Have Yourself a Merry Little Krampus

It's Christmas Eve in Chicago. Though a bit more gift wrapping must be seen to, the approach to a quiet holiday is otherwise unobstructed.

I know not everyone reading this celebrates Christmas, but it's certainly part of my heritage. In the spirit of the season, I'd like to offer a warm cup of holiday knitting to one and all–regardless of whether or not you usually partake.

There are veritable snowdrifts of patterns for knitting up Santa Claus, snowmen, candy canes, reindeer (plain- and red-nosed), elves, nativity scenes, mice (stirring), bears (teddy), toy soldiers (because nothing says Peace on Earth like a trained killer with a rifle) and most the rest of the cast of sugarplums.

But I was shocked–shocked–when I consulted the Ravelry pattern database and found not a single representation of the character I (and many millions of others) consider essential to a well-balanced festive season: Krampus.

Do you know Krampus? If not, a few words of introduction.

He is, mainly in Alpine countries, the friend and companion of dear Saint Nicholas. His useful function is to deal with the children whose behavior in the year past has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

This is, I believe, a most logical and reasonable division of labor. In America, we not only expect Santa Claus to reward the good children by scattering presents around; we also require–in the course of the same evening–that he stick lumps of coal into the stockings of the naughty. Have you ever held a lump of coal? I have. It's heavy, it's dusty, and it leaves black smudges all over everything.

Is it fair, I ask you, to make a man wearing white fur cuffs distribute tons of coal and tons of gifts from a miniature sleigh with less horsepower than a riding lawn mower? I think not.

Countries which employ Krampus do things far better.

Saint Nicholas visits only the nice children, hands around the goodies, and calls it a night. Krampus, meanwhile, drops in on the bad children–the ones who didn't finish their vegetables, and stuck out their tongues at Grandma, and boosted the ratings for Glee while Community was put on hiatus. He smacks them soundly with a bundle of birch twigs; licks them with his long, slimy tongue; carries them away screaming in the basket on his back. When he's good and ready, he tears them limb from limb and then eats them.

Note that coal doesn't even enter the picture. Krampus is very eco-friendly and discourages the consumption of fossil fuels.

That such a darling fellow should be absent from the knitting round-up appalls me. To redress the imbalance, I present the Little Knitted Krampus.



He is made from several colors of Skacel's excellent Fortissima Socka sock yarn, and the free pattern will appear in a few days.



My gift, gentle reader, to you–provided you've been a good child.



Otherwise, expect the Real Thing to tap on your door and spread you on toast like a chicken liver.

Merry Christmas from me, Dolores, Harry, and whole of the Sock Yarn Colony. We love you very much.

P.S. If you'd like to see more of Krampus, including absolutely adorable Krampuskarten from the 19th and 20th centuries that I used as visual references, visit this site. An animated treatment sure to gladden the hearts of your children (show it to them just before bedtime) is available on Youtube.

P.P.S. Anna Hrachovec of Mochimochiland, I wouldn't have had the chutzpah to tackle my first knitted toy design without your inspiration, encouragement, and the excellent treatment of the technical aspects in your books. Thank you!

Making Things

We have been making things.

Abigail and her mother have been making cookies. Those cookies.



I have already had it up to my proto-Gandalfian eyebrows with holiday baking so I kept out of the kitchen. Instead, I sat down with Abigail on Christmas Eve and (courtesy of a sweet little notion from Girl on the Rocks) did my best to further instill the home truth that Making Things with Yarn = Fun.



(You get to choose your own yarn. We chose Cascade 220 Sport.)

On Christmas morning, I presented Abigail with another yarn-based thing I had just finished making.





I've named the purse* Floradora. This is the beta, child-sized version. A grown-up version, larger and considerably refined, will hit the shops in January to herald the launch of a new class, "Cavalcade of Colorwork," débuting at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in February.

Now that I have made this blog post, I am going to make a trip to the cookie jar. (I said I was fed up with holiday baking, not holiday eating.)

