the raveled poncho of care
Dino Buzzati’s short story ‘A Boring Letter’ – included in the recently translated collection The Bewitched Bourgeois – contains part of a knitting pattern for a three-color ‘Peruvian poncho’. The story takes the form of the letter, so the voice of the pattern is thus (hopefully) that of the letter writer, rather than Buzzati’s. The relevant passage is:
So pay attention: You’ll need about two balls of gray (or beige) Shetland wool, another ball of the same wool in black (or tobacco), just over half a ball of the same wool in white (or cream), and number 3 knitting needles. You work in two parts, decreasing one stitch per row for every plain-stitched row. […] For the first part: With the gray wool cast on 262 stitches and knit for ten rows in plain stitch; then, still with the grey wool, knit sixteen rows in purl stitch. […] The twenty-seventh row: * one stitch in white wool, three stitches in gray wool *; repeat from * to * until the end of the row, finishing with one stitch in white wool. The twenty-eighth row: * three stitches in white wool, one stitch in gray wool *, repeat from * to * until the end of the row, finishing with three stitches in white wool. […] The twenty-ninth to the thirty-second rows, in white wool. The thirty-third and thirty-fourth, in grey wool. The thirty-fifth to the thirty-eighth, in black wool. The thirty-ninth and fortieth, in grey wool. The forty-first and forty-second, in white wool. […] Thus you’ll have 226 stitches to a row. The forty-third and forty-fourth rows, in black wool. The forty-fifth… (p. 298)
The omissions leave out the spoilers, of course, but even allowing for the fragmentary nature of the pattern, there is something not quite right here. I will set aside the decrease instructions for the moment (they are odd, but not impossible). What is meant by working in ‘plain stitch’? Generally, plain knitting would refer to stockinette stitch, which is knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side, but that seems a bit odd for starting out, because it would curl up. What is meant by working in ‘purl stitch’? If you purl every row, then you just get garter stitch, but more annoying to knit. It could also mean reverse stockinette, which is purling on the right side and knitting on the wrong side, so some ambiguity remains (and doesn’t solve the mystery of the curling hem).
The row-by-row instructions are unobjectionable. But we can get back to those decrease instructions, because it is odd that thirty-six stitches have been decreased after forty-two rows, when the instructions state that one should decrease one stitch at the end of each ‘plain-stitched’ row. As only ten such rows have (apparently) been worked, this suggests either a relic of the ‘new math’ or some derangement on the part of the letter writer.
Now, Italian is not among the languages in which I have any kind of competence, but in the course of working with knitting patterns, I have had the opportunity to format pattern translations from English into a variety of languages, each of which has their own conventions for how the instructions are presented in terms of vocabulary, abbreviations, level of detail, and designer idiosyncrasy. So although my knowledge of Italian is pretty much nil, it still seemed worthwhile to look up the original:
Dunque senti: Occorrono due etti circa di lana shetland grigia (o beige), più novanta grammi della stessa lana nera (o tabacco), più mezzo etto della stessa lana bianca (o panna) e i ferri numero 3. Si lavora in due parti calando una maglia per parte ad ogni ferro dritto. […] Per la prima parte: con la lana grigia avviare 262 maglie e lavorare per dieci ferri a punto legaccio, quindi sempre con la lana grigia, lavorare 16 ferri a maglia rasata. […] Ventisettesimo ferro: * una maglia con la lana bianca, tre maglie con la lana grigia *; ripetere da * a * fino alla fine del ferro terminando con una maglia in lana bianca. Ventottesimo ferro: * tre maglie con la lana bianca, una maglia con la lana grigia *, ripetere da * a * fino alla fine del ferro, terminando con tre maglie in lana bianca. […] Dal ventinovesimo al trentaduesimo ferro, in lana bianca. Trentatreesimo e trentaquattresimo, in lana grigia. Dal trentacinquesimo al trentottesimo, in lana nera. Trentanovesimo e quarantesimo, in lana grigia. Quarantunesimo e quarantaduesimo, in lana bianca.[…] Si hanno così 226 maglie sul ferro. Quarantatreesimo e quarantaquattresimo ferro, in lana nera. Quarantacinquesimo…
Ok. So this is something different. Within the limits of my comprehension, I think this should start out as:
So pay attention: You’ll need about two hundred grams of grey (or beige) Shetland wool, a further ninety grams of the same wool in black (or tobacco), and fifty grams more of the same wool in white (or cream), and size 3 knitting needles. It’s knit in two pieces, decreasing [binding off? dropping?] one stitch at the end of each [right-side?] row.
