Knitlandia

by Clara Parkes

  Published in 2016 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang

  An imprint of ABRAMS

  Copyright © 2016 Clara Parkes

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948556

  ISBN: 978-1-61769-190-4

  eISBN: 978-1-61312-939-5

  Editor: Melanie Falick

  Designer: Sebit Min

  Production Manager: True Sims

  Stewart, Tabori & Chang books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

  115 West 18th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.abramsbooks.com

  CONTENTS

  Preface: In Motion

  Chasing a Legend in Taos

  From Baseball to Broadway: Swatching in the Big Apple

  Perky Skeins and Fast Cars: Los Angeles

  Naked Lopi: A Knitter's Journey to Iceland

  Big Fleece and Fried Dough: West Friendship, Maryland

  Lucky in Loveland: An Interweave Summons

  Glass, Grass, and the Power of Place: Tacoma, Washington

  Cloudburst over Paris

  A Thing for Socks and a Very Big Plan: Portland, Oregon

  Mighty Scoops and Pho to Go: Celebrating TNNA in Columbus

  On Air in Cleveland: Filming Knitting Daily TV

  Autumn on the Hudson: Rhinebeck, New York

  Merriment in Minnetonka

  Stash-Wrangling in the Mile-High City: Denver

  Cashmere Dreams and British Breeds: A Last-Minute Visit to Edinburgh, Scotland

  Romancing the Loons: Holderness, New Hampshire

  Acknowledgments

  PREFACE: In Motion

  WHEN I WAS SIX, I went with my mother on a run to the grocery store. Too busy to fiddle with the garage door when we got back, she parked the car in the driveway and went inside, letting me snooze as she often did. Eventually I woke up, unbuckled myself, and came in for lunch. A few minutes later, a man in uniform knocked on our door and said, “Your car is on fire.”

  A plume of smoke billowed from the frame of what had been, until a few minutes earlier, our trusty VW Bus. A fuel line must’ve snapped, they said, spilling gasoline onto the still-hot engine until it ignited. All four tires had melted and the windows had shattered into a million tiny pieces. You’d think the experience would have put me off cars completely. Strangely enough, it didn’t. If anything, it only reinforced my desire to set the wheels in motion, as if the real danger were in sitting still.

  I grew up with grand road trips, coast-to-coast adventures in unreliable cars, playing Mad Libs and counting license plates. After my parents’ divorce, my mother moved us to Tucson, where we found smaller ways to escape. Some weekends, after giving up on waiting for a boyfriend to call, she’d mutter a curse and load us into the car. Windows open, we chased the sunset down Speedway Boulevard until the streetlights and sidewalks gave way to empty desert and the tall shadows of saguaros.

  We snaked our way up, up, up, until a sudden sharp left turn took us over Gates Pass. Ahead, the view opened up to nothingness. Back down the mountain we went, to an empty desert floor. We’d find a spot and pull over. The moment the car went silent, the desert took over. A brilliant city of lights unfolded in the sky above as our eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. My mother would lie on the hood of the car; my brothers and I, like rattlesnakes, preferred the warmth of blacktop on the empty road. The desert air smelled sweet and exotic. Lying there, my entire area of vision was filled with stars. At any minute, it felt like gravity would reverse and the sky would suck me in. I’d fall up, up, up into the cosmos.

  Eventually my mom would call to us and we’d get back in the car. As soon as we drove back through Gates Pass, the lights of Tucson would twinkle in the distance, like jewels on black velvet, beckoning us home. We hadn’t gone far, but that brief interlude away, even just over the pass, fulfilled my need to wander.

  My first “real” job after college was as a travel writer for a pre-Internet publisher. Rarely did my fellow writers and I go anywhere. We called venues and interviewed people who had no idea they were being interviewed. We scoured sources, worked with stringers on location, and managed to piece together fresh, original information. We became masters of the blurb. Colleague John Pinson and I even won an award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation for our work. The year was 1995.

