The Yarn Whisperer

by Clara Parkes

  FOR CLARE

  Published in 2013 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang

  An imprint of ABRAMS

  Text copyright © 2013 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.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978-1-61769-002-0

  Editor: Melanie Falick

  Designer: Mary Jane Callister

  Production Manager: Tina Cameron

  The text of this book was composed in Sentinel and Bryant.

  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

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  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  ON FAKERY—AND CONFIDENCE

  THE THING ABOUT BOBBLES

  A GOOD STEEK

  CHOREOGRAPHY OF STITCHES

  NOBODY’S FOOL

  HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

  PUBLIC/PRIVATE

  STITCH TRAFFIC

  OUTED

  KITCHENERING

  BRIOCHE

  CASTING ON

  LA BELLE FRANCE

  CHANNELING JUNE CLEAVER

  PABLO CASALS, GRANDPA, AND ME

  THE DROPPED STITCH

  BEATING THE BIAS

  THE GREAT WHODUNIT

  AUNT JUDY

  COMING UNDONE

  MAKING MARTHA’S SANDWICH

  HAPPILY EVER AFTER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PREFACE

  BEING CALLED A “knitting rock star” is like being voted the best Pakistani restaurant by the Bangor Daily News. It’s an honor, but not the kind that’ll get you a last-minute table at Le Bernardin or an order of chivalry from the Queen. No doorman has ever pulled aside the velvet cord for a famous knitter. And yet after more than a decade of hard work and persistent diligence, I find myself being labeled as such. I’ve been lucky.

  And what does a knitting rock star look like, you ask? For starters, I intentionally reside in a town of 910, my bedtime rarely inches past 10 p.m., and my version of trashing a hotel room involves twice stealing the salt and pepper shakers from my room service tray—though, in my defense, I did give a generous tip.

  I can swear like a sailor, but I’m a fiercely loyal friend and will do almost anything to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. I haven’t had a “real” day job in twelve years. I miss direct deposit and paid time off, and—oh my—how I long for that posh health insurance policy.

  Since turning my life over to yarn, I’ve lived easily a dozen lives. It’s been at times thrilling, scary, and devastating. The road has had some stunning vistas, a few steep inclines, and its share of rim-bending potholes. My inner airbags have deployed more than once. But the path has always pulled me forward. I’m fortunate, and I’m grateful.

  At the bottom of it all is one simple fact: I love yarn. Ever since I can remember, yarn has enchanted me. When I first asked my grandma—my mother’s mother, who has figured prominently in my knitting life—to teach me how to knit, it wasn’t to make anything in particular; I wanted to know how you made yarn work. I knew it had energy, that I could perform a series of actions with my hands that would bring it to life. To me, seeing those skeins of yarn was like finding a book written in a foreign language; I wanted to be able to read it.

  Some need to knit to be happy. They churn through yard after yard of fabric, like lawn mowers, processing thoughts and worries as they go. Or they produce garment upon garment, careful, thorough masterpieces. I’m more sporadic in my progress, more interested in the journey than the destination. But I do need yarn. For me it represents the purest essence of what is good about knitting: possibility, an open road, limitless potential. Like the soil we work and the food we eat, yarn gives life.

  Years ago, I was living in San Francisco and editing a technology magazine, the contents of which I didn’t really understand. I’d stumbled back into knitting after years of being away, and it was a welcome source of oxygen for my increasingly stifled mind. I discovered a yarn store not too far from my office; it was my lunchtime refuge.

  My stash grew wildly by the week—yarn, needles, tools, patterns, and books. Many, many books. Most were how-to books and pattern collections. I remember one in particular called Knitting in America. It had patterns, but they were all far too ornate and sophisticated for my skills. What I loved about this book was that it featured people from around the country who had figured out how to do what they love. They made their living in yarn, in raising animals, in dyeing, in designing … the paths were different, but the destination was the same. I felt a kinship, as if I’d finally found my people.

  Fast-forward a few years. I’d moved to Maine and was working as a freelancer, still in technology. My coworker and I were conjuring an editorial start-up of our own. It was going to be all about people who’d found their way, who were living with their grain instead of against it. I would be the writer.

  My colleague fed me names and stories he thought suitable for the project. A man who’d left his family behind to sail around the world for a year. Another man who’d made a fortune in investments. A third man who raced cars.

  I opened up my trusty copy of Knitting in America and found my own stories. I picked Margrit Lohrer and Albrecht Pichler, the founders of Morehouse Merino, successful urban dwellers who had managed to create a meaningful parallel life in the country just north of New York City. I wrote their story, borrowing so heavily from Knitting in America that it teetered on the edge of plagiarism. The act of telling a story that resonated with me—the physical process of running those words through my mind and out my fingers onto a keyboard, screen, and eventually paper—energized me. It was so easy and fluent, as if I were finally speaking my native tongue after years of speaking someone else’s. I was home.

  When I shared the story with my colleague, he replied, “I get that you like the story, but really. Sheep?”

