With the increased popularity of knitting among urban residents, the sight of a knitter on a public bus, subway, or commuter train is a now a common occurrence. Knitters are uniquely prepared to deal with the headaches that come with commuting by means of public transportation, as they regularly practice an activity that is both enjoyable and stress-reducing. However, transit debacles like the recent MTA strikes in New York City and last week’s spectacular failures of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System can pose challenges to even the best-prepared knitter. Here are a few simple rules that will help turn your local mass-transit delay into the best knitting experience possible.

Only knit items that you can work on while standing.

Just how did those people get those seats? Never mind, because there’s no way you’re getting one, unless you’re elderly or disabled (and not even then, if you live in New York), so if you want to knit, you better be able to knit standing up. That means no sweaters, no blankets, and no scarves that are past the first two feet. Yes, it’s finally time to learn how to knit socks. Or take the opportunity to knit those . . .um, potholders you’ve always wanted to knit.

Use only circular needles.

In that shoulder-to-shoulder, sweat-soaked subway car that hasn’t moved in over thirty minutes, anything that unnecessarily touches anyone else is considered a capital offense. The rhythm of your straight needles might be relaxing and hypnotic to you, but they’re tapping that guy next to you on his elbow, and he doesn’t think they’re hypnotic or relaxing. He thinks they’re f%#*ing annoying. Double-pointed needles? Even worse. At least your straight needles have caps on the end. Besides, the more needles you’re holding, the more needles you have to lose when the doors of the train finally open and everyone behind you pushes forward all at the same time.

Learn the Magic Loop.

This isn’t that new light rail system you’ve been hearing about for years that was supposed to be completed sometime during the last decade and solve all of your city’s traffic problems. Nor is it the shiny monorail that only goes to “nice” places and is only used by tourists. The Magic Loop is a method for knitting in the round on only one circular needle. The socks in the picture to the right are being knit on the Magic Loop. The completed sock was knit almost entirely during commute hours, and the final three inches, including the toe, were knit during Wednesday’s BART metldown. It’s the best way to knit in a standing-room-only situation, and it’s the only way to knit socks. Learn it, use it, celebrate it. The Loop Rules.

Decide early whether you want to speak to anybody.

There are two kinds of delayed-commuter crowds; the friendly “we’re all in this together” type, and the “I’m going to kill the next person who breathes on me” variety. Your knitting is going to attract attention in both crowds, and you need to be prepared. Even if you’re lucky enough to be in the former kind (ie. you don’t live in New York), you still may not want anyone talking to you. If this is the case, then do not speak to anyone under any circumstances. Put on your sunglasses, put in those iPod earphones (actual iPod not required), because once you’ve started a conversation with that freak next to you who “always wanted to learn how to knit, but never had the patience,” and keeps asking you “whether it’s hard or not,” you are trapped. For. The. Duration. Of. The. Delay.

And if you’re in the other type of crowd? Read the first three rules again. Take them to heart. Break them, and neither you nor your knitting will survive the trip home. Assuming the train actually starts moving again.

Announcement #1: A few people have asked me if Z, my spouse, has a blog. The answer is yes.

Announcement #2: Someone suggested setting up a gallery for photographs of Danica scarves, and I think this is a fabulous idea. If you’ve knit a Danica scarf, drop me a line. I’ll write back to you with my e-mail address (sorry, but spammers seem to like me, so I’m not posting my e-mail address here), and you can send me your picture! I’ll start the gallery as soon as the pictures start coming in.

So, after all that wonderful stuff about zen-like detachment that I wrote in my last post, let’s see how I’m doing.

Regular readers will recognize this as the inside of the Samus sweater that I’m knitting for my friend Suzanne. In the earlier post, I wrote about how I like to knit patterns that teach me new skills, and that for this one I learned how to sew in grosgrain ribbon. Well, silly me, when I “lightly steam-blocked the edges” I blocked them out to different lengths. The zipper, when I pinned it to the ribbon, rose an entire half-inch above the collar on the left side. Ordinarily, this problem is easily solved by re-blocking the shorter side, but alas, grosgrain ribbon does not stretch.

The title of this post is the first half of the message that appears on a sign in one of my local yarn shops. I think about this sign all the time, and I try to adopt it as my personal knitting mantra. Even so, it’s taken me about three weeks to get up the nerve to whip out my seam ripper.

The second half of the message on that sign? ” . . . so shall ye rip.”

I found this while I was cleaning out one of my closets. It was inside a folder, in the bottom of a gigantic nylon knitting bag. There were many other sheets just like it, some of them far less readable. They belonged to my grandmother, who died in January of 2002. She was ecstatic when I learned how to knit, and only slightly less happy than when she found out that I’d learned how to play bridge. “It will bring you a lifetime of joy,” she said, to both the bridge and the knitting. I stopped playing bridge right after college, so I can’t really confirm her claim about that one.

The above pattern is for a sweater sleeve. None of the other patterns in the folder seem to match it, but I’m still tempted to knit it. The worn state of the paper, my grandmother’s unmistakable handwriting, and the unexpected manner in which I found it all give this pattern an otherworldly quality. It’s as if I had reached back through time and into my grandmother’s knitting bag. Knitting these sleeves would give me the same strange sensation, and it’s almost too much to refuse.

Almost. The truth is that I never liked any of my grandmother’s sweaters. She once knit a cabled pullover for me that ended many inches lower than my waist, and with a vareigated yarn whose color scheme could only be described as tropical. It went straight to the back of my sweater drawer, where it stayed until my father asked me if he could have it. I gladly handed it over, relieved that the sweater would get some use. A few years later, when my grandmother asked me whether I still wore that sweater, I did what any adoring grandson would do. I lied.

I’ve knit more than a few items for friends and family now, but I’ve developed a policy thanks to this incident with my grandmother: I never, never, never ask a recipient if they wear something I’ve knit for them. It’s an unfair question, to both the knitter and the knittee. If your knittee doesn’t wear his/her item, s/he is now in the position of considering whether to lie to you. You, as the knitter, have opened yourself up to grave disappointment and the possibility that the time, energy, and money you put into knitting that item have been wasted. Neither of you deserves this.

And so, my grandmother–a New York Jew–inadvertently taught me that one of the biggest lessons of Buddhism is the same as the biggest lesson of knitting: nonattachment. Stitches drop, scarves unravel, sweaters sit in the back of closets, collecting dust. Every stitch I knit will eventually come undone, every completed item is a meditation on impermanence. There are lots of good reasons to knit. One of the best reasons is that it forces me to let go.