In 2020 I knit 2 sweaters and unraveled 3. I spent most of those countless hours of handwork alone and that time offered both comfort and confusion. I was grateful to have space from the chaos of my devolving marriage but I also found myself asking: I’m still married so why am I so lonely? I’m still married so why am I alone?
If the poem I shared last week gave me permission to begin again, the sweaters I unraveled that year were a step, however small, towards transformation.
The following essay is a slightly abridged combination of two essays from a collection I’ve been calling Knit Magic. It’s a tiny memoir of 2020 told through the sweaters I knit and unraveled that year. I’m currently in the editing phase of this collection so I wanted to share an excerpt with you today :)
Unraveling a Torment
Ravel: transitive verb - to separate or undo the texture of : unravel : to undo the intricacies of: disentangle : entangle, confuse.
Unravel: transitive verb - to disengage or separate the threads of : disentangle : to cause to come apart by or as if by separating the threads of : to resolve the intricacy, complexity, or obscurity of.
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The words 'ravel' and 'unravel' create a spiral of meaning: ravel, meaning both to entangle and disentangle; unravel, to disentangle, to come apart, to reveal. They follow each other in their twin meanings like two strands of yarn plied together to make one stronger yarn, fit for knitting a sweater.
These meditations on knit magic are central to my work, to the processes of making and mending, of taking things apart to see what they are made of and putting them together in new ways. The act of unraveling a sweater can be both spiritual and practical. Indeed, these seemingly separate labels inform each other.
When I unravel a thrifted sweater in order to glean its yarn, I don't know its history so I can merely guess, imagining the life that led it here to my hands. When I unravel a sweater I have knit myself, I'm not only salvaging the yarn to use again, I'm meditating on the life I have lived with the sweater and imagining the life I will live with the new garment made from its yarn.
Unraveling is a way to exist in a liminal space; the cloth becomes unrecognizable when it's turned into its base material - a strand of yarn - before it’s turned into cloth again. This space can be uncomfortable, but it can also be a time for dreaming to take place.
I often refer to this work as 'unraveling a torment', taken from a quote by Louise Bourgeois, a French artist who spent much of her life taking apart her clothing and sewing it back together in new forms. She wrote "To unravel a torment you must begin somewhere".
To unravel a sweater, I look for the woven-in ends where the knitter cast off and begin there
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I knit the orange sweater in a season of heartbreak.
It's the finest yarn I’ve ever used to knit a sweater. The work is slow and I am miserable. Not because of the knitting, no, I am happily distracted by the knitting. I cry a lot while holding the growing sweater in my arms. The pattern calls for simple stockinette stitch in sport weight yarn, and mine is orange like summer sun setting over blue mountains.
We move house. I live alone, fearing that I’ve driven everyone away. The days are long and hot so I stop knitting the sweater and leave it in my project bag, which gets discovered by mice who chew the soft yarn for bedding. Angrily, I rip back the arm beyond the holes and start knitting again. I discover another hole on the belly of the sweater. The mice have offered a moment of pause and I consider what I really want from this yarn.
I unravel the sweater on a beautiful day in late August. I’m wearing a greenish yellow tank top and I sit cross legged on my bed with the sun pouring in. I take a video of the process using my phone, which is propped up against a basket resting on the bed. I pull the needles out of the arm and begin winding that yarn back into a ball, unpicking the tubular binding at the neck and hem.
It is tedious, but when I am done, the entire sweater is a heavy ball the size of a child's head. I walk around with it clutched against my stomach.
I think of turning it into another sweater, one with a v-neck and loose hem, something that will fall off the shoulder. In the end I decide against deciding and put the ball, heavy and orange as the sun, away for the winter. I will return to it when a sweater calls out again to be created.
Thank you for reading this week’s missive. You can read the last two week’s here and here. As always, feel free to screenshot and share excerpts on your socials or with someone you think would enjoy it. xoxo, m