*I forgot to mention it's in Cascade 220. I guess we're having a Cascade Christmas.

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.

Peek on Earth

Judging from the pile of comments, the little movie in the last post touched a chord in quite a few tender hearts. Mind you, whether that chord was major or minor depended on how the heart was feeling about this year's roster of holiday knitting.

I'm taking my own on the road (to sweet Loop in Philadelphia for classes on lace and photography, information here) tomorrow, but before I head for the airport I'd like to let you know that this year's edition of the annual Panopticon Shop Holiday Knitting Ornament, "No Peeking," is ready and waiting in the shop. I've put it on cards as well. I do hope you will like it.



Peeking at your presents is a time-honored holiday tradition. Our family had another, related tradition: a merry reminder from my mother that any child caught or even suspected of hunting around for hidden goodies would get to watch in silent horror as every last box and bag went back to Santa's Workshop. I was 23 years old before I could open a closet door between Thanksgiving and Christmas without having an anxiety attack.

An Animated Discussion

Halloween 2010 is but a memory–a hazy memory for some in this household. Between us and the gift-oriented holidays lies only the blip of Thanksgiving. Now dawns the sobering realization that we may already be too far behind to catch up.

I was talking about this with my therapist just last week. She suggested that I deal with my holiday angst in a constructive fashion by putting my heated inner dialogue down on paper so that I could properly analyze it. But I was out of paper, so instead I made an animated cartoon starring Albert Einstein and the Queen of England.

That will strike you as an odd coupling until I explain that whenever I experience a heated inner dialogue, that's who the voices in my head sound like. (Although sometimes instead of Einstein I hear Fanny Brice; but the animation Web site doesn't offer a Fanny Brice avatar.)

The result is that I still don't have my holiday knitting under control and I have to find a new therapist.

Anyway, here's the stupid cartoon.

Feelin' Epiphanic

Here we are, then: Epiphany. The finish line. I cleared the triple hurdle of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve with no more than a bruised knee and periodic outbreaks of flop sweat.



And how, my dears, are you?

Are you perhaps thinking, as I do, that it might be nice if we spread the winter holidays out just a shade more? Frontloading all the Big Stuff into forty days is an appalling strain on the nerves, not to mention the finances.

It also leaves one staring forlornly across the frozen tundra without the comforting beacon of even one really good all-inclusive reason to get down and boogie. Valentine’s Day is for couples. St Patrick’s Day is for the Irish. Easter is too damned early in the morning.

And when I speak of the frozen tundra, remember that I live in Chicago, where global warming is something that only happens to other people. Come March, when we could really use it, the holiday glow has long since fizzled to a heap of dead ashes. So we huddle indoors, eating and drinking too much–kinda like Christmas, except that without decorations and presents and Very Special Episodes of “Gossip Girl” it’s mostly just depressing.

I haven’t felt my toes since late November. And according to the scum-sucking hag weather lady* our present blast of cold air is about to be supplemented by an additional blast** plus a blizzard.

At a time like this, knitting ceases to be a fiber art. It becomes a martial art. Me and my yarn versus frostbite and cabin fever. And if Old Man Winter throws down with me, he’s going to get a US 7 right in the groin shins.

He'd better steer clear of my posse, too. Especially this one.


"You know what would be great in these?
A slug of bourbon."

In case you don't recognize her, that is my Exceptional Niece Abigail,™ just a shade over two-and-half years old and already a dab hand at mixing our family's traditional butter cookies.

I arrived at Abigail's house in a gray mood, disinclined to rock around the Christmas tree. She was such a tonic to my nerves that a few days later, when Santa landed on the hearth rug, I forgot to kick him in the nuts shins.

One highlight of my stay was a guided tour of her stuffed animal collection. What began in 2007 with a cow and a bunny is now the largest private zoo in the Western hemisphere. It rivals, both in numbers and biodiversity, the population of the Serengeti Plain.