  When that job ended and I moved into high-tech publishing, I became a business traveler. From convention center to conference center to major hotel chain I’d go, from lobby to ballroom back to airport, to cover events with names like Database and Client/Server World and DB Expo. I’d sit in product briefings with various VPs of technology, and every second felt like a race to see if I could get out before they realized how little I understood.

  I was still working at my day job in high-tech when I launched my online knitting magazine, Knitter’s Review, in 2000. My goal was to be the eyes and fingers for knitters during a time when our world was exploding with new yarns, tools, books, gadgets, and events. That fall, I ventured to my first sheep-and-wool festival. It was in Vermont, and I called the number listed on the program to ask a question. The woman was quite friendly, and before long, she was offering me her home for the weekend. “I’ll be up at the lodge anyway,” she said, “so you’d have the place all to yourself.”

  I declined, figuring she might also be the kind of person who kept dead cats in her freezer. But when I got to the show, that same friendliness prevailed. Nobody knew who I was or what I was up to, they were just being—or at least they seemed to be—genuinely nice. They were eager to share their stories, answer my questions, and offer advice. The interactions energized me. I enjoyed it so much that I went to another festival, then another, then another.

  Knitting has offered me a perfect lens through which to see the world. During my fifteen years writing Knitter’s Review, I’ve clocked so many miles that I’ve essentially taken off or landed once every two weeks. My destination has never been a shiny skyscraper or boardroom. I’ve been headed to a yarn store, a spinning mill, a sheep-and-wool festival, perhaps a hotel or conference center taken over, even if only briefly, by knitters. The specifics of the trips varied, but my underlying mission was always the same. I have become a yarn evangelist, and I travel in search of my congregation.

  The stories in this book follow those years, beginning in 2000, when the Internet was in its relative infancy, when email newsletters such as mine were still a novel way to reach and build community among what we thought was a small group of knitters online. They track the rise—and occasional fall—of our important gatherings, our people and places, landmarks and legends, each of which has played a vital role in the vibrant knitting culture and community that exist today.

  CHASING A LEGEND IN TAOS

  ONCE UPON A TIME in a Taos, New Mexico, grocery store, a woman named Luisa Gelenter was going about her business buying food. Somewhere in the produce section, she felt a person standing too close. Inching away, she kept shopping, only to feel this person creep up on her again. Annoyed, she stomped off to another aisle. When the lurker soon reappeared, Luisa turned and snapped, “What do you want?” The words were barely out of her mouth when she recognized it was Julia Roberts. The movie star and avid knitter happened to be a big fan of Luisa’s work and was too shy to introduce herself.

  Who knows how it really played out,
but that’s the story Luisa loved to tell.

  In the world of yarn, Luisa Gelenter was a legend. Using nothing more than water and select minerals, bugs, skins, branches, roots, leaves, petals, and powders, from knowledge she picked up in Bolivia in the early 1970s, she could transform natural fibers, such as humdrum wool and mohair, into vibrant, magical yarns for knitting, weaving, and other creative pursuits. Some of her yarns were ultimately spun by a machine at a mill, but in the beginning, all of her fiber was farmed out to a squad of loyal handspinners who produced luminous, lively, color-laden skeins that were truly one of a kind. A complete garment in these yarns cost a fortune and was worthy of any red carpet.

  In 1974, Luisa had opened a shop called La Lana Wools, which occupied the old Bert Phillips studio in the center of Taos. As Phillips had helped establish Taos as a hub for artists, so did Luisa for lovers of natural dye. While tapestry weavers flocked to Taos to learn from the legendary Rachel Brown, from the late 1970s until the early part of this century, La Lana was a mecca for anyone interested in natural dyes or fibers colored with them.

  Luisa’s yarns were outliers at a time when other yarn stores were selling the spun equivalent of Hamburger Helper. Most were made from small batches of naturally dyed fibers that had been blended and spun by hand, aided by a discerning human eye, into unrepeatable skeins. They were priced by the ounce, like gold. Because of the incredible amount of time and skill each one required—and the appropriately high price tag for such work—she owned this market and had no competitors.

