Giovannina

The series of lace designs I've been naming after beloved women in my family (it began with Sahar and continued with Pauline) has a new addition: Giovannina.

That was my maternal grandmother's given name, as recorded (to our collective surprise) on her birth and baptismal certificates. She never used it, and neither (so far as any of us recall) did her mother. She was called Jennie, and called herself Jennie, and signed my birthday checks (thank you, Grandma) Jennie.

She was born in the early 1930s in Detroit, Michigan, to parents who had immigrated from adjacent Sicilian towns but married (in a match arranged by their families) in the United States. On the day of their wedding my great-grandmother was a few days shy of 16.

Giovannina was the third of four children and the first of two daughters. She fell in love with a nice Sicilian boy from New York City and went on to have five children of her own - four daughters and a son.

The priceless image below was taken before my arrival in the 1970s, but it's a fair representation of how I remember her.



The Christmas tree was in the front room of the house in St. Clair Shores, a suburb of Detroit. In the local patois this space was invariably referred to as the "frontroom"–one word. It was reserved for state occasions: Christmas morning, wedding photos, visits from clergy, official visits from my mother's gentlemen callers–including, eventually, my father.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of this room. She decorated it herself, and it was filled with her favorite things. When she wanted new furniture for it, she did the unspeakable for a good Italian wife in that time and place–she went out and got a job to pay for it.

The front room was a textbook example of what I affectionately call Dago Baroque. Imagine the crossing of St. Peter's in Rome, but with top-of-the-line seven-layer curtains from J.C. Penney and pale yellow deep-pile shag that never, ever has vacuum marks in it.

The gigantic furniture, including the console record player, was French Provincial upholstered in white damask under clear plastic. The wallpaper was gold foil with green flocking. You could see yourself in it. It remained absolutely pristine for decades until the never-to-be-forgotten morning when one of my cousins accidentally smacked it with a wet lollipop. Years later, Grandma still could not refer to this incident without turning red.

Bric-à-brac of the most elevated variety covered every horizontal surface. The customary painted miniature pony cart, of course; and a cabinet stuffed with a prized collection of porcelain angels and bells.

I now own two of the other major pieces: an 18-inch high Infant of Prague with a metal crown and a full seasonal wardrobe; and a hefty cut-glass candy dish on a marble base guarded by a pair of gilt cherubs. There was one other candy dish - a white marble urn with birds perched on the rim. The former held ribbon candy, the latter green and pink pillow mints. The stuff was so vile that sneaking it when the grown-ups weren't looking wasn't even worth the risk. When my grandmother died in the late 1990s, the candy in the dishes is believed to have been the same that was already installed when my mother was a bride in the late 1960s.

There were also, on pedestals, a pair of plaster statuettes of Italian peasants lugging huge baskets of velveteen grapes. My father was parked in an adjacent armchair chair near these on his formal visit, while my mother stirred pasta in the kitchen and presumably begged her parents to go easy on this one. After a while the eligible bachelor got bored and started shooting spitwads into one of the baskets. My mother caught him and happily was able to clear away the evidence before my grandmother could get wise and throw him into the street.

I loved my grandmother, and as a child I loved this room because it was so beautiful and brilliant and untouchable. I used to stand by the door and just stare across the threshold. On occasion, because I was such an odious little goody-goody, I was allowed to sit quietly on the sofa and just look at things. Just look, not touch. If I so much as extended a tentative finger toward the incredible cover of the Bible on the coffee table (with an inset reproduction of Leonardo's Madonna and Child with Saint Anne) she would shout from the laundry room in the basement, "I told you, don't touch!"*

I had an epiphany in that room. Not a pleasant one, either. My mother and I drove in for a visit. I was in my mid-twenties, and we were there specially to see my grandfather, who was ill with the condition that would eventually kill him. He had been moved from the bedroom to a hospital bed in the family room (a later addition, off the kitchen). My grandmother, unable to face her wedding bed without her groom...had taken to sleeping on the Sacred White Couch in the front room. While we were there, she ceded that space to me. The plastic furniture covers were gone. There were clothes thrown in a corner near the glass cabinet, and bottles of pills scattered on the coffee table by the candy dish.

I was shocked. It was the first time that I realized that certain people and things you thought would always be there, unchanging–Grandpa, Grandma, Grandma's sitting room–are not as eternal as you would wish. It was the moment I first understood, viscerally, that nothing is forever.

I can't claim that I consciously intended it, but when I started working with the lovely Filigran (100% merino superwash) that Skacel sent to me with a request for a lace design, these memories of my grandmother manifested in the square motif that became the main element in the stole. It's ornate, but orderly.



