Most knitters dislike the final stage of the process, which
is appropriately called "finishing." For example, a typical
baby blanket pattern calls for 14 or 15 ounces of yarn, and
the yarn comes in 3 ounce skeins. Each time you add a new
skein of yarn to your project, you incorporate two loose
strands of yarn: the last few inches of yarn from the old
package and the first few inches of the new one. After the
knitting stage is complete, you have to work all the loose
strands into the fabric. Finishing is tedious, a bit time
consuming and rather boring.
With this in mind, you will understand why I eagerly
purchased a new type of yarn, which comes in huge one-pound
skeins. The ad for the new yarn announced the news that one
could now knit an entire project with one skein and eliminate
the finishing hassle. That was too good to pass up.
Yarn pulls out from the center of the skein so you really
don't see what is happening inside. When I was at the halfway
point in knitting the blanket, an annoying thing happened.
The yarn started coming out of the skein in clumps rather
than a single strand, and the clumps were getting quite
tangled in the process. I was spending a good deal of time
turning and twisting my work to straighten out the many
tangles and avoid the formation of knots.
In desperation, I decided to stop work, pull out the very end
of the skein and start rolling it into a ball. This was
easier said than done. It took well over an hour to
straighten the yarn and wind it up. What a frustrating mess.
Each time I turned the piece to avoid one potential tangle,
it kinked up somewhere else. Had I used five separate 3 ounce
skeins as usual, the finishing process would have taken
perhaps 45 minutes. My no-finishing wonder yarn managed to
cost me more than twice that time!
It was quite a relief to extricate myself from the whole
mess. Now that the blanket is almost completed, I can laugh
about my error in judgment. However, I know many people who
have succumbed to a different lure and are now tangled up in
something that is much harder to solve.
The problem starts innocuously. A kollel couple sits down
one evening late in June to make plans for the upcoming
school summer vacation. They start reminiscing about their
own childhood vacations, when they would pile into their
respective family station wagons, with a tent and sleeping
bags tied onto the roof, a cooler full of hot dogs and other
goodies underfoot and off they would go to a scenic state
park for a camping experience.
Abba and Ima conveniently do not recall a baby sister getting
car sick or each of the older children asking about every
five minutes when they were going to get there. Nor do they
remember everyone frantically searching both sides of the
highway for signs of the closest rest stop as the recently
trained toddler gives everyone a massive headache by howling -
- non-stop — "I've got to make."
Selective amnesia has also erased the recollection of the
army of ants at the picnic site and the zillions of mosquito
bites that they accumulated during the long nights in the
great outdoors. With the passage of a dozen or more years,
those summers have become nothing short of idyllic.
Now they decide together that they want to give their
children a wonderful summer camping trip. However, they are
missing one essential ingredient. They don't have a car. "Not
to worry," declares Abba, "We can rent one."
The next day, Abba spends his lunch break making calls and
finds out that renting a car is mighty expensive. If this
whole adventure had been based on clear thinking, that would
have been the end of the story. But, unfortunately, logic has
not entered the scenario from the very beginning and it
certainly isn't making its appearance now.
Our intrepid vacation planners make a calculation. If they
put together the amount of money that it would cost to rent a
car for just five summer camping trips, they can buy a car of
their own. This is as ridiculous as my decision to buy the
giant skein of yarn, and also where another tangled mess
begins.
People who are selling a good, reliable car, either because
they are moving or because they now need a different type of
vehicle (van, pickup truck, etc), quite understandably expect
to get a large amount of money for the car. Therefore, if you
see a car for sale that is priced at the figure in this
story, 5 times a two week summer rental fee — which
comes out to 2 or 3 thousand dollars — you know that
this car falls into one of three categories.
It might be a lemon, which means it was troublesome from day
one, or it might be getting old and in need of frequent
costly repairs or it may have been involved in a serious
accident and isn't structurally safe.
No kollel family would dream about buying a yacht or a
private plane. They would tell you, "Of course not. Those are
playthings for the rich and famous." I have news for you. For
people who are just making it to the end of the month on a
stretched budget, car ownership should remain as remote as
buying a Lear Jet.
Cars do not run without a constant supply of gasoline, which
is extremely expensive. A car also needs minimum maintenance
consisting of oil changes, basic tests and adjustments. There
are things which have to be replaced at routine intervals,
such as oil filters, batteries, shock absorbers, spark plugs
and mufflers.
Even if you are good with a wrench and particularly handy at
automotive diagnosis and repair, you can't make replacement
parts. They still have to be bought. Other car related items
that cost money are insurance, license fees and emission
control certifications. Owning a car is like having a guest
at your table who consumes a lot more than his share of the
family's food.
There is another important thing to consider. This whole
scenario started with a pipedream of piling a family into a
station wagon or car. Those days are gone forever. The old
bench style front seat that used to hold three adults has
been replaced by two front buckets seats that accommodate
exactly two passengers.
The way a whole bunch of children used to fit into the old
family buggy was by putting one row of kids on the seat and
another on their laps. Today, babies and toddlers aren't
allowed to sit on laps. By law, each child under a certain
weight now needs a special car seat that takes up at least a
third of a car's back seat. To further complicate the
picture, every passenger — including children —
must have a seat belt.
How many people can fit into today's average car? Five.
Therefore, most kollel families are not really talking about
buying a car. They are talking about a van. And if you think
a car guzzles gas, try going somewhere in a van.
I really got upset when I was trying to free my knitting
project from the knots and tangles that threatened to ruin
it. And that was just for one stressful afternoon!
Imagine someone who is just able to balance his family's
budget for food, housing, clothing and tuition, and all of a
sudden he sees himself entering the down, down, down debt
spiral as more and more of his dollars, shekels or pounds are
going to fuel and maintain a car or van.
That is really a tangled mess!
