I, Libby Mallory Fenn, have a superpower.
I can look at any article of clothing, be it made of cloth or yarn, and within 10.87 seconds I will know how to make it. (I realize this is a somewhat unusual superpower.) My brain, sadly average every other day of the week, will snap into this crazy sort of overdrive and there will be a shining moment of telepathy as the designer's intentions, beliefs and world view will drop into my head with exactly the ease of ... well. I don't have any clever similes because it is just that easy. It is not something I study, ponder or meditate upon. This has resulted in a profound inability to teach anyone how to sew, knit or crochet. "You just ... do it," I say, stunning my pupil into speechless awe at the sheer brilliance of my prose.
Actually, if I had done it on purpose, this would be a very Zen, very hip method of instruction. "Do or do not. Look within yourself, find the ability to knit/sew/crochet that you have always possessed and ... create." (I realize that in the last sentence I am probably ripping off a dozen positive-psychology books and a few organized religions, but please believe me when I say that I have never bought a self help book, and I certainly never learned anything about Kitchener stitch or French seams at Faith Presbyterian Church, Smalltown, USA.)
The problem with this "innate ability" theory is that it is definitely not the way I learned myself. My grandmother taught me how to crochet, my mother taught me how to sew, and my mother's best friend taught me how to knit. I remember a fairly brutal learning curve on all three. My first crochet project, an end-to-end acrylic scarf for my father was literally a ruffle, my tension was so wildly off. To his credit, my father nobly wore it (in public, no less) and swore that it was just what he wanted for Christmas. Of course, this Christmas he's getting a pair of handknit socks, from a ridiculously expensive 100% wool, custom-made to his specifications. So one might say that his initial long-suffering paid off.
Anyway, my point is that at some point I seem to have lost the knowledge of how to do something, without having lost the ability, interest or desire. It's like the secretary in my brain was busy one day and accidentally filed sewing/crochet/knitting under I for Instinct instead of S for Skills Learned. This error has led to some unfortunate holes in my mental encyclopedia. This error is why I knit my first pair of socks at the age of 11 or 12, and the second pair at the age of 21 or 22. (Discounting about 400 pairs of baby booties in the interval. They were fast, cheap and they would fit eventually. What's not to love?) The first pair I made by looking at a pair of six-for-a-dollar socks. Ribbing at the top. Back and forth on smaller and smaller rows for a while then bigger and bigger rows until you're back where you started. Decrease for the toe. Check. At this point, the only yarn I'd ever bought was the Walmart SuperSaver Skein of Garish Acrylic Goodness. The only DPNs were sized for same. The result was predictably enormous, if technically spot-on for my first attempt at designing a sock in my head. They were basically unwearable, even for someone with as high an uncool tolerance as I possessed, and I put aside "this sock thing" aside with disgust.
It wasn't until a decade later when my mother was rediscovering knitting for herself, that she pointed out "Look, they have sock yarn" and I pretty much swooned on the spot. Yarn, designed specifically for socks? Thin and soft and wool? And in all these colors? The store owner (the wonderful Pat of Taming of the Ewe)gave me a quick tutorial on the figure-8 cast-on and a formula for getting the right size and off I went. I couldn't believe how awesome it was. I had missed out on ten years of knitting socks just because I didn't know better than to buy cheap, scratchy yarn! Having polka dots of genius is not, it turns out, preferable to having general, all-round intelligence that lets you learn the same way as everyone else on the planet.
Not that it doesn't have its moments of supreme satisfaction or just plain convenience. This summer I took the pieces of a sundress to the beach. No pattern? No problem! I'd seen the picture on the cover at least once, right? Wasn't it obvious to everyone how the 16 pieces all fit together? No? Not everyone? Oh... Despite being occasionally awesome, my superpower seems to come with a catch. I have never managed to make it do anything remotely marketable or cash-producing (with the exception of a very odd run of hobbit cloaks during high school). Hint: if you're looking at a pattern book and realize that you could produce the sweater on the front? Any other knitter worth her yarn can do it too. They just have to buy the book first. Is it my destiny to solely use my powers for the good of others? Am I allowed no fiscal benefit other than that of spending $15 on materials and then spend 15 hours making it into a gift, as opposed to forking over $25 on a present I could immediately wrap? Maybe someday I'll figure out how to translate my instincts for clothes-making into some amazing new type of sewing pattern based on philosophies rather than sizes. For now, though, the main perk of my very strange superpower is the little ego boost I get as I page through a book of sweaters and realize:
"Hey. I could do that."
