Knitlandia

by Clara Parkes

  The more gregarious sheep will approach any outstretched fingers, sniffing to see if they hold any treats. Sometimes they’ll even lean against the gate so you can scratch their cheeks. You connect with others who’ve come for the same solace. Visiting the sheep barns restores one’s faith and sense of order in the world.

  As you amble in the quieter barns, your eyes are better able to appreciate what your fellow festival-goers are wearing. Gatherings such as Maryland give us a rare, much-needed opportunity to show off our work to peers who appreciate it. The only challenge is climate. This being Maryland in May, wearing a knitted sweater is foolishness. Those who don’t knit light tops of cotton or linen will choose, instead, to adorn their shoulders with a shawl or shawlette. Some of the most extraordinary lace I’ve ever spotted has been at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

  Inside the fairgrounds, any knitted item is fair game for conversation. A tap on a shoulder, an “Excuse me, which shawl is that?” will inevitably lead to a friendly chat with a stranger. Contact beyond the fairgrounds is a little more risky. I once scared a woman at a nearby Mexican restaurant when I touched her sleeve and said, “That’s O-Wool Balance! My favorite yarn!”

  Maryland is a long way to travel from Maine for just two days. That’s a lot of money to spend on an event that changes very little from year to year. Yet I always do. My grandparents had lived in Maryland, just over the Potomac from DC. Theirs was that tiny mythical house hidden by forest, encircled on all sides by development. After they died, it was swiftly bulldozed to become part of a $4 billion waterfront resort and mini-city. We were all heartbroken. It left me feeling as if I had unfinished business in the region, and this festival gives me a reason to keep coming back. Each time I do, I greet a few more ghosts and go away a little more clear, more settled.

  Just as the festival has helped me grapple with my ghosts, it has accumulated plenty of its own. By the 2000s, Howard County police were managing crowds of more than 70,000 people. With such a huge influx, it was only a matter of time before things started happening—which they did in 2008.

  The Knitter’s Book of Yarn had just come out and I had the great idea to bring a project from the book and let the yarn vendor who’d supplied the yarn display it in her booth. It was the Optic Waves shawl, a masterpiece of hand-dyed orange and yellow mohair. The stitch was simple feather and fan, but the yarn gave it the heft and warmth of a sleeping Maine Coon.

  Just a few minutes after the show opened on Saturday morning, I heard the announcer’s voice over the PA system. “If anyone has found an orange shawl, an orange shawl, will you please return it to the Brooks Farm Yarn booth? I repeat, an orange shawl . . .” My gut fell. Not two minutes after it had been hung up in the booth, someone slipped it off its hanger and carried it away.

  Later that night, hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise would be stolen from several vendor booths in the main building and the nearby barns. Cash registers would be pried open, and all the goat pens and rabbit doors opened. Thankfully all the animals were safe and recaptured on Sunday morning, but the spell was broken. Since then, police have become a significant presence at the fairgrounds.

  I’d wanted to think that knitters were different, that our gatherings were somehow sacred and safe. But the unfortunate truth is that we are not. In that way, Maryland has helped me grow up. It’s been the doorjamb on which I mark my own progress. I came to my first Maryland not knowing a soul, making more trips back to the car than I care to admit. I ate my meals alone and stayed at a seedy motel in Columbia, slipping my credit card to the clerk through a slot in bulletproof glass.

  Then, in 2003, Knitter’s Review readers began to gather on Saturday at lunchtime right outside the main gates. We put faces to online names. We made virtual friendships real. We met spouses and significant others, Sherpas brought along to help carry goods to the cars. We taunted one another with our fibery finds, taking turns saying, “Wait, where did you find that?!”

  We came from all over. Shelia from New York, now living in Oregon. Jennifer from Virginia. Martha from Philadelphia. Beth, who seems to have lived in a different place every year. And me from Maine. Maryland has become that annual spring gathering we do not miss. It’s a touchpoint, that class reunion we attend—even if we have nothing new to say—to honor our friendships and keep track of the passage of time, all in a place that reflects a mutual love of wool.