But the animals are as nothing when compared to the babies. Abigail has in her care enough infants to make Mrs. Duggar pay a call on Planned Parenthood. They're quite literally everywhere. On the couch, the windowsill, the stairs. Under the kitchen table. In the bathroom. They drip from the eaves. They clog the gutters.


"Let's play Count the Handknits."

To keep track of so many, Abigail has had to eschew traditional names like Wilma and Cherise in favor of more starkly descriptive labels like Naked Baby. This is Naked Baby.


"Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form."

Naked Baby arrived wearing clothes, but they were removed within minutes and haven't been seen since. Her only concession to modesty is this burping cloth sarong, which I think makes her look like a mendicant Buddhist nun.

This is Hair Baby, so called in recognition of her crop of brushable, tuggable hair.


"Mama says I'm the pretty one."

I also met, but neglected to photograph:

• Purple Baby, whose sewn-on purple pajamas saved her from being christened Naked Baby II.
  
  
• Pink Baby. As Purple Baby, but in pink.
  
  
• Band-Aid Baby, who has an oval logo on her knee that looks like a Band-Aid. (Abigail is fond of Band-Aids and often applies them decoratively, like temporary tattoos.)
  
  
• New Baby. No longer, strictly speaking, new; but retains the title out of courtesy.
  
  
• Mexico Baby, who short-circuited after falling down the stairs and now speaks only Spanish.
  
  
• Pajama Baby, who came in a car seat. We expected she would be christened Car Seat Baby, but Abigail likes to throw a curve ball now and then.
  

Christmas Knitting

Christmas knitting was very subdued this year. No great plans, no big surprises.

Last year, I knit my first pair of mittens as a gift for Abigail. Through the entire Maine winter they kept her hands warm and dry, and they wore like iron; but by first snow this year, she'd outgrown them. So I presented a new pair.



These are improvised along Norwegian lines, by way of Elizabeth Zimmermann in Knitting Around. The orange blossoms are out of left field. I think Dolores slipped something into my Virgin Egg Nog.



Not fancy, but she seemed taken with them and they've already seen action.


"I call them Romulus and Remus."

There was also a sweater, of course. Here's a peek, while I await the full photographs of her in it. If it looks familiar, it's because you've seen it here once before.


"Get off my front porch before I call the cops."

I made some small tweaks to Abby's version, because apparently I can't even knit my own patterns as written.

I've been thinking about and working on socks, too; but more about that after I've polished off the last box of chocolate. (If you eat Christmas candy after Epiphany, the calories count.)

*I know. The weather lady is just doing her job. But I hate the way she smiles when she says, “Stay inside or die.”

** Thanks again, Canada.

Out of the Sketchbook

I'd like to have done a more finished version of this, but–well, read the caption and draw your own conclusions.

Out of the Sketchbook

Over the Water

I'll be popping across the pond in just two short weeks. On November 10 at 6* in the evening, I'll be at I Knit in London for an informal but lively evening of knitting, talking and reading from works old...and new.

In the Shop

The annual knitting ornament is newly available for your Christmas tree, Festivus pole, Hanukkah bush, Kwanzaa privet hedge, Solstice rubber plant, or Secular Humanist creeping charlie.

I enjoyed making it for you. I hope you will like it.



* Whoops. I mistakenly wrote 7 pm on first writing.

Abigail and the Mittens

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that though Christmas 2008 is now but a fading memory and a stack of credit card bills, you might still like to see my Christmas knitting.



Child's mittens, two, of the "warm woolen" variety. Cheaper than bright copper kettles or cream-colored ponies, and easier to wrap than schnitzel with noodles. Also, you can start a pair of these on the 16th of December and not sweat the finish line. I was done by the 20th.

The free pattern they're based on is here. I found it through Ravelry's search feature in about four seconds. I decided to work them using Jo Sharp DK left over from Susan's ruana, in a simple color pattern I charted myself. The extra-long cuffs are a handsome feature–no snow is going to get past them, and it snows a great deal in northern New England.