I hope she would have liked it, though she was not one for wearing shawls. (She did like drapey flowy gowns, though, and bought one or two each year for my grandfather's annual convention in Las Vegas.)



The construction's a bit unusual, by the way. I took inspiration from the eminently sensible technique of the Orenberg lace knitters–who work their shawls in one piece, center and edging simultaneously. The method for turning the corners is different, but the end is the same: when the shawl is finished, it's finished. You have a center completely surrounded by a lacy edge, with nothing else to do but wear it.



Skacel wholesales their pattern collection to yarn retailers everywhere, so if you'd like a copy, contact your LYS. If you run (or know of) a shop that's got Giovannina in stock, please feel to speak up in the comments. If you'd like to ask your shop to place an order, the pattern number is 21100405.



*My mother has inherited this supernatural ability to see through solid surfaces, as well as the skill to effortlessly stun small children with it.

If I Were a Drag Queen I'd Want My Name to Be Carte Blanche

One of the things I very much enjoy about writing a column for Knitty is that the lady in charge over there usually lets me muck about unsupervised. I admit that I've had an issue with authority figures at least since my first report card came home with the notation, "An intelligent child, but often needs reminding that he is not the person in charge."

In my own defense, I well remember the person in charge of that kindergarten; and she needed reminding of a few things, such as the indignity of engaging in semantics with a five-year-old. We had quite the little debate about my decision to stick a black-and-white photograph of a banana on the collage of Things That Are Yellow. I maintained that bananas are yellow, even if this picture of them hadn't been printed in color. She ripped the bananas off the poster and put me in the corner.

I lost that battle, but carried the day when it came time to name the towering, green papier-mache brontosaurus we'd all built as a group art project. My suggestion, "Raquel Welch," won by a landslide in spite of her attempts to bully and intimidate the electorate. She preferred "Greenie," the (if you ask me) pedestrian and predictible brainstorm of Jennifer K., one of the four Jennifers in our class of 25. Jennifer K. was a perfect little angel who never, ever asked the tough questions like, "If you're tired, why do we have to take a nap?"

Of course, to her credit, she tallied the votes fairly. Maybe she knew if there were so much as a whisper of fraud I'd have gone to the principal and demanded a recount.

Wait. What the hell was I writing about?

Knitty. Right.

The Spring + Summer issue is up, and I'm in it. And I forgot, when the last issue hit, to publicly thank Amy Singer for not even batting an eyelash when I referred to a famous, fictitious knitter as a "stone-cold pain in the ass." There are not a whole lot of fiber arts publications that will let you call somebody a pain in the ass, even though–this is strictly between us–the world of fiber arts is replete with persons (self included) who are a pain in the ass.

This issue's pattern first appeared in 1843, but I'll be a monkey's muffatee if the thing doesn't look like it was designed last Tuesday.



It's a neckerchief knit on the bias (the drape is to die) that can easily–and I mean easily–be worked as a full-size shawl in whatever weight yarn you fancy. In fact, the original author's directions for a shawl variation are right there, down at the bottom, in case you just aren't a neckerchief sort of person.

Upcoming Events

I'm going to be back in Boston at the Common Cod Fiber Guild on May 13, 2011. I was the speaker at the Guild's first meeting, and take some pride in the fact that there was ever a second meeting.

Then I'm jumping over to Oklahoma for the Sealed with a Kiss Knit Out 2011, part of a merry trio that also includes Fiona Ellis and Jane Thornley.

June 24-26, I'll once again be at the Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Festival in Grayslake, Illinois. I don't know the full teaching line-up (it'll be posted soon, I hear), but I know they're bringing in some big names again this year.

And in July, I'll be over in London at Knit Nation, the schedule for which is now up. It bodes well that I've just received my Tier 5 Creative Worker Sponsorship Certificate, which makes it legal for me to teach in the UK. Her Majesty's Goverment was most obliging.

That's not the whole summer calendar, but that's what I can tell you about as of now. Stay tuned.

Cookies

If this post smells of butter and drool it's because I've spent about half the day baking cookies. The kitchen looks like Open House at the Keebler Factory, including the flour-covered resident elf who is typing this from a perch by the cooling racks.

I hope you can't get fat from inhaling near a pile of fresh cookies. I just got back into these jeans.

Oh, such a display. We have pinwheels, we have brownies, we have chocolate chips–courtesy (respectively) of Maida Heatter, Irma Rombauer, and Ruth Wakefield.

