Free-Range Knitter Read Free Page B

cozy. There will be snow shoveling and tobogganing, skating, and several blizzards in which the freezing temperatures and blowing snow will demand wool. Days when no one would dream of going outside without a hat and will conduct passionate searches for their mittens, but once it is winter, the knitting will always be in addition to something. They will need their parkas and mittens. Their snowpants and a hat. Your knitted stuff will be useful but will not stand alone. The autumn is a brief interval that is chilly but not freezing, cool but not cold, a few shining weeks when all one needs to cope with the Canadian climate is the fruit of your needles. These days belong to us. These are the weeks when we are most appreciated for what we make and what we do. The few. The chosen. The knitters.
    These cool days are also, for many Canadians in general and for my family of McPhees in particular, the beginning of the most esteemed of autumn traditions, the Furnace Wars.
    The Furnace Wars are an unspoken and holy contest among our people, a desperate war against nature, trying to delay the inevitable winter by sinking deeply into denial and refusing to give in to the need for central heat. For an intrinsically peace-loving populace, this is really the only serious war we wage, and we lose it every year. It’s as if we believe that wecan actually shorten our winter by not turning on the heat; that somehow it’s not really happening unless you allow it to get the upper hand. (The irony is how cold you have to get to prove that it’s not cold, but as with many things to do with pride, not everything about this makes sense.) This time of year, many Canadians obsessively watch the weather forecast and check the thermostat. We say things at the market like “How cold is your house?” or “Did you turn your furnace on yet?,” or we boast of our past achievements: “Last year I made it until Halloween.” The longer you can go, the colder the house gets, and the less heat you use, the more noble the fight.
    As the winter approaches, and we simply must cave in to survive, some of us can’t even give up all at once. Last year in the schoolyard I heard a woman say, “I put the furnace on, but only for an hour. I just took the edge off, you know, for the kids. Bob and I can take it.”
    I know this must seem alien to people who live in areas where winter isn’t a long dark challenge to the soul, but here, turning on the heat is like admitting to the beginning of winter, and nobody wants to be the first to cave in. To add fuel to the fire, heat is expensive, both financially and environmentally, and the victors of the Furnace Wars get not just bragging rights but also a low gas bill and a sense of moral superiority. As a knitter, I have other, more compelling reasons to play. This period before I turn on the heat marks the weeks when my art is an important part of the fight. These are the weeks that I look like a genius formaking everybody thick wool socks. Everyone wears slippers. They are thinking about full-time indoor hat use. Shawls and throws are over laps and around shoulders. Turning on the heat ends these days of glory for my knitterly self, and that means that central heat is my natural enemy. Unfortunately, this personal sprint for glory is compounded by the fact that I am a member of a very competitive family that enjoys egging each other on in this sort of matter, and I think it gets worse every year.
    Last autumn the ongoing battle involved a great deal of confusion. My Uncle Tupper and his wife, Susan, visited my brother Ian for a weekend, and since Susan isn’t a McPhee, she compelled him to turn on his heat (if by “compelled” you understand that I mean that she said it was a stupid game). Ian complied (he is nothing if not a good host) and provided heat for the duration of their visit, then turned it off again and outlasted me from that point and tried to claim victory. I say this means he definitely lost, since