Free-Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee Page B

whatever that is, and I think that’s why Denny’s best nature breaks all those rules, and it’s why she gets away with it.
    It’s even there in the way she knits. You’re not supposed to be able to knit the way Denny does and not suffer the wrath of the knit fates. If you don’t use patterns, don’t do swatches, don’t even tension your yarn, then you’re going to have trouble. Her knitting should be terrible. It should look sloppy and uneven and show the lack of rules like the knitter’s version of a scarlet letter, but it doesn’t, and that drives us all nuts—for a while, and then you start catching on. There’s a reason Denny’s done away with the rules. She has to be unique and dance to her own drummer and do it all her way, so that you’re inspired to start playing around with the rules about who you are.
    There are still people who don’t catch Denny’s magic. People who find her all the things I found her to be before I came to understand why I met her, what her magic is, and why I think she’s here. There are people who can’t get the hang of it or are offended by all the rule breaking, people who talk about how she doesn’t fit in, and I wonder about those people. If Denny’s gift is the ability to make you want to be more like yourself, then what about those people who can’t get used to her? Maybe they just don’t like who they are enough to want to be themselves.

Dear Designer #2
    Dear Designer,
    How are you? I am very well, though somewhat disappointed that I haven’t heard from you about that brief letter I sent addressing what I felt were the somewhat inadequate instructions regarding the neck decreases on your most recent pattern. I know I was probably ever so slightly over the line when I claimed that you were not knitting with all of your needles, and I’m very sorry for any insinuation I may have made about your academic record in mathematics, but I still stand by my conviction that it would take you less time to write clear instructions than it would for me to reknit a neckline, but you would know better than me.
    I’m writing to you today because although I have tried to forget that this happened between us, I can’t let go. I do not fancy myself your conscience, Dear Designer, but when I findexamples of your poor behavior I feel that I must speak up. You have been elevated to the status of a role model in the knitting community, and your designs are everywhere waiting to assault delight and enlighten knitters worldwide, and I feel that in exchange for this honor, you have a certain responsibility to us, the humble knitters gathered at your feet. I feel that even though you never answer any of these letters, you must bind each of them to your heart and deeply contemplate all that I write to you.
    It is because we have this close (albeit somewhat one-sided) relationship that I was among the many knitters gathered around you at the bookstore where you gave a talk last week, and I was listening carefully to everything you had to say about your work and your calling, and it just so happened that I was sitting right next to the girl who asked you about the difficulties she had encountered with one of your fanciest colorwork sweaters. Her problems involved having so many different colors operating in one row that the number of yarns she had to carry along the rear of her work resembled a rope that would have been entirely at home along the bow of a transatlantic ship, and, I hope you recall, she had asked you for some direction about how she should accomplish this task. Nay, Dear Designer, she had asked what you, the matron of all knitters, the lighthouse by which we guide our yarny journeys, how you yourself managed to carry the seven (or was it eight?) strands of yarn that needed to be transported along that section of Fair Isle knitting.
    I leaned forward then, for as you may recall from my fourteen-page letter of last October, I had tried to knit that sweater, and it was that