Piled highest, at the back, are the other cookies. The special cookies. You won't find the recipe for them in any published book; and don't bother asking for it, because after I told you I'd have to kill you. It's a family secret–as deep and dark as the one that keeps the Kardashians on the air, except ours goes better with coffee.

These are Grandma's Jennie's cookies.

Grandma Jennie, rest her soul, was my mother's mother.



She's on the right, in the bow. That's my mother on the left, and the howling lump in the center is me–a week old. (I was either hungry, or commenting on the prevalence of drip-dry polyester fabrics in early 70s fashion.)

We assume Grandma learned how to make the cookies from her mother. We don't know for sure. We never thought to ask. It's a bizarre recipe. I've got about 32 linear feet of books on cookery ranging from 1747 to the present, and there's nothing in any of them that comes even close. It starts out a little bit like shortcake, only without sugar; and then–

No, wait. Can't tell you. Would have to kill you.

These cookies were the first thing I ever baked. I was about ten or eleven, and my younger sister was my accomplice. Every pass of the rolling pin was an act of transgression. Mom wasn't home, we didn't ask permission to use the stove, and these were Christmas cookies. We made unsupervised, unauthorized Christmas cookies in May.

I know that seems piffling at a time when the second graders on "Gossip Girl" get their kicks by snorting cocaine and crushed Flintstone vitamins during little bitty orgies in the VIP room at American Girl Place. But back then, to us, it was thrilling.

My sister, once the sous chef, is now the master baker. She inherited Mom's gigantic yellow Tupperware bowl–you could take a bath in it–which holds the stupendous amount of dough produced by the full recipe. She has developed and perfected a system that allows her to keep one hand clean and dry while the other adds ingredients and kneads them in. And her cookies always have the proper amount of crunch on the outside, while the inside melts in your mouth.

We grew up rolling out the dough and cutting it into moons and hearts and trees, which is what Mom does. But we were surprised to learn during a visit to Grandma's that she didn't use cutters. She rolled the dough out into long ropes with her hands, then twisted sections of rope into curlicues, knots and braids.

Her hands flew. She twisted, we watched. My grandmother was a lovely woman; but she didn't like children mucking around in the kitchen. Baking cookies wasn't a game, it was work. Without interference she could produce six dozen in record time. If you were good, you might be allowed to help with the sugar sprinkles. If you got too enthusiastic and sprinkled the floor, you'd better run.



Susan and I still mostly roll and cut, but near the end of each batch we also make a few twists as a tribute. It's not a hospital wing or a fountain in Central Park, but there are worse ways to be remembered than through a cookie recipe. I think Grandma Jennie would have appreciated it. Especially with coffee.

Then Again, Let's Not

Confession time.

There are moments when I feel ungentlemanly for shooting peas at these old magazines. Part of it has to do with being a budding designer myself, and wondering which things I'm putting out there will some day make the Hit Parade of a "You Knit What?" as yet unborn.

The other part stems from an honest-to-goodness feeling of gratitude for publications like Workbasket. That plucky little thing toodled along for sixty years–a magnificent run for a periodical by anyone's standards–even though by the mid-1970s knitting and crochet were both on life support. Granted, Workbasket was heavy with flights of fancy that should have been grounded on the tarmac. Toward the end, fiber arts content was heavily supplemented with forays into tuna cookery and making your own beef jerky. But the editors kept putting it out there, month after month, long after more mainstream mags like Woman's Day and Family Circle had given up on any craft that required mastery of an actual skill.

On the other hand, just when I'm in danger of smudging the faded ink with tears of thankfulness, I turn the page and run into something like this.



In case they don't have doors where you come from, this is a doorknob cover. In case they don't have doorknob covers where you come from, you may be wondering why a doorknob needs a cover.

Me too.

I have encountered doorknob covers in real life–including several sisters, cousins and aunts of the Scary Clown variation shown below. They were to be found on various knobs around my paternal grandmother's house when I was a little boy, and I hated them.



When you are five years old, and small for your age at that, a doorknob cover is less a piece of handmade whimsy than a torture device. The doorknobs on the heavy old doors in grandma's house were either metal or china. They were slippery when nude. Tricked out in equally slippery acrylic, they became almost entirely impossible to turn, even with both hands.

And there was one on the bathroom door.

Place yourself, if you will, in the tiny shoes and underpants of a newly housebroken child who has had three glasses of Kool Aid and has just felt the alarming and unmistakeable call of nature. He heads for the commode, but finds the way barred by the immovable head of a smirking clown. He struggles, he bangs, he cries a little bit.

Finally, in desperation, he goes against everything Grandma and Sunday School have taught him rather than face the shame of admitting to the grown-ups that there's been an accident.