  That was all I needed to hear. I politely backed out of the project, and, just four months later, sent out the first issue of Knitter’s Review. Every week, I’d publish thoughtful, in-depth reviews of yarns, tools, books, and events that shaped the knitting experience. That was September 2000. It’s safe to say that hundreds of yarns have flowed through my fingers since then; I’ve met thousands of people, written millions of words.

  Stories are like buildings. You see them from the outside, you see their structure and potential, you see light in the windows and want to get inside. The writer’s job is to find the right door. Once you do, the rest of the journey often comes easily. I’d found that door; my adventure was a gift. Today I open the pages of Knitting in America and realize that, quite by chance, many of its characters have since become personal friends. The leap from icon to friend is utterly surreal.

  I remember meeting Meg Swansen in 1995, at my first Stitches West event. Already on yarn overload, I rounded a corner and came to a booth filled with books. A beautiful woman stood at the table. She turned to me and smiled that twinkly, electric smile. Time stopped as my mind connected the dots and I realized Meg Swansen was standing before me—the famous teacher, designer, author, and daughter of Elizabeth Zimmermann. My heart leapt and my mouth fell open, but no words came out. Instead, I walked away as quickly as I could. Twelve years later, we
were sitting together under a plum tree in Oregon after the first Sock Summit, knitting and talking. When I stripped aside all the baggage we tend to add to famous people, I was amazed to discover that I really liked Meg as a person—her wisdom, humor, vulnerability, all of it.

  That’s been the most amazing part about this journey—the people. My quest to find good yarns and tell their stories has brought me face-to-face with an astonishing assortment of people I would never have met otherwise: Melinda Kjarum, who raises Icelandic sheep in Minnesota (when her oldest ram, Ivan, was still alive, she would rub his arthritic joints with pennyroyal oil each evening). Eugene Wyatt, a Merino sheep farmer who plays trombone to scare away the coyotes and frequently quotes Proust in his blog. Melanie Falick, the author of Knitting in America, who happened to edit the very same book you now hold in your hands. My circle is complete.

  The knitting world has changed dramatically since I first entered it. The doors to the establishment have blown wide open. Each person has vastly more opportunity to carve out a niche for him- or herself. We have greater transparency in terms of what we’re using and where it came from. And we have greater choices than ever before.

  Buying yarn is easy. A few clicks, and we can see what other people thought of it, what they knit with it, how they liked it, and how much of it they still have left in their stash. We can find dozens, if not hundreds, of suitable patterns—and we can see what other yarns people used for those patterns, what they thought of them, how they worked out.

  Filter the chatter, block out the surrounding landscape, and you’re left with one thing: yarn. Therein lies the real adventure, and the key to my own heart. A good yarn is better than any table at Le Bernardin.

  In Victorian times, people often spoke through flowers. They called it floriography. A single acacia signified secret love, an oxeye daisy called for patience, and the pear blossom spoke of lasting friendship. But, as in Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries, some were harbingers of danger, dishonesty, even death. Women “corresponded” through flowers, able to communicate far deeper meaning through them than they could put into words.

  What if it turns out we do the same thing with yarn, creating swatches and garments that, when deciphered, tell stories of their own? Stockinette, ribbing, cables, even the humble yarn over can instantly evoke places, times, people, conversations—all those poignant moments we’ve tucked away in our memory banks. Over time, those stitches form a map of our lives.

  This book is a collection of my own musings on stitches—why we work them, what they do to fabric, and how they have contributed to the fabric of my own life. For life really is a stitch. It has a beginning, a midpoint, and an end. It serves a purpose, and if we’re lucky, it creates something beautiful and enduring.

  ON FAKERY—AND CONFIDENCE

  WHEN I GRADUATED from college, I immediately got a job as a customer service representative for Macy’s at the Bayfair Mall in San Leandro, California. Four years at an institution of higher learning, fluency in French, and the ability to intelligently analyze works of art were worth, as it turned out, exactly twenty cents. They offered me $6.10 per hour, but then raised it to $6.30, citing my degree as the reason.

  During my two-day training, I learned how to do everything my job didn’t entail, things like operating a register, cashing out, issuing a credit, and weighing myself on the scale in the women’s restroom. Then my manager took me aside and reassured me that customer service was better than the other departments. This was the career track. I was behind the counter. Work hard and you could get ahead, she said. Look at her, she’d been working that very same desk since it opened in 1957.

  My department was at the end of a hallway with a dropped ceiling, fluorescent lighting, and linoleum floors that gave a distinctly Soviet-era sense of doom. I met customers at a Formica counter in the middle of which sat a button. Press it, and an old-fashioned-doorbell ding-dong could be heard in back. People loved that button. One woman came in for battle about a grease-caked pressure cooker that she wanted to return although it was years old and she had no receipt. She plunked her toddler on the counter, and he pressed the button incessantly.

  “Can I help you?” Ding-dong, ding-dong.

