Category: Reflections

I have decided to be honest with you all. For as long as the boutique has been open, I have been unravelling everything I make. Not the things you have bought, I promise, but the things I have not been able to sell, and the things that came back, and the things that sat too long on a shelf looking at me. It is a compulsion, and I do not know where it comes from.

I think I fear the moment a thing is done. A finished jumper must go out into the world, and the world is a place of dogs and washing machines. A ball of yarn, however, is safe. It can be anything. I am sorry if this comes as a shock. I will continue to make beautiful things. I will simply, in the dark, continue to take them apart.

For those who wonder what I do at night, I will describe a typical evening. At nine I close the shop. At ten I make tea. At eleven I walk the length of the shop in the dark and touch each item as I pass: the mice, the scarves, the hats in their rows. At midnight I begin.

I take one thing down. I find the loose end. I draw it gently, loop after loop, and watch it come away in a long, patient line. By four, I have a heap of yarn the size of a sleeping cat, and a feeling of peace so deep that I could weep. In the morning, I wind it up and begin again. It is not sad. It is the opposite of sad. It is the opposite of finished.

People often admire my work and ask what I am making next. The truth is, I am always making the same thing. I begin a scarf, and when it is almost complete, I find that I cannot bear the last row. Instead I go back, very quietly, and take out the first. It is a small sin. It keeps the scarf from ever being done.

A finished scarf is a thing that can be lost, or sold, or left on a bus. An unfinished one is always with you. It is a promise rather than a fact. I have forty seven of them in the cupboard, each at a different stage, and not one has ever been worn. I love every one. I shall go on loving them for as long as there are rows to love.

I am often asked about the ideal conditions for knitting, and I always say the same thing: a cup of tea, two needles, and a window with some weather in it. Rain is best, but a light wind will do. You want a chair with arms, and a lap that is not required for anything else. A small dog nearby is optional, and a cat is not.

My own tea is a strong Assam, with a drop of milk, left to cool until it is nearly cold, because I always forget to drink it. By the end of an evening there are usually four cups on the sill, each in its own state of surrender. I like to line them up. I like to count them. Four is a good number, and there are rarely fewer than nine.

Some of you have asked why the shop light is on at two in the morning. The answer is simple: I do not sleep very well. I never did, even as a kitten. My grandmother used to say that I had “a busy thread,” and I think she was right. At two I put the kettle on, which I am not allowed to do, and I sit in the back room with the basket.

I do small work. A bit of mending, a little tidying, a spot of pulling out a stitch that I did not like. It is peaceful. The street is quiet, the mice are asleep, and the only sound is the soft slither of a thread leaving a place where it had been. I would not call it a hobby. I would call it a habit, and a loved one.

There are few things I love more than the smell of wool in a warm room. It is a smell with layers: lanolin, first, and then something sweetly animal, and then, at the bottom, a note of cupboard. I have tried to bottle it. I have failed. The nearest I came was a candle called Sheep Weather, which smelled of a wet Tuesday in Wales.

The boutique, I like to think, smells of it all the time. Customers say that they walk in and feel their shoulders drop. I tell them that it is the lanolin, and they believe me. It is not only the lanolin. It is also, I fear, the three hundred and forty things I have taken apart and never quite aired. Do come in and breathe. Linger. Everything lingers here.