Grandma, if you're reading this, I used one of your good tablespoons to bury the doorknob cover over by where the plum tree used to be. I'm sorry. The tree is long gone; but since the clown face was made out of Red Heart, it's probably still there. At least you didn't have to mop the hallway.

Never Say Never

Knitting has taken me many places I never expected to go, but none more unexpected than a baseball field. Yup, I went to Stitch 'n' Pitch Chicago last night. I said I wouldn't and I truly believed I wouldn't. But at the last minute there was ticket, and the weather was good, and there was the prospect of An Evening with Knitters. So I went.

You remember Eleanor Roosevelt's line about how you should do something every day that scares you? The game was my Scary Thing for yesterday.

I know. Especially if you're American, you're thinking, scary? What the hell could be scary about something as squeaky-clean, family-oriented and apple pie-esque as a night at the ballpark?

Well, I'm a little gay man who was once a little gay kid. Here's a partial list of things I associate with ballparks based on my personal experiences:

• Being yelled at for not wanting to go to the ballpark.
• Being yelled at for wanting to bring a book to the ballpark.
• Being yelled at for not understanding the game. (I still don't.)
• Being yelled at for not having a great time at the ballpark.
  
• Being called a faggot.
• Being called a wimp.
• Being called a nerd.
• Being called a pansy.
  
• Having a beer thrown at me for inadvertently wearing the colors of the visiting team.
• Watching drunken men in the Fenway Park bleachers simulate anal sex with an inflatable doll in a Yankees jersey.

Some fun.

So I was nervous. Yeah, there would be 300 knitters, but there'd be thousands of non-knitters. And I've seen people I love get weird at sporting events. Belligerent. Especially when they felt I was letting down the team but not knowing what was going on (see "faggot, wimp, nerd, pansy," above).

I am happy to report that last night, I emerged unscathed and unmolested. I even, dare I say it, had fun, although at no point did I actually watch the game–which is probably one of the reasons I had fun. And you know what? The White Sox fans were pretty nice people, and so was the stadium crew.

I had my camera, so here's a little souvenir scrapbook. It was awesome, as always, to see familiar faces and meet stitchers I haven't met before. I even got a chance to talk to Gianofer Fields of Chicago Public Radio, who was there interviewing folks–she's the one in the headset, learning to cast on from Kathy of Arcadia Knitting.

Many thanks to the Chicago committee who put all this together, even though they also all run knitting shops and have way too much to do as it is.

PS. If you go see the White Sox, spend the extra money on the kosher hot dogs, it's worth it.
PPS. The red Stitch 'n' Pitch baseball caps are wicked cute. I will be wearing mine a lot.

Proud Son

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and all across the country mothers were getting things–flowers, cards, telephone calls–from their children. My own, dear mother deserves her own island in the Caribbean, a pony and a chocolate fountain; but since I didn't want to embarrass her with extravagance I just sent flowers.

She sent me something, too, and I want to share it with you.

First, a bit of background.


Mom and one-day-old Susan.
Susan just celebrated her own first Mother's Day.

My mother is a can-do sort of woman. If she wants to excel at something, she will. She did not, for example, learn to sew at her mother's knee. As a young wife, she decided sewing would be a useful skill. She got a sewing machine, took a class, and turned into the second coming of Betsy Ross. We reveled in an abundance of expertly hand-sewn clothes, gorgeous Halloween costumes, perfectly tailored school uniforms and matching family Christmas pajamas.

She also learned from a friend how to knit. Aside from an occasional afghan, however, this was a skill that lay dormant for years. The first time I ever saw her do it was Christmas 2005, when our incessant chatter about the joys of yarnplay persuaded her to join the fun. Her powers of recall were startling. We gave her a pair of needles and a gentle nudge, and soon she'd turned out several very nice scarves and a few patterned washcloths.

Then she decided it was time to try a shaped garment. She picked a doozy–Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket. In case you've been knitting in a cave, the Baby Surprise Jacket (which you can find in The Opinionated Knitter and Knitting Workshop) is a little cardigan sweater that's knit as one flat piece, folded up like origami and seamed at the shoulders. It's a classic pattern and a fun project, but not always an easy knit for a beginner.

My mother, however, does not care about easy. She wanted to knit the jacket. She got the yarn, the needles, the pattern and Meg Swansen's instructional DVD, and off she went. And look at this.



Not only did she finish, she worked in a bunch of Meg's fine details including paired increases and decreases, a collar, and a cast off that eliminates the little dog-ear at the very end.



I'm choking up just looking at that. How you've grown, mother darling. There's a Rogue Hoodie in your future. I just know it.

