Everyone needs a stitch of kindness now and then

This is the closest I will ever get to pulling a jewelry heist. I have stolen another women’s cache of yarn. This wasn’t by accident. I did it knowing full well what I was doing, though I tried to cover my tracks. My obsession with crafts seems to have no respectable limits.

Last weekend I attended a knitting workshop near Portland. The workshop promised to be a very special time with two world-famous knitters, Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably. I have wanted to take a workshop with Fassett for 15 years, but could not afford the exotic locations where he usually teaches: cruise ships, a villa in France, Sweden. I was delighted to finally have the time and money to attend his workshop practically down the road.

My husband asked whether “just any knitter” could attend, or only those with special skills. I know what he meant: “Do they take women who knit three-armed sweaters, or sweaters where one sleeve is longer than the other, or how about knitters who make everything just three inches too short?”

That’s me. I’m the imperfect knitter. Twenty years of knitting, and all I can say is I do the best I can do. Imperfections and all, I headed to Portland.

The class material list suggested we bring 20 colors of yarn, a notebook and some knitting needles.

I parked myself in the class with a meager supply of seven colors of yarn and scrounged in my purse for a receipt to write notes on. I poked the woman next to me, introduced myself and asked if I could borrow some of the 30 colors of yarn she had laid out neatly in front of her. It was a buffet of yarn. She opened her brand-new spiral notebook to take notes, and I stopped myself from asking for a sheet of her paper.

The knitting gurus entered the classroom, we raised our needles in unison and we were off. Five hours of nonstop knitting.

The well-supplied woman next to me was struggling with her needles. I looked over at her work and she seemed stuck on the first row. I offered to help her. She got tears in her eyes and said she didn’t belong in the class; she had only been knitting for two months.

“Don’t worry, I make three-armed sweaters. Of course you belong in the class.” I tried to be reassuring. “Let me help.” That may have scared her.

My left-handedness made the teaching a bit awkward. She tried to follow my lead, but her loops were too big and she kept dropping her stitches. We spent half an hour trying to get past the first row.

It’s OK, I reasoned. We’ll get through this. But the more I reassured her, the more upset she became. She started to cry and then she lifted herself out of the chair and tried to leave the class. I tried to hold on to her. I wanted her to stay and not give up. I explained that knitting takes time. I told her that this is how knitting is passed along. Someone sits with you and patiently helps you through the first few rows.

But I could see that she felt terrible needing so much help. She felt like she was wasting my time. She could not accept the fact that I was more than happy to help her along while we were in class. She whispered that I had paid so much money and traveled so far to be in the class, she couldn’t waste my time.

I couldn’t stop her from leaving.

It struck me that we often feel like we are too much of an imposition when in reality we are here to help each other. I would have sat with her for the whole class if she needed that. But she was gone.

Other knitting vultures tried to descend upon her yarn. But I insisted on keeping it all together and packing it up, promising the other knitters I would find her later and return her yarn.

But I couldn’t find her later or the rest of the weekend. So I took her cache of yarn home with me, and that is how I became a yarn thief.

Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island. Her column on living with meaning and purpose runs every other Tuesday in The Herald. She is a therapist, a wife and a mother, and has founded two nonprofit organizations to serve homeless children. You can e-mail her at features@ heraldnet.com.