Knitlandia

by Clara Parkes

  As a yarn critic, I go to TNNA to survey the landscape, to see yarns, and to meet with colleagues. Others go because they own yarn stores, operate mills or yarn companies, publish magazines or patterns or books, manufacture needles or accessories, teach workshops—and that’s just within the knitting group. TNNA also encompasses needlepoint, spinning, weaving, counted thread, and embroidery. But at a very high level, the groups break down into two worlds: knitting and needlepoint, the Sharks and the Jets of needle arts.

  Despite the fact that both crafts use yarn, they’ve never mixed well. When a knitter gets onto the show floor and mistakenly veers into one of the stark, canvas-lined needlepoint aisles (for they are segregated), a distinct chill comes on, a sense of having left one’s village and entered a strange forest. I’m confident the needlepointers feel the same when they stray from their tribe into ours.

  TNNA is a volunteer-governed, non-profit trade association that was founded in 1975. It has no headquarters, no full-time staff. Day-to-day management duties have been farmed out to a professional association management company that also services the International Window Cleaning Association, the Ohio Forestry Association, and Professional Lighting and Sign Management Companies of America, among others. TNNA does offer other professional programs throughout the year, including youth mentoring, charity outreach, and industry research. But its work really comes into focus during its biannual trade show.

  The main attraction of TNNA is the marketplace, where more than 250 vendors exhibit and take wholesale orders for their wares. Most vendors have one or two booths the size of what you’d expect a trade-show booth to be, while the bigger players can occupy entire blocks of rows and aisles. Décor likewise varies from the uninspired skirted table or two to slick, completely custom-built spaces with racks and shelves, upholstered armchairs, charming bicycles, and potted plants. Placement of vendors is a source of endless debate, which hand-dyer got plunked uncomfortably close to her competitor, which vendor was exiled to a Siberian end row bordering, gasp, needlepoint. In theory, there’s a protocol to everything, but people still whisper.

  Education is another key part of the show. Workshops begin a couple of days before the marketplace opens and end as the last crate is hammered shut and loaded back on the truck. Classes run the gamut from business development to social media, and always include several craft-specific topics too, like working stranded intarsia or stitching your very own needlepoint canvas depicting a Hollywood Gold Digger “all dressed up in her tight gold lamé capris ready to spend her sugar daddy’s money.” (Really.) Many teachers use the classes as a way to offset their TNNA travel and hotel expenses, though the pay scale is modest.

  Cash-and-carry transactions are strictly forbidden except for one night, when many of the exhibitors set up in a big ballroom and sell special goodies and kits for the event called Sample It. No minimum orders, no waiting, this is pure and immediate retail pleasure. For vendors, it’s a chance to get products into the hands of potential wholesale customers. For attendees, it’s a chance to buy nifty stuff. They line up by the hundreds for hours ahead of time, sprawled on the convention center floor like teens trying to score tickets to a Taylor Swift concert. The doors open and in they race, treating themselves to a little of this, a little of that, perhaps a knitting bag, a shawl kit, a cute accessory, all that with no major commitment—and they get to carry their goodies home right then and there. (Even after an “Immediate Delivery” option was added to the show in 2015, Sample It was more packed than ever.)

  TNNA has a summer and a winter show. The winter show—where summer yarns are unveiled—takes place in January, swinging generally between San Diego and Long Beach, California, with an occasional pit stop in Phoenix. While summer yarns aren’t historically as exciting, the winter TNNA still gets decent traffic for the simple reason that it takes place on the sunny West Coast in January.

  But the summer show—where fall and winter goods are previewed—is another matter entirely. The first summer TNNA I attended was years ago in Indianapolis. I mostly remember air-conditioned walkways and $12 convention-center hotdogs. But the next summer, we moved to Columbus, and everything about TNNA changed.

  Despite occupying more than 1.7 million square feet, the Greater Columbus Convention Center manages to defy convention-center odds by fitting right into the Short North neighborhood in which it sits. Even more important than the convention center itself is what stands across the street from it: North Market.