  “Yeah, this thing doesn’t work (ding-dong) and they won’t (ding-dong) give me another one.” Ding-dong.

  Behind the counter, a tall divider concealed a windowless back office with several empty desks and squeaky chairs, gray metal file cabinets, and a carpet that was once tan. This was my safe haven.

  I had no idea what I was doing. Not a clue. I was the destination for people who needed authoritative answers. I couldn’t tell them the store hours without looking them up. Housewares? I think it’s on this floor. No, wait, maybe on the first floor. I’m sorry, hold on a second, let me look that up.

  The phone was always ringing. “I just bought a set of sheets and washed them, but now I’ve changed my mind; can I still bring them back?” How should I know? At first I took messages, trying to research the answer and call people back. But the calls didn’t stop coming. I put people on hold until they hung up. The messages piled up, and eventually I started stuffing them into my purse and throwing them away when I got home. I felt like someone had put me at the helm of a nuclear submarine. No matter what button I pushed, something was going to blow up.

  On Fridays, it was my job to hand out the paychecks to my fellow employees. They stood, fingers tapping, while I leaned into the special paycheck cabinet under the counter to find their envelopes. The men seemed especially eager to help me navigate the alphabet. They’d lean over the counter and peer into the box with me. “That’s F … no wait, you’re on E, one more …” It took me exactly two weeks to realize they were just trying to get a better look down my shirt.

  The store was always pushing credit, offering the usual “10 percent off today if you open an account with us” deal. Employees received a scratch-off game card every time someone opened an account successfully. Even I won $200, which I promptly took to the jewelry department and spent, using my employee discount, on a Movado watch.

  But when someone’s credit was declined—and this happened frequently—that unfortunate person was sent to me to hear the bad news. They already knew what was coming, but still they came. I could recognize the credit application as it marched toward me, clenched in someone’s fist. They had no idea what could be wrong. Everything was fine. Their credit was perfect. They needed that leather sofa. “That’s horrible,” I’d say, feigning astonishment and indignation on their behalf. I played good cop to the credit department’s bad cop. “I’m going to call those people right now and find out what’s wrong.”

  Then I’d take the smudged, crumpled application, pick up my phone, and call the credit folks—who would proceed to tell me the real story. This guy already had three outstanding accounts with the company, all of which were in collections. He lied about his employer. He was nine months in arrears on his child support. There was a warrant out for his arrest, and I should seek shelter and call the police immediately.

  My job was to listen to this information without changing my facial expression. Then I had to translate it to the person standing in front of me in such a way that he would nod and walk away instead of yelling, pleading, sobbing, or becoming physically violent. I don’t have an ounce of joyful prison guard in me. I tend to voluntarily take on other people’s pain and embarrassment. I felt guilty and small and horrible being the one to convey bad news to people who, more often than not, already knew it was coming. There I was, fresh from college with good credit and a job. Who was I to tell this guy he didn’t deserve a new dining-room set?

  But I stumbled upon a strange and liberating universal truth: Faking confidence works. The people who came to me with their dented pressure cookers and falsified credit applications? More often than not, they weren’t prepared to bare their souls and walk with me, hand in hand, in pursuit of a resolution that was both just and true. No, they simply needed an answer, a d
efinitive line in the sand, a boundary. Even if the answer was “I don’t know,” it needed to be presented by someone who exuded unshakable confidence. When it was, they nodded and went away. Just like that.

  This was a revelation to me, but also a challenge. I wasn’t raised to exude confidence. I was raised to agree, to support, and to stand out as little as possible. You may know my mother from such hits as, “What should I order?” and “Am I cold? Do I need a sweater?” Meanwhile, my father was happily tucked in the Rochester Philharmonic as second-chair oboe for more than thirty years, preferring to be eaten alive by wolves than to be singled out for a standing ovation.

  Nobody taught me how to assume a position of power or authority. I can tell you how to be quietly capable, how to harbor a grudge, or how to suffer with such melodramatic martyrdom that even Meryl Streep would take notes. But stand tall and say, “Sir, you’re going to have to leave or I will have security escort you out of here”—that was nowhere in my cellular makeup.

  You know how it’s easier to clean someone else’s house than your own? Well, the same is true for emotional houses. I realized I was in a living laboratory in which nobody really knew me at all, so I could experiment at being someone else—someone who had no qualms about setting boundaries and telling people what to do. I wasn’t going to stay long, so what the heck? I began to dabble in being that woman in the tidy office attire, the one whose name you never bother to remember, whose leather pumps go clickety-clack as she marches efficiently to and fro saying “yes” and “no.” The more I dabbled in this alternate über-confident persona, the more smoothly everything began to go. It wasn’t that I was blatantly lying to people, I was just behaving as if I knew everything.

  My time at Macy’s was brief. By fall I’d turned in my badge and was on my way to France for a teaching fellowship. Fake Clara was lost in translation, and I spent the next year feeling like a dreadful impostor. But I still have the Movado watch, and I still marvel at the power of fakery.