why i don't worry about gauge

Oh, to be perfectly ordinary.

I have always attracted the looks askance, the fleeting stares and snickers of kids on passing schoolbuses, the squirrels looking up from their nuts in the park, the offhand derision of those who know ... something ... toward those who never will.

I am happy enough mucking along in my muckety muck, squish, pop, whirr. My shoes squeal on linoleum and crunch on cheap, crinkly carpet as shoes should. I do not tread lightly. I fully occupy, visually, biophysically, philosophically, all the space my corporeal presence requires. I do not mind -- in fact, I embrace -- the panoply of clashing images my appearance presents, the purples and blacks and blues and browns, conflicting colorways, jarring combinations of T-shirts and suit jackets, of boots and vests and floppy oversized hats, of ballcaps and glasses and capri sweats. If I am an anomaly, at least I can spell it and expound upon the concept.

So, what is it about me that often engenders the comment, "Where do I know you from?"

Fact is, I have a familiar look about me. I am an embodiment of type, typecasting and stereotype, prototype, holotype and, by inclusion, of necessity an antitype (if indeed an object fully contains not only all of its attributes but of its opposites).

Stocky housewiferly bookish editor, more suited to adjectives and adverbs than to nouns and verbs, an historical aside to the cold hard facts, an embellishment and likely a sorry one on the vine of human aspiration and achievement.

Perhaps that is why I knit, a swatch here and there of my own creation, a humble nominal offering as easily laughed off as admired. I make nouns: scarves, hats, socks, afghans. But it is the adjectives that count: lacy, fluffy, dark and sinister, earthy, soothing, homey, gemuetlich.

Conformity to the norm is not only unattainable but in the end undesirable, the narrowing of human experience which should be explosive, uncontrollable, imaginative beyond words. I cannot, will not, could not, would not, knit as others do.

And so if perchance the gauge is off, I simply add a cable to draw the fabric in or increase evenly to let it breathe out and relax. Cutting, steeking, seaming, weaving. Process over product. Zen over ken.

It helps to knit for nonpicky people, who must be bred from an early age to scrounge for themselves and gratefully accept any offering no matter how funky.

Certainly that is why I had children. To live outside the gauge.