  I’d come to town for the Taos Wool Festival when I first set eyes on La Lana. October in New Mexico is chile time, and the air was filled with that distinct fragrance of chiles being roasted outdoors. The leaves were beginning to turn in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but in town, pink hollyhocks and Russian sage still lingered, striking a lovely contrast against the warm adobe walls.

  The festival took place at Kit Carson Park in the center of town. There, a carefully juried group of vendors was assembled in a broad circle, like a wagon train at the end of the day. In the middle, a fiddler and guitarist played tunes while people danced on the grass. The setting was magical.

  La Lana wasn’t a vendor that year, I suspect for the simple reason that the shop was adjacent to the park. So I dutifully left and crossed the street, walking through a small courtyard and into La Lana.

  The minute I entered the store, I was greeted by an army of finished garments. It was like the wardrobe trailer on an exotic film set, with wildly textured vests and tunics that looked like a cross between native tapestries and ceremonial garb. The clothes would overwhelm a shy person. These pieces required grandeur. Rumor was Julia owned at least one.

  Beyond the garments, the room opened up into a space I can only describe as a yarn cathedral. It still had the original massive wall of north-facing windows from when it was Phillips’s studio. But instead of illuminating paint on canvas, the windows now showcased Luisa’s masterpiece on the next wall: a writhing waterfall of handspun skein upon skein of explosive color and texture unlike anything I’d ever seen. Brilliant mohair locks shimmered against matte wool fibers that seemed to be still in the process of twisting together. It was so stunning, so rare and spectacular, that you could only stop and gasp. It was the kind of place that made you talk in a whisper.

  I was tongue-tied. All I could do was furtively snap a few pictures, buy some skeins, and sneak out. After I wrote about that visit in Knitter’s Review, I heard from Luisa and we began a cautious, respectful correspondence.

  When I next went to Taos a few years later, it was specifically to see Luisa. I was writing The Knitter’s Book of Yarn and needed to know more about the mechanics of yarn. Luisa happened to have a mill at her disposal. In 1991, she’d launched the Taos Valley Wool Mill with two partners. One of the partners was a man named Robert Donnelly, an industry veteran Luisa touted as her guru in all things yarn. “He can tell you everything,” Luisa said. I needed to know everything, so when a family wedding was announced in New Mexico, I emailed Luisa and we made a date.

  I arrived with family in tow, depositing them at our hotel before walking over to La Lana for what I thought would be a short visit. This time, I went up to the woman behind the register, introduced myself, and asked to see Luisa. To calm my butterflies, I pretended to study a basket of dyestuff.

  A booming voice came from behind. Everyone seemed to step aside—if not physically, then energetically—to make room for the short, stocky, weather-beaten woman who’d just come in.

  I took a deep breath, smiled, and held out my hand. But Luisa didn’t take it. “No,” she shook her head. “You’re not Clara. You’re too young.”

  I didn’t know her well enough to tell if she was serious or not, but she looked angry. All my confidence drained, and I suddenly felt like a kid, a poseur. She was probably in her sixties, such a legend that she had assistants and protégées to do grunt work. She’d mistaken me for someone on her level when, in fact, I was just starting out.

  We recovered with small talk, and she showed me around the shop. Remembering why I’d come, she asked, “Shall we go see Robert?” The mill was outside of town. We would need to drive there, she explained. Did I have a car? I stuttered that mine was parked at the hotel across from the . . . “Oh forget it,” she shook her head, “I’ll drive.”

  This was not the start I’d had in mind.

  We got into an ancient Volvo, me carefully moving things off the passenger seat. The car was filthy. Not Hoarders filthy but the kind of chaotic filth you’d imagine in Jackson Pollock’s car. Amid the empty plastic tubs and scratched cassette tapes was a sort of barnyard debris from her foraging expeditions. I imagined her screeching to a halt by the side of the road, grabbing the bucket, diving into a thicket, and emerging triumphantly with the very twigs necessary to obtain a rich orange or copper or red. What looked like desert brush to us was, in fact, her paint box.