  First established in 1876, the market now occupies a huge structure built in 1995. An open retail space on the ground floor is ringed by a second-floor gallery of tables for eating. More picnic tables sit outside, though it’s often too hot for them by the time we get there. Vendors sell beautifully stacked fresh fruit and produce, pungent spices, breads still warm from the oven, exquisite cheeses, all sorts of fish and meat, flavorful Indian food, mounds of pad thai, and perfect pierogies. More important than all those foods combined, though, is the ice cream. Specifically, Jeni’s Ice Cream.

  Back in 1996, when gourmet ice cream consisted of Häagen-Dazs, when the rest of the world was squeezing frozen yogurt out of spigots, Jeni Britton Bauer began serving up surprising flavors inspired by fresh local ingredients. I know you hear those words all the time, but these flavors are so good, so unusual, so surprising, that many of us gasp when we sample them—or moan, or laugh, or all of the above. Everyone around understands. And there are always people around, for there is always a line at Jeni’s. It’s a happy line, everyone mentally clapping their hands together as they get closer and closer to the ice cream case.

  Part of Jeni’s magic is the staff, who seem genuinely passionate about ice cream and dedicated to making their customers happy. I’ll never forget the time the guy behind the counter heard me mumble, “I wish I could just have what I had yesterday,” and responded, “Let’s see, that was the lemon-blueberry yogurt with berries and whipped cream, right?”

  Tasting is a key part of the adventure, and you’re encouraged to sample everything. They’ll patiently dole out little spoonfuls as many times as you want, whether you’re tasting pear zinfandel, cherry lambic, queen city cayenne, salted caramel . . . the list goes on, and it changes from season to season. “You can try as many as you like!” they assure you after the third or fourth tiny spoon changes hands and they spot a look of embarrassment creeping onto your face.

  “Which one was that?” a stranger may ask if you’re particularly demonstrative with your swooning.

  I know I’m supposed to be telling you about TNNA and I’m instead prattling on about ice cream, but there’s a reason. This market, and this ice cream in particular, has galvanized the show. It’s given us a common denominator that has nothing to do with yarn or with our business at all. During a difficult time of transition, as the once small and tightly closed industry has been disrupted by new technologies and a galaxy of new players, many of whom have bypassed the establishment altogether, and the focus of what TNNA is about has struggled to adapt to this brave new world, food has helped bring us together.

  I haven’t been going to TNNA as long as some people, but even I can remember when the aisles were so full it took forever just to make it from one to the next. Shop owners lined up to see new products and place hefty orders. Now, while I wouldn’t say tumbleweed abounds, the crowds are sparse at best. And instead of lining up to place orders, many of those entering vendor booths are doing so in order to pitch their own services. Where have the people gone? Some no longer come, preferring to let the sales rep come to them. Others have simply stepped across the street.

  North Market has provided a neutral territory, beyond the convention center and hotels, in which to hold our meetings. Rather than ordering matching Caesar salads off a generic hotel menu, whispering so that the person at the next table doesn’t hear, we can wander through the market and explore the food together, each picking what we love. What better way to understand someone on a basic level than by watching how
they relate to food? Even rivals have a safe starting point for conversation. Lo, we both picked the same lunch spot two days in a row. Maybe we aren’t such adversaries after all?

  One of my favorite TNNA meals was with Eunny Jang when she was editor of Interweave Knits magazine. After days of polite meetings with others, we threw manners to the wind and ordered everything at the Polish stall. There were no boundaries between my Styrofoam container and hers, just one big smorgasbord to be devoured equally.

  Or the time I ran into an editor with whom I’d had a very tense working relationship. She was almost eight months pregnant, uncomfortable and exhausted. She’d slipped off her shoes and was slurping a bowl of pho not unlike the one I was carrying on my tray. I was overcome with an urge to put my hand on her shoulders and tell her everything was going to be okay.