In the first sentence: Balls of yarn are not all the same weight (some are, for example, only fifty grams, not one hundred), so keeping the measurement in grams seems sensible. In the second sentence: my interpretation is my best guess based on context and the vocabulary I picked up formatting Italian patterns. ‘Knit in two parts’ could also mean ‘worked back and forth’ here, and it is also possible that dritto here is ‘right side’ [of the work] so it could mean one stitch is decreased (although the patterns I’ve seen generally use diminuire/diminuendo rather than calando) at the end of each right-side row; it could also mean one stitch bound off at the beginning of each row, or one stitch bound off at the beginning of each ‘knit’ (as opposed to purled) row.
For the first piece: cast on 262 stitches with the grey yarn and work ten rows garter stitch, then, still with the grey yarn, work 16 rows in stockinette stitch.
As an overview, I think the copyeditor for the original translation got a bit overzealous on the consistency of numbers; perhaps Italian doesn’t care for such things, but the inconsistency (which is retained in the earlier version of the translation, published at The Brooklyn Rail as ‘An Irritating Letter’) does indicate something about the letter writer’s state of mind and problematic grasp of apparently insignificant details. Moving on, however: The translation of lana as wool is, yeah, accurate, but in the context of a knitting pattern, a bit of a Britishism or archaicism. Punto legaccio is garter stitch (knit every row), as a quick internet search will indicate (you don’t need Google translate for that). Maglia rasata is stockinette stitch (knit every right-side row and purl every wrong-side row) as, again, an image search will illustrate. At this point, a sensible pattern would mention how many stitches are remaining; if one stitch is decreased every row, there would be 236; if one stitch is decreased every right-side row, then there would be be 249. If, as is possible, one stitch is decreased every row in the stockinette section only, there would be 246 (one stitch every other row in the stockinette section would yield 254). Finally, if one stitch is decreased on every knit row, then there would be 244 sts.
Twenty-seventh row: * one stitch with white yarn, three stitches with grey yarn *; repeat from * to * to the end of the row, ending with a stitch in the white yarn. Twenty-eighth row: * three stitches with white yarn, one stitch with grey yarn *; repeat from * to * to the end of the row, ending with three stitches in the white yarn.
As a stylistic tic, I hate the use of ‘repeat from * to *’, but it is so spot on that Buzzati is clearly cribbing from knitting patterns or is a very good mimic. As you can see, the first row in this section seems to require an odd number of stitches (the pattern is a multiple of four stitches plus one), which would support the right-side row translation, except of course that the last stitch would be a decrease, so although the ending stitch count would be odd, the starting count is even. But wait. The next row also requires an odd number of stitches: a multiple of four stitches plus three. If you are decreasing every row, then you start with 235 sts, fine, but the final stitch is a decrease, so you only have 234 stitches and cannot complete the final stitch. If the decreases are worked every right-side row, then you start with 248, but as you aren’t doing any decreases, that doesn’t do you much good. It is also somewhat unusual to be working stranded colorwork flat, but everyone loves an adventure.
The remainder of the translation to the pattern (along with the pattern itself) seems fine, except the 226 stitches on the needle, which are clearly present in the original. So forty-two rows have been worked and somehow only thirty-six stitches have been decreased. 1 I cannot tell if this is meant to indicate the state of mind of the letter writer or their poor penmanship (a hasty 0 could be misread as 6) or the agitation of the letter’s recipient (the letter does, if I may say so, contain some rather surprising tidbits).The oddities in the pattern, however clever they might seem (i.e., as indicative of character and ultimate narrative outcome) are, I think, rather happy accidents than intentional signposts, but could be mistaken. In technical knitting terms, there were a couple of minor misses, but the overall effect I think comes through, even for the habitual reader of knitting patterns.
- If one stitch is decreased/bound off on every knit row, then 26 sts would be decreased; if the initial cast-on is 252 instead of 262, this would be possible. The mind boggles at the possible solutions. In any case, the letter writer’s attention to detail has, perhaps, been compromised.[↩]