  We drove slowly out of town, making our way farther and farther until there was nothing but desert. Just as I began to wonder if I should’ve brought an overnight bag, we reached Arroyo Hondo and turned off the road.

  Amid the single-wide trailers, barbed-wire fences, abandoned cars, and barking dogs was a small, nondescript building. Its doors were open, and an immense noise was coming from within. This was the mill.

  The minute we went inside, I was hit by the overwhelming smell of lanolin mixed with spinning oil. The space itself was quite small, about the size of my local garage, just big enough for key pieces of equipment. I remember spotting the bobbins before anything else. Bins of empty ones, bins of full ones, bobbins tucked on shelves and tossed in cardboard boxes.

  A man with a beautiful black ponytail was dropping tidy clumps of fiber onto a conveyor belt that led into the drum carder, a huge machine with whirring cylinders. I gasped as a frothy river of fiber poured from the other side of the machine right onto the concrete floor. A sudden urge came over me to lie on that floor and let the fibers spill over me—but I resisted.

  The spinning frame stood idle, its long row of bobbins empty and expectant. Nearby, I saw slinky strips of white fiber being pulled into a noisy green contraption, spewing out the other end like soft-serve ice cream into a tall cylindrical bucket.

  Something wasn’t working right. An older man in a gray T-shirt flipped a switch, lifted the lid, and pulled away some fiber. Another man, this one with a gray beard and a Miller Racing baseball cap, stood with him and consulted on that little clump of fiber, both of them pointing, nodding, rubbing it between their fingertips, shaking their heads. They must’ve agreed on something, because the baseball-cap man nudged the fiber back into the machine, closed the lid, and flipped the switch back on. Spotting us, he smiled and came over. This was Robert.

  He gave me a cursory tour of the mill. I’d seen the carding machine, which, Luisa explained, was at the heart of her experiments with millspun dyed yarn. The more they could control the fibers as they went in, the more uniqu
e the results they could get on the other end when it came time to spin. I didn’t quite understand at the time, but I nodded eagerly.

  Another spinning frame was in motion, strands of fiber worming their way from tall barrels to bars suspended over the machine, then through a series of rollers until spun yarn wound its way onto bobbins. Nearby, yarn snaked its way upward from cones, over another bar, through more loops, and was then paired with another strand before getting twisted together onto a bigger bobbin as plied yarn.

  Robert yelled an explanation over the noise, but to be honest, the sights and sounds and smells were so overwhelming that I barely heard what he was saying. I just knew I was in love with this place.

  At last, we ducked through a back door and sat down on white plastic lawn chairs in the dirt. Luisa and Robert sat with their backs to the wall, facing the afternoon sky. I could see large pebbles where the adobe walls had begun to wash away.

  Luisa smoked. I held my breath until the breeze changed, then quickly filled my lungs with clean air before the smoke blew back again. I watched the cigarette as it got smaller and smaller, until, whew, she stubbed it out. She probably had asked if I minded her smoking, but after our bumpy start, I was certainly not going to tell Luisa Gelenter not to light up.

  We sat there talking about yarn—about the current state of the knitting world, about the state of domestic textiles, about the fate of larger mills across the country. Robert had worked at many of them and witnessed their demise firsthand. Now, he operated a fraction of what he was used to, serving a very different audience. Instead of running ten hours a day to satisfy the voracious appetites of T-shirt or towel manufacturers, he was spinning small batches of wool for handweavers, knitters, and hobby farmers, people who cared about the breed integrity of their flock and knew each animal by name. Farms in the region tended to have Navajo-Churro sheep, or alpacas and llamas, even angora goats, animals who generally grew long, strong fiber. Robert set this up as a semi-worsted spinning mill with equipment that had been carefully chosen and calibrated to process these fibers. He also made yarns for Luisa.