  And the festival? What began as a showcase for educating people about sheep and sheep products remains exactly that, powered entirely by volunteers, only on a much larger scale. A good amount of what formed the heart of those early shows—the wool sale, the spinning and weaving demonstrations, the barbecued lamb, and even the crowning of a Lamb and Wool Queen—continues today.

  Perhaps the best thing about Maryland Sheep and Wool is that it takes place over not one but two days. Those who come for just one day must squeeze it all in, the hysteria, the ambling, the stupor. But spread over two days, it becomes something else entirely—a deep, quiet, and enduring rite of spring.

  LUCKY IN LOVELAND: An Interweave Summons

  MENTION THE NAME LOVELAND to anyone in the fiber arts, at least anyone who was around between 1975 to 2014, and they’ll likely say one thing: Interweave. For nearly thirty years, this otherwise innocuous little town on the eastern slopes of the Colorado Rockies was home to one of the most influential publishers in the textiles world: Interweave Press.

  As the story goes, in 1975, a young Linda Ligon quit her day job as a high school English teacher to stay home and take care of her three children. From her kitchen table, backed by $1,500 from her teacher’s pension, she launched a brand-new publication for handweavers. It was the perfect marriage of her two passions, weaving and words.

  Linda sent her first issue of Interweave to friends, family, regional guild members, weaving businesses that were just starting up at that time, and anyone she thought would be interested. When people started sending her money and the subscription requests started coming in, she knew her dream stood a chance. With relentless persistence, she built Interweave into a quarterly magazine that’s now known as Handwoven. Four years later came Spin-Off, then The Herb Companion, Interweave Knits, and Beadwork, not to mention hundreds of books.

  Linda’s success hinged on one particular truth: The narrower your subject niche, the more passionate and loyal your readership will be. She often used that passion as a currency for obtaining content, creating contests to generate feature stories for the magazines. The currency extended in-house, too, where staff was often expected to take on additional projects for the love of the craft alone—like when she convinced Deborah Robson to edit the new Spin-Off magazine on top of her full workload as a book editor for the company. Such was Linda’s draw, and the draw of the environment she’d created, that people rarely said no.

  Having long since outgrown her kitchen table, Linda had moved the offices to a stuccoed, late-Victorian home at 306 Washington Avenue, just up from Loveland’s tiny old downtown. There the company grew, staff ever-expanding, until she purchased the historic First National Bank building on Fourth Street, old Loveland’s main drag, in 1990. Even that proved too small, and they soon expanded across the street and next door, adding satellite offices in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

  By the time she sold Interweave to Aspire Media in 2005, the company had seventy employees and was worth an estimated fourteen million dollars.

  Soon after that acquisition, I was invited to Loveland by then-president and publisher Marilyn Murphy. Her invitation was simple: How’d I like to come for a visit? They’d pay my way and put me up. What did I think?

  For a knitter, a summons to Loveland was like an aspiring country musician being invited to Memphis. It meant big things were afoot. I suspected this was it. I was about to take a journey that would result in a press release, a big announcement. They wanted to buy Knitter’s Review for an untold sum that would set me up for life. They would hire me to stay on in some amazing e
ditorial capacity that meant even more money, exotic travel, and free Post-Its for life. To preserve the “wow” impact of that press release, I told nobody of my trip.

  I flew into Denver well past dark, rented a car, and drove the fifty-one miles due north to Loveland. Linda’s husband had since walled off the downstairs of that original stuccoed Victorian building for his own use. The upstairs was converted into an apartment for Interweave visitors. On that first night, I would have it all to myself.

  The building was dark when I arrived. Retrieving the key from under the front doormat gave me goose bumps. I was holding the key to the original Interweave building in my hand, walking up stairs trodden by Interweave’s first editors, into rooms in which Interweave’s first staff had worked. It smelled of mildew, but it was Interweave mildew, and all I could think, as I put away my belongings in one of the two guest bedrooms, was how romantic.

