GETTING FLEECED

Everywhere you go today, people are knitting. Not since voodoo and tattoos have the needle arts been so mainstream. No longer the realm of grannies, men, women, children -- even domesticated chimpanzees have taken up knitting in this most unlikely of fads.

I think it's just great. Is it me, or does knitting seem a tad repetitive? On more than one occasion, I've watched my wife grow disenchanted with a knit she's spent a hundred hours on, only to pull out all the stitches and start again.

It drives me crazy. I won't even make another omelette if it falls on the floor. I'm down there on all-fours, fighting off the dogs for the ham chunks.

Who the hell cares if there's one botched stitch 14,000 stitches ago? My wife cares. She'll unravel an eight-foot long scarf if she notices a "dropped stitch" made back when the scarf was the size of a pot holder. It drives me nuts.

She tells me her knitting is like writing -- well maybe not like my writing, but others' writing. Knitting is a craft and, as such, she will do a piece over-and-over until she gets it right.

For Christ's sake, knitting is not like writing. But if you want to force the analogy, it would be like me writing, i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i for ten hours, then am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am, am for another ten, then getting fancy -- I'm getting happy fingers now --bored-bored, bored, bored-bored, bored, bored-bored, bored, and so on, only to find out two days later that I don't want it in the "first person," and having to start all over again.

There are two knitting clubs in town: The Knitwits and The Hookers. The Hookers are technically crocheters and are frowned upon by The Knitwits. I don't know what their turf battle is all about, but I'm wary of any ideologues who carry pointed weapons in flowered bags. They seem to hover around yarn stores like moths to a 40-watt bulb.

Not long ago, I went to buy my wife one last small birthday present at the local yarn shop. The Yarn People were there knitting away. Pretending to know what I was doing, I was fingering through the merchandise and squeezing the yarn balls like I was buying avocados. Finally a suspicious clerk came over and asked if I needed some help.

I was shown some pattern books. Pointing to a nice-looking turtleneck sweater, I asked where I might find that yarn. Thirty minutes later, when the clerk finished telling me everything I ever wanted to know about sheep hair, I was told she didn't have that yarn.

I picked out another simple-looking garment, an ankle-length sweater-coat with ruffled collar, I believe it was. It was cool. Even the buttons were knit. This time she had the yarn -- but not enough of it. After several such dead ends, I was ready to velcro the wool clerk to the pattern hanging on the wall.

It was at this point the clerk started questioning my wife's knitting ability. Hey, no one questions my wife's knitting ability. Not even me. "Oh, she's the Westchester champion at purl-casting," I said, "dropping" two of the three terms I knew. I prayed the clerk wouldn't ask me to elaborate. Then she looked up my wife's record in her computer.

"You know, she's only made scarves and hats before," the clerk said. I assured her my wife was well beyond that now, and pointed again at the sweater pattern.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I finally found a box full of "skeins" that had been died in the wool in the same batch (important, I learned) and proceeded to checkout. The clerk told me I was a very nice man for buying my wife this present. I didn't know how nice I was until the register tape was pressed into my hand.

"$276.34 please." When the clerk revived me, she told me she had made a mistake in ringing it up. No shit Sherlock, I said. She had forgotten to add in the tax.

I pleaded with the clerk, "Do you know you can buy an already-made sweater at Kohls for a tenth that price?" She patted me on the shoulder and helped me sign the sales slip. I reminded her we were talking sheep fur, not Parisian silk.

On the way to the door, I spied the circle of in-store knitters -- The Hookers by the looks of them -- busy knitting away, pretending not to notice my elevated stress levels. I reminded everyone within earshot that my wife would be supplying the labor -- I was only looking to buy the yarn. Next thing I knew, I was on the outside looking in.

The clerk later told my wife (when she was in exchanging my gift) that the knitting class could hear me muttering all the way to the car, "I was only looking to buy some yarn, I was only looking to buy some yarn...."