Confessions of a Reformed Pattern-Slave (Freeformer)
Or, How I Threw Away My Knitting Patterns and Learned to Love Crochet

Written by: Claudia L. Dunitz

Author's email: cdunitz@healmyhands.com

Author's website: http://healmyhands.typepad.com/heal_my_life & http://www.healmyhands.com/home2.html

Credits: Photo’s by Claudia Dunitz

I’ve been knitting for a long time. Well, at least it seems like a long time - 30-odd years. I’ve knit sweaters, scarves, toys, hats, lap robes, dog coats and pretty much everything there is to knit. And I was pretty darn good at it, too! I had no problem following a knitting pattern. And, as a result, knitting and I have always enjoyed a fairly chummy relationship - until a little over a year ago, when a yarn order I’d been waiting for didn’t arrive.

I was a Project Knitter, who knit on only one project until it was finished, because I couldn’t stand the suspense. I couldn’t put anything aside until it was done. Oh, I always had a pair of socks and a shawl lying about; socks because they were my portable knitting and shawls because they take so darn long that I just never had the stick-to-it-iveness to hang in there until the monster was finished. But there was only one “real” project at a time. So when that yarn order didn’t come, I found myself with nothing to knit. And that was terribly, frighteningly painful.

That very pain was what drove me away from my beloved pattern knitting and straight into the dangerous arms of freeform and crochet.

I’d never really been particularly fond of crochet, partially because I’d grown up in the era of really bad 70s colors and crochet, and partly because the symmetry of it had always eluded me. In the early 70s, my crocheted scarves always listed left or right, no matter how hard I tried. I cried - I despaired. My crochet was truly hideous - lumpy, crooked and vaguely forlorn. Other women could do this - why not me? What was wrong with me? I loved yarn, but the crochet thing was getting me nowhere fast.

Then a couple of months before our first anniversary, I decided I wanted to crochet my new husband a sweater. I went into my LYS to buy some yarn, hoping that the proprietor, a lovely little old German lady, could magically help me. Did she ever! Aghast at the idea of my crocheting a sweater, she pushed me into a chair, stuck a pair of knitting needles into my hands and announced, “You’ll knit!” And knit I did. And I never looked back at poor, abandoned crochet.

Then, a few years ago, at a Stitch and Bitch meeting in New York City’s Union Square, I was busily knitting a sock when I noticed that the woman next to me was pulling out the most amazing piece I had ever seen. She had set her bag on the chair between us and opened it to reveal an explosion of small balls of yarns in the entire range of yellow through gold. It looked like a treasure chest. I looked away, not wanting to stare.

As I watched out of the corner of my eye, she proceeded to pick one little ball out of the bag and pick up a row of about ten stitches randomly on the piece. She knit a few short rows and bound off. She reached in for another ball, picked up some stitches in another section and began to knit a bit in moss stitch. She bound off this bit too. At this point, my sock forgotten in my lap, I was completely intrigued. I had never seen anything like this and had to ask, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m freeforming,” she explained, perhaps a tad too gaily, as she continued to add bits to her glowing work. “It’s easy” she continued nonchalantly. “You just knit little bits in different yarns, always going in different directions.”

“Where’s the pattern?” I asked.

“There isn’t one,” she replied smiling slyly. I blanched.

“You can take a class,” she offered.

“Thanks,” I replied.

I shook my head, knitting and muttering quietly to myself. This was wrong. No pattern? The whole thing was beyond me. And just what was she going to do with that mishmash anyway? Nuts to that. Freeforming was obviously for leftover hippies, which I definitely was not. I was a pattern knitter and I liked it that way. I liked my knitting neat and organized, with certainty and guaranteed results. Craziness of this sort just had no place in my orderly life. So I promptly inched my chair away from her just a bit and like the crochet, I put it out of my mind. I could turn the heel on my sock before the end of the night if I hurried.
Ah, but you know how those things go. Once a seed is planted, it can, like crabgrass, eventually take over the whole lawn. It only needs the right conditions to sprout and those conditions came together in spades last year. In addition to being a pattern slave, I was, remember, the one-project wonder and I still take a lot of ribbing from my friends, who think this means I’ve an unfulfilled fiber life.