  As great as the lunches are at North Market, the ice cream has always been the kicker. Hold a bowl of it and you are instantly approachable, no matter whether you’re the head of a yarn company or an unknown blogger. The greeting when passing other show-goers on the street tends to be, “Which flavors did you try today?” Ravelry’s Mary-Heather Browne keeps a list on her phone so she can track her progress through the menu and avoid duplication. I keep my sampling spoon handy and am not afraid to use it if I spot a friend leaving the market with a fresh bowl.

  Once North Market closes for the day, the ice cream crowd simply moves a few blocks up North High Street to the actual Jeni’s store. There we resume our line around the block, waiting for a chance to sample yet more flavors. We’re all friends—line friends—by the time we get inside.

  After-hours entertainment is another integral part of TNNA, especially in Columbus. Somehow the Hyatt Regency lobby has been declared the official hangout spot. People perch on every surface, the more official folks staking out high tables at the bar, the rest of us piling onto whatever couches and ottomans we can drag into ever-expanding circles. I’ve never stayed up long enough, but legend has it that if you do, you might catch an impromptu ukulele jam led by Knitty editor Amy Singer. Yarn and needles remain in constant motion all night. It’s impossible to guess how much knitting has to be collectively unraveled the next morning, in the sober light of day.

  But the Hyatt lobby isn’t the only place for festivities. Quite often, the summer TNNA coincides with Columbus’s Gay Pride celebrations, whose parade route runs along the very road that divides us from North Market. What fun to watch the parade from the air-conditioned skyway running between the convention center and the hotel across the street, to share the moment with small-town shop owners. “Well goodness gracious,” I heard one say, admiring a buff shirtless man astride a gyrating burrito, “will you look at that?” Just then, a topless woman gazed up from her float and blew us a kiss.

  While the show is on, it feels like the knitters have truly taken over the town. You can’t walk 100 feet without running into someone you know. TNNA, and especially TNNA in Columbus, is like a weeklong fulfillment of that dream where we’ve managed to secede from the rest of the world and make our own kinder, gentler, more yarn-friendly society.

  Of course, this being the Midwest in June, there will also be storms. Big, dramatic ones where the sky turns a dark shade of what you keep double-checking to make sure isn’t tornado green. We’ve had lightning strikes, flooded roads, blown transformers. The convention center has Tornado Shelter signs for a reason. One night I was on my way to dinner with Amy Singer and we turned just in time to catch North Market’s red neon sign silhouetted against a sky that had suddenly turned black and furious. We were spared, but a tornado did touch down about 100 miles north of us that night.

  I’ll never forget the time Cat Bordhi and I spent an extra hour in the Jeni’s store while the skies unloaded outside, lightning flashing, sheets of rain whipping sideways straight at the windows. Dozens of strangers, many of us knitters, were packed together like campers huddled in tents, grateful to be dry and protected. If the power went out, we had all volunteered to eat the ice cream before it had time to melt.

  With such a fondness for Columbus, you can imagine the outcry when it was announced that the show would move to Washington, DC, in 2016. The way we wailed, you’d think the world was coming to an end. But life is what you make of it, and the show is what we make of it. Perhaps it wasn’t Columbus that brought us together at all, but rather our mutual curiosity, a collective eagerness to move beyond the convention center and explore the world outside.

  Mind you, I’m still upset that the summer show is moving. But I’m confident that no matter where it goes, we’ll find a big enough Hyatt lobby and enough ice cream to keep us afloat for another year. Plus, I hear DC has a great ramen joint not too far from the convention center. . . .

  ON AIR IN CLEVELAND: Filming Knitting Daily TV

  WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I wanted to be an actress. I regularly appeared in every school drama production, and I set up and became president of my high school’s very first drama club. But like many, I lacked the necessary spine and drive to make it happen in the real world. The notion of constant rejection was just too much. Instead, I found comfort behind words.

