Deborah turns her head so violently to the left that you’d think her eye ball had been snagged by a size G crochet hook. She stops in her tracks. Around her the early morning coffee shop is humming. Conversationalists are leaning toward each other across tables. Students, writers, and dawdlers, each seated alone, are geared up with laptops, headsets, iPhones and five dollar coffees. To her left, a fieldstone fireplace, from floor to ceiling, takes up a quarter of the wall. Deeply cushioned chairs, with pedestaled side tables and reading lamps are arranged in a semicircle around the fireplace. Seated there are three newspaper readers, two book readers and one other. It is The One Other who has caught her eye. 

     A man, in his 30s, newly barbered, dressed in a suit and tie, and polished brown leather shoes, stands apart from his more causally groomed and dressed neighbors. He is neither focused on reading nor his computer; instead he leans into his knitting. His pattern lays on a side table which is pulled up close. She turns toward him, bends slightly and aims her caught eye, first toward the blue highlight tape marking his progress on the graph of his knitting pattern, and then toward the blue, black, and orange colorwork of the hat he is knitting. She stands quietly and waits while he knits. When he comes to his gold marker he stops, places his right index finger on the marker, rests his work on his lap and turns in his seat to look up at her.

     “Deborah, is that you?” He rises to greet her. 

     “Pete it is good to see you again. I met Cindy when she came into the shop a few weeks ago. I’m pleased to see that you are both still knitting.”

     “It’s a miracle that you dropped by just now, because I actually have a question about my color work. Do you mind? Could I ask you a quick question?”

     “Of course. I’ll pull up a chair and sit beside you. Let me offload this first.” She chooses a small table behind the fireplace seating area and places her project bag on the floor, her backpack on the seat and takes off her shawl and drapes it over the chair. Having planted her flag, she picks up an empty chair and carries it around and places it beside Pete and sits down. “Now let’s take a look at your project. Your colors are amazing. This blue sparkle for the water is perfect. Is that homespun?”

      “Yes, Cindy spun it for me. She’s taken up spinning.”

     Deborah picks up the skein of blue sparkle, “This is gorgeous. You guys are a good team. She spins it. You knit it.”

     “Thank you, we are a good team. But see,” and he holds up the piece for her to take. “But see—is it supposed to rumple this much? I mean, I know it will be smoother after I block it, but is it right that it rumples this much? I worry I’m doing something wrong.” 

     She puts down the homespun, and being careful to place her right index finger on his marker, she takes his work. Pete is a tall man and when he leans toward her he can easily see down into his work. She flips the hat so that the wrong side is visible. Keeping her eyes on the work she speaks to him, “You have done a good job staggering and tacking your floats every three stitches, so that is not the cause of the rumpling,” she says.  She flips the piece back around. “The problem is your work is too tight, you are not pulling back before you knit foreword.” 

     “Pulling back?”

     “Yes, do you mind if I knit a bit of this to show you?”

     “Please do.”

     She glances once more at his graph. Then her hands begin to move. The skin of her hands is too thin to fully contain blood vessels and her carpometacarpal joints at the base of her thumbs are flat where they should bulge, and bulged where they should be flat. Nonetheless, her fingers move octopus-style, each being controlled by its own brain. In her right hand, her throwing hand, she holds two strands of live yarn simultaneously. One is between her thumb and forefinger, and the other between her forefinger and middle finger. After knitting a few stitches she pauses. 

     “Okay it is now time to slide the knitted stitches down the needle. Mostly we take this hand movement for granted, because our only goal is to make room for the next batch of stitches. Ah but that is not the case with fair isle. For colorwork that carries horizontally across the back, the goal is to stretch the carried yarn. The cause of your rumpling is that your carried yarn is too tight. Watch this.”

     Her right hand lifts off the needle for a moment in a needless flourish, then slowly she slides the stitches back. She speaks as her hands knit the next grouping of stitches. “Sometimes in life one must back up before going forward. This is one of those times. Think of if as pulling back on a bow before loosing the arrow. Or rocking a stuck vehicle backwards before driving foreword. Or apologizing before attempting to resume a relationship. Undoubtedly you can think of other examples.”

     He leans back to gain a more full perspective of her, ”I can actually,” he says.

     Again her hands stop, and her right hand lifts off the needle, “Okay now watch." She rests her hands back down on the needle, "First back up, then go forward,” she says as she slowly slides the stitches back.

     After showing once more, she says “Now how about you try it,” and hands the work back to him. She picks the graph up from the table and points out, “This is where you are.” 

     “Perfect,” she says as he demonstrates the technique. "Just remember you must back up before you go forward.” 

     “Do you think I should frog it and start over?”

     “That’s up to you. There are always several options after having made a mistake. Let’s look at some of your options. You could throw this in the garbage, give up, and never knit again. Or you could frog the whole thing and start over. Or you could press on from here and block the hell out of the bottom, warple section. Or you could tear back to the beginning of wave’s top, where the FairIsle begins and rework it from that point.” 

     “To get to that section would I’d have to unknit all those rows, right?” 

     “No, actually you can just tear it back to the desired row, then pick up the stitches carefully and before they unravel. If you do accidentally drop a stitch, there is a way to pick it up. There is also a trick to seating the stitches correctly so that they do not twist. There are tricks that comes in handy for fixing mistakes.”

     “I need to take off for work, but could I schedule a class with you to learn how to back up to my mistake and make it right?”

      “Actually I am starting a class this weekend that is entirely devoted to avoiding and fixing mistakes.”

     “Really?”

     “Yes, Saturday mornings, an hour and half, for 5 consecutive classes and then a booster class the following month. There is a curriculum. Also knitters will be bringing their own problems. We can always learn from each other’s mistakes, right?”

     “Right. It’s so lucky that you happened to come by just when I was having a knitting emergency.  I’ll stop by the shop and sign up. Cindy might be interested too. She might have some spinning questions. Would that be okay?” 

      “Absolutely.”  

     Deborah returns to her table and takes a seat opposite the chair with her backpack and shawl while Pete packs up his knitting. They both wave their goodbyes. He turns to leave, then does a sudden double take. It's the unmistakable logo of Wonder Woman that holds his attention. It's Deborah's shawl draped over the back of a chair. His gaze shifts from shawl to the woman herself. His brows furrow, his lips downturn for a moment before they move to words. If at that moment a lipreader was watching, he would read, "First, back up."