I didn't have Abigail's hand measurements. I couldn't ask for them without spoiling the surprise. I realized I'd have to trust the pattern, and sneak in a fitting after I got to Maine.

Flash forward to a few days before Christmas. With both parents safely at work, my mother and I sat Abigail down to try on her gift. They fit. Delight all around. Abigail waved her warm, woolen hands cheerfully in the air and said a new word: mittens.

I was still working the two-color I-cord on the sly, and whenever Abigail caught me in flagrante me she'd say "Unka Fwank. Knit. Yarn. Mittens!" Or she'd walk into the upstairs bathroom, where we'd done the washing and blocking and trying-on, and say, "Mittens!" Or she'd see somebody on television wearing mittens and say, "Mittens. Knit. Unka Fwank!"

On Christmas Eve, I wrapped up the box in snowman paper. "Unka Fwank, Mittens!" said Abigail. "Present!"

"Listen, honeybunch," I whispered. "Let's try to keep that just between us for another twenty-fours, shall we?"

"Present!" screamed Abigail.

Abigail was fascinated by the presents. They were probably what she remembered most about last year, her first Christmas, when she'd just learned to get around the living room by rolling over. The first place she rolled to was the Christmas tree, and the first thing she did was grab a package and start ripping.

This year, being 19 months old and ambulatory, she had been warned sternly to keep clear of the tree. The presents underneath, furthermore, were not to be touched. She'd often wander over to them and stare longingly, but if she extended so much as a finger a voice would bark, "Abigail! Don't touch the presents under the tree!"

And she'd dutifully back away, leaving the glittering pile undisturbed.

Her mittens were the last gift I wrapped, and I was about to add them to the heap when somebody called me to help with something urgent in the kitchen. In my haste, I left the box on the table next to the sofa.

About half an hour later, arranging cookies on a platter, I heard a jubilant squeak followed by the sound of Phil asking, "Hey! Where did you get those?"



We had said over and over not to touch the presents under the tree. We had said nothing about presents sitting around on tables. Abigail (whose father, I might add, is a lawyer) must have decided she was safe on a technicality.

What the heck. It was Christmas Eve. And I got an early present myself, which was watching her parade around in them, refusing to take them off, fully engulfed in a flood of Mitten Joy.



You know what this is a picture of? This is a picture of a kid whose uncle will be happy to knit her a cream-colored pony and a stable to put it in if she wants one.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: The End

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



twelve months' probation,
eleven units responding,
ten words of warning,
nine neighbors ringing,
eight shameless encores,
seven kegs a-brimming,
six queens sashaying,
five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

(And so concludes our merry holiday chronicle–slightly late, as booking at the precinct took simply forever. Normal (?) blogging resumes tomorrow.)

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Eleven

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



eleven units responding,
ten words of warning,
nine neighbors ringing,
eight shameless encores,
seven kegs a-brimming,
six queens sashaying,
five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Ten

On the tenth day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



ten words of warning,
nine neighbors ringing,
eight shameless encores,
seven kegs a-brimming,
six queens sashaying,
five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Nine

On the ninth day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



nine neighbors ringing,
eight shameless encores,
seven kegs a-brimming,
six queens sashaying,
five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Eight

On the eighth day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



eight shameless encores,
seven kegs a-brimming,
six queens sashaying,
five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Seven

On the seventh day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



seven kegs a-brimming,
six queens sashaying,
five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

(Happy New Year, everybody, and thank you all for your support, encouragement and good cheer through a thrilling and often scary 2008. I hope 2009 will bring peace and abundance to all of us! Love, Franklin)

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Five

On the fifth day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



five Highland Flings,
four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Four

On the fourth day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



four letter words,
three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Three

On the third day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



three clenched men,
two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day Two

On the second day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me



two hurtled jugs,
and a party that lasted 'til three.

Lurching Toward Epiphany: Day One

On the first day of Christmas, Dolores gave to me...



a party that lasted 'til three.

To be continued, I fear.