SWATCH POEMS

Mary Sauer

Puff Stitch
Object ID: 2020.1.267
    
Barbara,1 I knit 
this swatch 
by the drop 
slide, assemblage2
me at the communal 
pool, co-mingled
& held together,
wrapping what 
cop spindle 
ravels fiber: 
                    
bulky & bought 
second hand. 
What memory 
retained? What 
gauge achieved? 
What play 
grounded in 
empty textile
-space. 
                    
Cast on 
in nursery school 
rhyme fragmented 
in the yarn over, 
dropped when 
my pencil cuts 
water’s surface, 
my daughter cheers 
& my toes touch 
the bottom. 
                    
Un-frogged 
I wanted to knit, 
but I was knitted3 
to bobble 
in lap lanes. 
                    
Toweled off 
& purled four 
together to close 
the popcorn puff, 
close the pool 
down (pink)
cast off, ice cream 
sandwich 
on my fingertips.   

Mistake-Stitch Ribbing4
Object ID: 2020.1.2675

Barbara, I swatch this stitch at a party. Treasury me at the midcentury thrift table, surrounded by 
melting ice in rocks glasses, wilted arugula dropped from my sandwich. Burrata on my button down.

Barbara, I try the cross-stitch ribbing6 first. I am highly embossed. I have a hard time when I get to the 
*skip 1 st and knit into 2nd st part. This is only the second part.

Trying a new stitch after having too much to drink is like going to Whole Foods and feigning 
surprise at the prices.

My friend smokes and dances to Charli xcx in her Keanu Reeves sunglasses.

My phone in battery saver mode leaves me in the dark.

When I say, maybe I should try a simpler stitch to my friend Sara, my friend Sara says, yeah.

When my friend Sara points at Mistake-Stitch Ribbing and says, I like the name of this one, I know 
what they mean.

When I say, I like your sweater vest, I hope you say, I made it.  

---

1. “Puff Stitch” from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara G. Walker. Pg 150
2. Aktas, Bilge, “Material as the Co-designer: exploring a new practice in the nature and at the studio” in SYNNYT/ORIGINS, 2018
3. Kilpi, Linnea. “Knittedness: On the expressivity of knitting as metaphoric process” in Craft Research Vol 14 No 2, 2023
4. “Mistake-Stitch Ribbing” from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara G. Walker. Pg 40
5. Morris, Audrey. Mistake-Stitch Ribbing. Knitted recreated for the Barbara Walker Swatch Collection at BLUE: The TATTER Textile Library. 2020. Entry/Object ID 2020.1.69.
6. “Cross-Stich Ribbing” from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara G. Walker. Pg 41

Mary is is a poet, short story writer, and knitter from Kansas City where she works with the Kansas City Monuments Coalition. She is a Best Small Fictions nominee and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Timber, Pleiades, coastlines, [light study], Seam Allowance, and HAD.