Bad Dream

At my age I really need to stop snacking on peanut M & Ms immediately before I go to sleep.

Lately I've been mostly successful at stemming the craving, but last night I fell down hard in that aisle at Walgreen's where the Easter candy is on sale. At bedtime it was nibble, nibble in between browsing Heirloom Knitting for a new Big Lace Project.

So I had a nightmare. It's one I have quite a bit, about once a month.

I was back at my first (and worst) job ever, stocking shelves at a forlorn supermarket in a depressing corner of upstate New York. I was paid minimum wage, minus the usual taxes plus weekly union dues that were equal to about 50% of my take-home pay.

The official job responsibilities were what you'd expect. I lugged boxes to and fro. I wrangled shopping carts that were determined to escape from the parking lot. I cleaned up spills, wielded a price gun with little skill and less enthusiasm, and suffered the insults of a supervisor five years my senior who had been rejected by Harvard (which he knew I was getting ready to attend) and was not happy with his lot in life.

He liked to give me the heaviest lifting to do, particularly as I was the youngest and smallest of the stock boys. Sisyphean tasks were his forte:

Move these thirty ten-pound boxes from this side of the stock room to that side. No, you can't use a cart. Carry them. Shoot, you just finished moving the whole stack? I just realized they shouldn't have been moved. Put them all back where they were. And do it faster this time. I'll be watching the clock.

Annoying, but honestly no worse than stocking shelves. And it was good for my biceps.

The night supervisor, however, was a genuine sadist. He was a guy from my high school who'd been on two dates with one of my best friends, an enormously pretty girl named Candace. She'd apparently spent most of those two dates talking about what a sweetheart I was. Then she told him to get lost. He was therefore not inclined to look upon me kindly.

After his unfortunate affaire de coeur with the lovely Candace, alarming things began to happen on the shop floor. I'd be pushing a cart through the stock room and suddenly a full, heavy box of canned food would land with an explosive CRASH on the floor next to me. I'd look up, and he'd wave from the catwalk. "Oops!" he'd shout, grinning impishly. "Must've lost my grip!"

Six-foot stacks of boxes would topple as I passed. Full pallets would zoom down the aisle and knock me flat. I'd climb a ladder to reach a high shelf and find myself heading for the floor. "Wow," he'd say, smiling down at me, "You gotta be more careful about where you set up, slick."

I learned very early in childhood that it was no good appealing to authority about stuff like this. Rumors aside, I don't know what it's like to grow up as a little girl. But when you're a little boy, you discover fast that asking for help with bullies does no good. You get one of two stock responses:

1. You better learn to fight back.
2. If you're gonna act like a sissy, you deserve what you get.

Neither solves the problem, but such is the world's disgust with a male child who doesn't tend to brutality.

So I said nothing, and kept my eyes open for runaway cans.

And then–and here is the scene that replays in my dreams–there was a late shift when the box crusher jammed. The box crusher was a big, green cage into which empty cardboard boxes were heaped. When the cage was full, the contents were pressed into a compact bale by the machinery, then tied with wires and ejected for disposal.

There was a huge sign on the side of this thing indicating that nobody under 18 was even supposed to touch it. I was 16, but when I asked questions about the sign the day supervisor told me to shut up and do what I was told. I became fairly proficient with loading, crushing, and bailing. It wasn't especially scary or difficult. If I pretended my boss was inside, it was fun.

But the night it jammed, the late shift supervisor ordered me to crawl inside and fix it. I was, he pointed out, the only guy in the building small enough to fit through the opening. And once I'd cleared the jam, I'd have almost ten seconds for him to pull me out before I'd wind up as Flat Stanley.

I told him to forget it. He persisted. He called over the other members of the night crew, none of whom were terribly fond of me, and they insisted I was being a faggot and a sissy.

"Get the fuck in there," said the supervisor, "or I'll fire your faggot ass on the spot."

I'm sitting here typing this, so I don't need to tell you I ultimately did not wind up in the crusher. But it took everything I had to stand my ground and say no. He told me I was fired, and I waited out the remaining hours of my shift in the parking lot. The next day, I swallowed my pride and appealed to the store manager, who was appalled by the whole thing and reprimanded the night supervisor, though he didn't actually fire him.

Of course, that just increased the rate of falling boxes, but I managed to survive the rest of the summer with only minor bruises and a whopping $250 in my bank account.

The nightmare is very weird in that I always get stuck in a sort of loop where my moment of indecision plays and replays. I stand there in my ugly apron as ten guys call me a stupid sissy faggot and try to get me to climb into that crusher. And in that moment, I honestly don't know what to do.