The words 'ravel' and 'unravel' create a spiral of meaning: ravel, meaning both to entangle and disentangle; unravel, to disentangle, to come apart. They follow each other in their twin meanings, twined around each other like two strands of yarn plied together to make one stronger yarn, fit for knitting a sweater.
These meditations on knit magic are central to my work, to the processes of making and mending, of taking things apart to see what they are made of and putting them together in new ways. The act of unraveling a sweater can be both spiritual and practical, and in reality these seemingly separate labels inform each other. When I unravel a thrifted sweater in order to glean it's yarn, I don't know it's history so I can merely guess, imagining the life that led it here to my hands. When I unravel a sweater I have knit myself, I'm not only salvaging the yarn to use again, I'm meditating on the life I have lived with the sweater, and imagining the life I will live with the new garment I knit with it's yarn. Unraveling is a way to exist in a liminal space - the cloth becomes unrecognizable when it's turned into its base material - a strand of yarn - before it is turned into cloth again. This space can be uncomfortable, but it is also a time for dreaming to take place.
I often refer to this work as 'unraveling a torment', taken from a quote by the late Louise Bourgeois, a French artist who spent much of her life taking apart her clothing and sewing it back together in new forms. She wrote "To unravel a torment you must begin somewhere". To unravel a sweater, I look for the woven-in ends where the knitter cast off and begin there.
I knit the orange sweater in a season of heartbreak. I knit it from the yarn of a homemade sweater that I unraveled. The color is like sunlight on pine boards in June. It is dappled with sky-blue spots and white and black flecks like salt and pepper. I found the sweater at the thrift store, knew right away that it had been knit by hand, hands that may even have chosen the yarn at the local yarn shop. I can’t imagine giving a homemade sweater to Goodwill, though I'm grateful when I find one that I can use. The sweater was a gift, I decided, and maybe when a fissure grew in the relationship the sweater was moved on. Or maybe I’m completely wrong. There is no way of knowing, but as I unravel the sweater, my mind is meditating on my own heartbreak.
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I unravel the sweater and it comes apart easily, without issue. I wash the skeins in the enamel basin and hang them on the laundry line to dry in the sunlight. The yarn is warm and irresistible to me. I plan on knitting a crewneck sweater.
It's the finest yarn I’ve ever knit a sweater out of. The work is slow and I am miserable. Not because of the knitting, no, I am happily distracted by the knitting. I cry a lot while holding the growing sweater in my arms. The pattern calls for simple stockinette stitch in sport weight yarn, orange like summer sun setting over blue mountains.
We move house. I live alone, fearing that I’ve driven everyone away. The days are long and hot so I stop knitting the sweater and leave it in my project bag, which gets discovered by mice who chew the soft yarn for bedding. Angrily I rip back the arm beyond the holes and start knitting again. I discover another hole on the belly of the sweater. The mice have offered a moment of pause and I consider what I really want from this yarn.
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I unravel the sweater on a beautiful day in late August. I’m wearing a greenish yellow tank top and I sit cross legged on my bed with the sun pouring in. I take a video of the process using my phone, which is propped up against a basket resting on the bed. I pull the needles out of the arm and begin winding that yarn back into a ball, unpicking the tubular binding at the neck and hem. It is tedious, but when I am done, the entire sweater is a heavy ball the size of a child's head. I walk around with it clutched against my stomach. I think of turning it into another sweater, one with a v-neck and loose hem, something that will fall off the shoulder. I decide against deciding and put the ball, heavy and orange as the sun, away for the winter. I will return to it when a sweater calls out again to be created.