  How ironic, then, that decades later my writing career would land me on television. When it was all said and done, I appeared on thirty-nine episodes of Knitting Daily TV, a program that still airs on public television stations around the country.

  Before YouTube, knitters relied on just a handful of VHS videos and even fewer television programs for any kind of “live” knitting information. Although Elizabeth Zimmermann began broadcasting her own programs on Wisconsin Public Television in 1966, the notion of knitting-related television programming never really took off. When Shay Pendray began filming Needle Arts Studio in 1996 on Detroit Public Television, it was big news—but it was even bigger news when she sold the show to Interweave Press in 2007. The program was relaunched as Knitting Daily TV and, in 2012, I was invited to join the show.

  Shay stayed on for the first few years, but the producer role had been handed to Interweave’s head honcho, Marilyn Murphy. After my monumentally unmomentous trip to Loveland, Marilyn had actually become my friend and mentor—and it was because of her that I got tapped for the gig.

  The idea was that I’d be their resident yarn expert in a five-minute segment called “Yarn Spotlight” that would run in every episode. Then-host Eunny Jang and I would sit at a table and chat about the yarns that just happened to be spread out in front of us—but with the brilliance and clarity expected when a camera is rolling and your show doesn’t have the words Real Housewives in its title. Having written about the science, mechanics, and magic of yarn for more than a decade, I loved the idea of leaving the page and jumping into freeform conversation.

  Soon Marilyn and associate producer Annie Bakken presented me with a list of the yarns I’d discuss in the first season. I learned that each episode would be grouped by a theme, such as Superb Stitch Definition or Made in America or Brushed Yarns. I quickly discovered what would become my two biggest obstacles: I could only talk about yarns that had been placed there by an advertiser (difficult for someone whose career was built on unbiased criticism) and, because this was public television, I could never mention any of them by name. Advertisers still got to say, “That’s our yarn!” when their spot aired, but I could never acknowledge them on camera. All too soon, I felt like I’d switched from PBS to QVC—though I accepted the mental challenge of following the rules while staying true to my core.

  A few weeks before it was time to shoot all my episodes for the season, yarn began showing up at my doorstep. I dutifully knit swatch after swatch after swatch, some in stockinette, others in colorwork or lace, cables or ribbing, so that each yarn could be shown in what I felt was its ideal knitted state.

  Then came wardrobe. While everyone else wore beautiful handknits on set, Marilyn thought it would be fun if Eunny and I did the segment in lab coats. “You know,” she smiled, “like you’re in the yarn lab with Clara and Eunny?�
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  Interweave had just entered the knitting conference fray with its Interweave Knitting Lab conference, and event staff all wore lab coats. All we had to do was stick white labels over the black Knitting Lab logos and we were good to go. As dreadfully unflattering as they were, and as much as they trapped perspiration under the bright lights (causing the stickers to peel off), in hindsight these lab coats ended up being a godsend. While everyone else grappled with costume changes, all I needed to bring was a few jewel-toned T-shirts to wear underneath.

  The show was filmed in a suburban Cleveland studio whose claim to fame was that Bob Dylan had once filmed something there. The studio was near the back of a 1970s brick building with seedy, deeply tinted windows. It looked like a cross between a porn studio and a setting for a mob hit.

  Each season had thirteen episodes, all of which were filmed over the course of one week. We shot two seasons per year, one in the spring, one in the fall. Marilyn, Annie, Eunny, and I stayed at a chain hotel by the freeway, and one or two other guests would pop in and out for their spots. Marilyn played chauffeur, renting a big car and coordinating arrivals so that we could all pile in at the airport. Before we even reached the hotel, we’d make our first stop of the week: Whole Foods.

  Due to an unbearably early start time and abundance of junk food at the studio, we were encouraged to stock up on our own breakfast and snack supplies. Eunny and Annie, both being tiny women who subsisted mostly on cigarettes, would get out with a bag of grapes, perhaps some almonds and a yogurt. I, on the other hand, staggered out with at least three bags containing everything but dish soap.