So there I was, waiting for my yarn to arrive in the mail with nothing on my needles. My life was crazy and I needed the peace and serenity of needles in my hands. No yarn equaled no peace. In desperation to do something, anything with yarn, I decided to straighten out the little four-drawer chest where I keep the odds and ends of my fibery pursuits. I noticed several small balls of deep green and gold yarns tumbled in a corner of the bottom drawer. I picked them up and set them together on the bed - wow, what a gorgeous color combination, I idly thought. Then, I remembered that nutty freeforming woman in Union Square. I picked up a ball of gold and knit a few tiny rows in seed stitch. Binding off, I picked up another ball, picked up some stitches, and knit a few more rows in another direction.

OK, this was so cool, and not at all frightening. I kept adding bits in greens, and then added some more gold. I made stripes. In my excitement, I totally forgot that I had put a pot of carrot-ginger soup on the stove to reheat, and burned the bottom to a crisp. I was FREEFORMING! The house smelled like a funeral pyre, but I WAS FREEFORMING!

I stewed about the little piece I had created. It was pretty, but flat. I wanted more. Depth and curves and tunnels and things I couldn’t really put a name to. So I decided to go online and see what other people were doing with this crazy freeforming thing.

When I found Prudence Mapstone’s amazing art, I saw what I was missing - CROCHET! My flat work was missing the depth of crochet. And amazingly, my particular style of crooked crocheting wouldn’t matter one whit. In fact, the crookeder, the better!

But wait…crochet?

Yes. Crochet. So I set about crocheting doodles and springy spiral things and loops and balls and circles, never doing any stitches more complex than a single, double or half double crochet, since those were the only stitches I really knew. I went forward and backwards and upside down. . There are no rules in freeform so I was never wrong! This crochet thing was okay - and I could do it! I finally realized what I had been missing all those crochet-less years. I was hooked, so to speak. I joined the International Freeform Crochet Group on Yahoo. I learned how to do the bullion stitch. I finished my first scrumble, which is a small piece of freeform, and decided it should be a bag, so I did a second piece as the other side. My knitting needles began to collect dust as I added more and more crochet to my work.

But as wonderful as this new love was, as thrilling, and exhilarating and startlingly new, freeform had a definite downside. Stash. Freeform needed stash. In fact, it ate stash like a teenage boy eats Cheezits. And, as the One-Project Wonder, I didn’t have any stash. I needed to shop. I needed yarn, not lots of it, but lots of different yarn: different colors and textures and weights.

On the bright side, one ball or less of anything was just the ticket. That meant that I could shop closeouts and orphan ball sales. The downside was that with the exception of white, black, and pastels, which I just don’t like, and just generally ugly yarn, which I wouldn’t buy anyway, anything and everything was up for grabs. I figured I could always use it at some point. Now this new stash needed to be stored. I started filling every available empty space with yarn and with projects. I discovered beads and thought, “Hey, I should add some of these into my work.” I emptied the top drawer of my nightstand so I could put beads in there.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, just when I thought I had it all down pat, and my madwoman shopping spree for yarn and beads had slowed, and my freeforming had settled into what I naively thought was a predictable pattern, I discovered embellished quilting and I thought, “Hey, I should add some of this stuff into my work…”

I used to be a reasonably neat person, but the nature of freeform dictates balls of yarn piled into baskets, and those baskets are all over the place. The chaos fuels the creative process. My one canvas tote with its lone simple project is long gone. There are no twelve-step programs for fiber addicts, which is probably a good thing, because my family would make me go.

But I don’t care. I’m happy now, with my newfound love of freeform and hence, crochet and my stash scattered everywhere. Yarn has taken over my life as I knew it, and I’m one smiling woman. I owe it all to freeform.

Meet the Author :

Claudia Dunitz lives in New York and has two daughters and two granddaughters. Her company, Heal My Hands (http://www.healmyhands.com/home2.html), makes natural skin care products she developed herself. She dives, rock climbs, hikes, bikes, bakes (particularly when she is stressed), reads and loves a good movie. She has created and crafted in virtually every medium. At one time or another, she has had a stained glass studio, painted in oils, decorated custom cakes and punched tin. She has been knitting for over 30 years. She designs and creates mosaics in smalti, knits, crochets, spins, dyes, embroiders, quilts, sews, felts and now, with great abandon and a deep love and involvement with yarn and fiber, she Freeforms! Claudia also teaches freeform knitting and crochet workshops and welcomes all inquires from the interested.