Chapter Six
“It's so good to be back home in BC. Oh, Kris, we'll be so much happier here,” Mother sang. “We can eat out anytime we want, go to the theatre, shop. This is the good life. I've taken us out of that pig sty and into this castle.”
The house, all stainless steel and concrete, wasn't a home—merely a building.
Mother worked long hours at St. Paul's hospital. My dad was far more adaptable than I'd given him credit for, he offered his considerable animal husbandry skills to the BC SPCA Vancouver Branch. And me? A speck a drift in a mass of people with no place to land—not in my overcrowded school, not in our sterile house. I continued to drift. On the farm, being outside had always calmed me, cleared my mind. Here? I felt like a freak that everyone stared at. No peace, no calm. Cars, trucks, buses—only a city full of noise.
Somehow in all that confusion, I noticed a white script scrawled across a display window—Urban Knits. Looking through that window was like watching TV. White-haired knitters were gathered around a large wood table admiring a basket full of yarn and flipping through pattern books. I pushed the door open to shelves of yarn in a tapestry of colours—lipstick lava, China-town apple, Gothic rose, potting soil, grape jelly, porcelain green, sea foam, tea rose, pumpkin, lullaby purple, maple sugar, lemon peel, cinder, birch, baton rouge.
“May I help you?” Words favoured by a thick Russian accent. Under snow-white hair, her face was soft and friendly. Her name tag read Marta Petrov—and as she alone had a name tag I assumed that she was the proprietor. Marta led me to the basket of yarn, into the community of senior knitters.
One of the whiteheads, working with a circular needle, thought she knew me. “Another knitting novice,” she muttered. But she didn't know how many 4-H blue ribbons I'd won.
“It's so nice to see young ones take an interest in our craft.” This one worked with double-pointed needles.
Three knitters dug through their knitting bags simultaneously. One produced a pair of needles that were too short; another pair was too long; another was just right. I accepted that pair and the knitter asked, “Do you know how to cast on, Hon?”
“I use the Continental cast on.” I selected a ball from the basket and began to coil stitches onto the needle.
“It's much better to knit your stitches on,” they told me.
Behind, in, over, out—the steps had become second nature, like breathing.
“What is she doing?”
“She's using the German method of knitting.”
“She'll twist her stitches.”
“You really should learn to throw your yarn, Hon.”
“Yes, all knitting books recommend it.”
I reached the end of the row and began to purl.
“What is she doing now?”
“It looks awkward, so awkward.”
They wanted to know. So I told them. “My Icelandic-Canadian aunt taught me to knit. This is the Norwegian purl.”
“Someone taught you knit like that?”
“Well, I've been knitting for over forty years, and that is not an acceptable way to knit.”
“Her stitches are well formed.” A Russian voice sang out above the rest. “Her tension consistent.” Marta sent them a look and they returned to their own knitting. “So your aunt taught you, dorogy (my dear)? Tell me about her.”
“My aunt Olavia—that's the Icelandic version of Olivia—was more like my mom than an aunt. My mother is a doctor and is always very busy elsewhere. Aunt Olavia taught half of the community of Blondous to knit. Blondous, Manitoba is where I'm from. She was a 4-H leader for more years than I’ve been alive....” I began and didn't stop.
I became such a permanent feature in Urban Knits that Marta hired me to knit sample sweaters. She paid me in yarn. In that shop, surrounded by all that tantalizing yarn and inspired by all those patterns my mind began to buzz with ideas—what would this sweater look like in this stitch pattern? With these sleeves? This neckline? My ideas filled page after page in my scrapbook.
