Why I Love to Knit: Part 1

I never buy yarn on the internet. There is no substitute for touching the fibers, feeling the yarn between my fingers before I work it, imagining how the colors and stitches will take the light and look against the skin. And I rarely buy yarn in shops here in DC, preferring instead to frequent yarn shops when I’m away from home. That way knitting becomes a form of armchair travel. I do buy yarn in the towns where my children and grandchildren live. That way, when I make them scarves, hats or sweaters I can imagine that I’m in their company, in their neighborhoods. In Brooklyn NY where we have a daughter and a granddaughter, it’s Maxcine DeGouttes’s Stitch Therapy in Park Slope. In Durham NC where we have a daughter and grandsons, it’s Cozy on 9th Street.

Visiting Vermont in September I scooped up some yarn and a pattern for a little pullover for my Brooklyn granddaughter at the Whippletree Yarn Shop in Woodstock to work on during a European trip in October. By then I expected I’d be done with the first sweater I’ve made for myself in years, soft natural shetland kimono with the most complex cable pattern I’ve ever tried.

On my flight to London I finished assembling my sweater and started my granddaughter’s. On the Eurostar to Paris I was working my way down from the neck on a size-two no-seams pullover in a soft multicolor combination of raspberry, navy, olive, pumpkin, wondering how the colors, which looked quite fetching close up, would look at a distance.

The train attendant -- stunningly glamorous to my eyes, given that I usually travel on Amtrak between DC and New York -- paused during her fresh-brewed coffee service and caught my eye. “You are kneeting?” she purred. “Do you know La Droguerie? The best yarn store in Paris?” She drew a little map and made a notation in my day planner -- rue du Jour, 1er Arr. en face Cathedral St. Eustache, Metro Châtelet-Les Halles. “The shop is small, but leave a good hour. There’s always a line.” And she disappeared with her café cart into the next cabin.

My husband and I had a good hour the next morning before meeting friends for lunch. After a visit to the gem of a cathedral that perfectly illustrates the transition from Romanesque to Gothic, we crossed Rue du Jour to La Droguerie, entering at 10:33, three minutes after opening time. A line had already formed in what seemed like a narrow hallway lined on both sides with sample skeins, ceiling to floor. I had to touch them all. Above was a sign in four languages. NO PHOTOGRAPHS. I stationed my husband at the back of the line of a dozen elegantly suited women, all clutching knitting directions. Peter was the only man in sight except for the fellow in the tiny cashier’s cabin, which probably unchanged since the 1930’s. An elderly woman sat by the doorway to a side room, knitting furiously, faster than I’ve ever seen anyone doing continental stitch.

Wearing my newly finished kimono, I lurched from wall sample to wall sample, selecting finally a beautiful alpaca heather in four shades, two each for light-weight scarves for our daughters -- one in Brooklyn, the other in Durham. Peter had advanced one place; now there were three more women behind him and the line reached the sidewalk. I had time to peep into the adjacent room, twice the size of the yarn hall, that was lined, also floor to ceiling, with jars of buttons and ribbon spools.

An hour later we reached the front of the line. More fluent in French than I, Peter began speaking for me. Our sales clerk, an elegant woman holding a tiny pad of paper and a pencil, regarded me and my Anna Zilboorg kimono. “Madame and I can speak for ourselves,” she said in perfect English. I explained that I wanted to replicate the cable pattern on my kimono onto a scarf of alternating lengthwise stripes of the heathers. To indicate the length I outstretched both arms, almost touching the two sides of the shop. The clerk scribbled on her note pad. “Single or double strand?” Single, I said. “Bien. Attendez.” And she disappeared behind a door in the back of the shop. Peter sat down to read next to the furious knitter while I selected beads to decorate the scarf ends. Ten minutes later my new best friend emerged from the back room with four perfectly wound balls of yarn. She examined my bead choices, then revised them entirely. “Bien,” she repeated, assembled the yarn and beads into a packet, scribbled on the tiny slip of paper, and steered me to the cashier. She handed him the tiny note, then shook my hand and Peter’s. “You will be happy, Madame, Monsieur,” she said. “Enjoy the rest of your stay in Paris.” We paid and plunged back out into the Paris sunshine to admire the gargoyles on the west face of St. Eustache.