  The next morning I awoke early and donned the one vaguely office-appropriate jacket I still owned, with a Knit Happens T-shirt underneath for good measure. I downed a cup of milkless tea that tasted faintly of mildew and set out.

  The house was on a residential block of humble older homes, most built in the early 1900s. I passed tidy trees and lawns and picket fences, then turned left onto Fourth Street and walked the several blocks into Loveland’s old downtown, a charming museum of 1930s main-street architecture. Wide sidewalks and flat-fronted brick facades were occasionally interrupted by a slick 1960s plate-glass windowed storefront with a “For Rent” sign in the window. “This is it,” I kept thinking. This was the moment I would replay in my mind again and again, the story I’d retell to my great-grandnieces and grandnephews when they asked where the family fortune came from.

  Soon I was there, standing in front of the old First National Bank building. Built in 1928, its white Classic Revival facade looked impressive and permanent, like how you’d want to draw a bank in a children’s book.

  I opened the doors and walked inside.

  “I’m here to see Marilyn Murphy,” I said to the woman at the desk, feeling both terrified and emboldened by being there to see such an important person.

  I gazed up at the balconied second floor, which wrapped around me on all sides. I saw cubicles, desks, people. Interweave people.

  Sure, to the less enlightened, it may have looked like any other office setting. But this one held staff whose publications I understood and revered. To me, every single person I saw that day was the luckiest person in the world for getting to work there.

  Tall, elegant Marilyn appeared, dressed in the kind of creaseless artisanal perfection you’d expect from the president of a textile-themed publishing company. Around her neck draped a perfectly folded, richly textured scarf—spindle-spun, dyed with twigs and bark, and woven on a backstrap loom, I presumed, by some remote Peruvian artisans. I immediately broke into a sweat. We shook hands, spoke a few words, and ascended the central staircase together.

  She led me into her office, which, at that moment, seemed fabulously grand and presidential. Looking back, I can’t remember much about it except that it had some of the only windows facing onto Fourth Street. Then we went into Clay Hall’s office next door, recently vacated (if my memory serves) by Linda. Here was the new owner of Interweave, a Bozeman, Montana–based twenty-five-year publishing veteran who specialized in acquiring and growing what he called “enthusiast titles.”

  In my mind, his office was sparse but even more presidential, with chairs positioned to make his desk seem as big and impressive as possible. The office décor may have included a fish or a sailboat, those being Clay’s main interests. He was quick to point out that he’d been taught how to knit after the acquisition. It made good PR, though I doubt he ever did anything beyond a garter-stitch square before tossing it away and getting back to his deals.

  Up first was a meeting with the Interweave Knits staff, which had been assembled in a room for the sole purpose of meeting me. Marilyn introduced us and left. We made awkward small talk at first, nobody quite certain what the goal of the meeting was. I asked about the acquisition and they opened up. People in the company were optimistic but nervous about how it would pan out. Apparently, Clay had been very clear with everyone right up front: His was a five-year plan to fatten the calf and sell it onward and upward. Which meant more opportunities, but also more projects, more magazines, more work. Somehow, “do it for the love of the craft” didn’t have the same ring when it came from someone backed by private-equity firms. The profit focus had become a little too obvious.

  When the meeting adjourned, Ann Budd offered to clear my mug for me. At that time, Ann was the managing editor of Interweave Knits and had already authored some of the most dog-eared books in my knitting library. You can’t have the Ann Budd clearing your dirty dishes, and I said as much to her. I insisted on taking it down the hall and into a side kitchen. She walked with me, then pointed and said, “Shove it there.” She gave a wry smile, “Now you can tell your readers the Ann Budd told you where to shove it.”

  Soon it was lunchtime. Clay, Linda, and I headed across the street to exactly the kind of casual upscale restaurant you’d expect as the setting for a very important business meeting. They sat on one side of the crisp white-clothed table, I sat on the other side. This is it, I thought. This was when they would pop the question and name their number, which I would consider, oh so sagely, before accepting.

