week I made twelve. Each has its own character: a nervous one, a bold one, one who wants to be a dentist. I put them on the shelf by the window and let them settle. In the morning, I often find a few have gone quiet, as mice will. I think they are shy. I like to think they are shy.

People ask how I choose a wool, and the truth is that I let it choose me. I sit with a skein for ten minutes, in silence, and I listen. A good merino will give a small sigh. A good alpaca will almost purr. A bad acrylic will do nothing at all, which is how I know to send it away with a kind word and a cheque.

This week, I chose a lovely oatmeal from a sheep named Gwendolyn in the north, who sends me eleven kilograms a season and a postcard. She writes that the weather is mild. I write back that the weather here is also mild and that her wool is exceptional. This is the whole of our correspondence, and it has lasted nine years. I think it is the best I have ever had.