"Lady Emily was making a khaki scarf, had been making it for nearly a year, and was likely, as far as anyone could see, to finish a few days after the end of the war, if then.... What she achieved in the way of adding stitches, of losing stitches, of inventing stitches that no one had ever met before, of finding a long ladder where none had been five minutes earlier, of discovering a peculiar knotted lump twenty rows back and insisting on unravelling at that point because nothing was good or good enough for the soldiers and picking up her row with double its number of stitches, only those who have tried to guide a mother's early steps in knitting can understand."
Anyone who tried to guide a child's early steps in knitting would understand this as well. Recently, I got a girl started on a scarf, sent her home and have heard since that the thing was widening in weird ways that she could not understand or control. Similarly, my return to crocheting after decades created monstrosities; I did not seem to know when a row ended and it was time to turn around; I just kept adding stitches. The learning curve for making can feel steep at times.
By the end of this passage in Angela Thirkell's Marling Hall from 1942, we learn that Lady Emily's scarf varies in width from 9 to 19 inches, is 5 feet long, and she thinks she only half done with it. This is one of the funnier passages in this novel which can seem a bit impatient with humankind at points. But it was 1942 and the country was struggling desperately and I can understand how Thirkell's tales of life in the English countryside would be less cheerful than her pre-war works. Although they continued to turn on making sure that people married the right spouse who would make them happy, and not the wrong ones who made parents clutch their hair.
You can find these works at Virago Books: https://www.virago.co.uk/?s=thirkell