  While Clay wolfed a panini and Linda effortlessly made a bowl of soup disappear, I ordered a salad that took about nine months to chew. We made more small talk. Clay told me all about his new sailboat. He had a jovial demeanor and spoke with a slow, old-boy Southern drawl. Linda’s eyes never left me, her mouth fixed in a tight-lipped smile that made me increasingly nervous. She was friendly and smart but impossible to read.

  We went back to the bank, met up with Marilyn, and headed into a bigger meeting room where Ann, Linda, and others had gathered. This time, they wanted to talk books. Like a kid being invited to the North Pole to pick out her Christmas presents, I fired out idea after idea. I started with my biggest dream of all, to write a whole big beautiful book all about yarn.

  “We already did that,” Linda said, pointing to a three-ring binder on the bookshelf behind me. It was a book about yarn for weavers. It hadn’t done very well. “What else do you have for us?”

  “I think there’s a market for a book about creative spaces, where I profile inspiring, successful people in our industry and showcase the space where they create. Like, Linda, that wooden kitchen table where you founded Interweave.”

  She looked at me. “I think we slaughtered a pig on that table. . . .”

  “Or you, Ann?”

  “It’d have to be the shower wall,” she replied. “I do all my best thinking in the shower.”

  By the sixth or so idea, Linda interrupted, “Where do you get all these ideas? Do they just come to you?” Her smile remained as inscrutable as at lunch. I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or just being polite. Was she secretly plotting to break into the apartment tonight and chop me up into little bits?

  By the end of the meeting it was somehow decided that my first book with them should be a small black-and-white paperback about the curse of the “love sweater.” It would feature a collection of personal stories from famous knitters either proving or disproving the age-old superstition that knitting for a loved one before you’re married will curse the relationship. Because every knitting book must include patterns, this book would also feature charming teddy-bear sweaters, each designed by the famous knitters telling their stories. To be honest, this wasn’t really my first, or second, or even third choice for a book. But still, it looked as if my lifelong dream of writing a book was finally going to come true. We would firm up the details when I got home.

  I floated back to the apartment on a cloud, exhausted and elated from what had just happened. And it wasn’t over, either. That night I would dine with the president of Interweave, and surely that’s when she’
d pop whatever question had caused them to invite me to Loveland, and I would accept. Tomorrow I would fly home, triumphant. In anticipation of the celebration, I called up my airline and cashed in 20,000 frequent-flyer miles for an upgrade. It seemed only fitting to fly home in first class with all the other successful businesspeople, what with everything coming together so smoothly.

  That evening we went to another slick restaurant on Fourth Street. We drank a Malbec wine that turned Marilyn’s teeth an inky shade of blue. My salmon “on a plank” consisted of a piece of salmon on a cedar shingle exactly like the ones we were using to reshingle the back of our farmhouse. I was still so nervous that I sat on my hands, and when I pulled them away from the vinyl banquette they made a loud fart noise I hoped Marilyn didn’t hear.

  As we talked, it finally dawned on me that Marilyn had been steadily pushing Loveland as a great place to live. Pushing as if any future between Interweave and me would hinge on my being closer. I’d just left San Francisco, very decisively, to pursue a quieter, more creative life in Maine. I’d managed to carve out a job for myself in the knitting industry that was fulfilling, autonomous, and self-supporting. As I stared at my cedar plank, I was left with a simple, heartbreaking certainty: This train would need to keep going without me.

  The fish sat heavy in my gut that night. Sometime during the wee hours, I awoke with a start. I thought I’d heard a man’s scream. Was it outside? I heard nothing else, no running footsteps, no wailing, no sirens, nothing. Heart pounding, I turned on the fluorescent overhead light and was startled by moths, dozens of them, fluttering around the ceiling. I heard a clock ticking in the other room, and a slow, steady drip from the bathroom shower.

  Marilyn picked me up the next morning for a final breakfast before I left. She took a detour to show me Lake Loveland. By now, she’d learned that I loved to sail.