Gobsmacked in Cambridge

A final note from the England trip, an addendum of sorts to the notebooks (one, two, three).

We spent most of the day doing what visitors do in Cambridge. College, college, college, Trinity Street (I bought a beautiful English-made bow tie at Arthur Shepherd), college, college, church, church, church, lunch.

It was mid-afternoon, the clock was ticking, and I had not yet set foot in a bookshop.

Working on a hunch that an ancient center of learning might yet have one or two of these to root around in, I asked Liz.

"Yes," said Liz. "I will point you at two. Tom and I can go have a drink at the pub while you browse."

(Liz has done this before.)

After some negotiation it was agreed that I should have one hour, thirty seven minutes before presenting myself at the pub.

"Now," Liz said. "Over there is the larger shop. Over here is the smaller shop, but they specialize in antique children's books."

I'll repeat that.

"They specialize," said Liz, "in antique children's books."

I think Tom said something after that, but I was already at one hour, thirty six minutes and ten seconds and didn't have time to fool about. I can talk to Tom any time.

The children's bookshop was the size of four phone booths. For those of you too young to remember phone booths, it was the size of those four retro novelty photo booths at Jerusha and Skylar's wedding in Williamsburg, the one your whole dodge ball team went to.

I walked in, and the first thing that hit me in the face was a shelf crammed with titles I have read about but never seen in person. This place is the physical embodiment of my lifelong wish list. Within seconds, I was confronted by four linear feet of what I gauged to be turn-of-the-century Caldecott.

"May I help you find anything?" said the nice lady at the desk.

"Gasp," I gasped.

"Well, do please let me know," she said.

I stared dumbly at the row of Caldecott for a moment. I tried to reach for a book and realized my fingers had gone numb.

Then, much as those who have survived environmental catastrophes say that an inborn, automatic survival instinct pulled them through, I heard a voice that was not quite my own say,

"Listen. I'm from America and only have a few minutes. I see you have piles of Caldecott. I'm also interested in Ernest Shepard, Arthur Rackham, Dulac, and Walter Crane. Oh, and I wonder what you might have in the way of needlework titles–especially knitting."

She sprang into action.

"Needlework. Hmm. Now, that's a tough one." But she had that look in her eye, the one book people get when presented with a novel challenge.

"I know," I said. "There really isn't much."

"Well, have a look at these." They were crochet books from the 1950s, aimed at the plucky post-war girl of twelve to fourteen.

"Sweet," I said. "But I don't really crochet."

"Hmm. Well, I'm afraid aside from those all we have at present would be some Girl's Own annuals with needlework patterns..."

"I like the sound of that."

"...and then there's that."

Up on a top shelf, cover facing  out, leaning casually against a row of who cares what, was this.



It's Jane Gaugain's The Lady's Assistant for Executing Useful and Fancy Designs in Knitting, Netting, and Crochet Work.

Jane Gaugain, in case she's not a household name for you (yet), is the woman you might call the mother of fiber arts publishing. She ran a haberdashery business in Edinburgh with her husband, she wanted to sell wool yarns from Germany, and she realized that you sell more yarns with pattern support. So she began to circulate patterns by request and subscription. (There is a wonderful article about her in this issue of Twist Collective.)

Then, in 1840, Mrs Gaugain produced her first book. This book.

This book, which is the beginning of everything that brought you all those knitting and crochet titles on your shelf. Elizabeth Zimmermann, Mary Thomas, Barbara Walker, Alice Starmore, Interweave, Soho, STC–it all starts here.

Now, please keep in mind that I went to England owning exactly one (1) knitting book that pre-dates 1880. And it's terrible. I mean, absolutely terrible. Fun as a relic, interesting to look at, useless to work from.

So for me, standing face-to-face with the first widely acclaimed, best-selling collection of knitting patterns was a little overwhelming.

But not so overwhelming that I didn't check the price. I was afraid to look.

It was really good. More than I'd normally drop on a single book–but really good. There aren't piles of knitting titles from this era lying around. Think about it. What do you usually do with outmoded books of knitting patterns? You throw them away, that's what you do. Or you donate them, or trade them, so that others may throw them away. And so it has always been.

It means that when you do find Mrs Gaugain for sale, she's pricey. But this shop was not a specialist in this topic, and though they did note "scarce" on the front flyleaf they didn't price it to keep it lying around in space that could be better occupied by, say, a nice first of Wind in the Willows.

So I bought it, with a beating heart and just one sad glance at the big, blue, oblong, I'd-never-even-heard-of-it album of Caldecott illustrations that's still sitting there, probably, and she said they would ship it to me if you haven't yet bought my Christmas present.

When I left the shop, I checked the time. I had been inside for exactly ten minutes.

While strictly speaking I had another hour and twenty-seven minutes allotted to book shopping, I found myself unable to go on. After you find the book at the top of your Life List just sitting there, what's the point of trying to beat that in a second venue?

I didn't know what to do, honestly. I felt like a dog that had spent his life chasing cars, and then caught one.

I stumbled toward the pub, clutching Mrs Gaugain to my palpitating chest.

Liz and Tom weren't there, of course. They weren't expecting me for more than an hour. In fact they were probably expecting me to forget them entirely, then scream NO NO LEAVE ME HERE IN PEACE as they attempted forcibly to extract me from the stacks.

(Liz and Tom have done this before.)

I turned around and ran smack into them on the street. They were startled.

"What happened? Did you find something?" said Tom.

"Mmrrbrblp," I said.

It was all I could do to get the book out of my bag and show it to them. They, being kind people, did not even make fun of me (much) when I started to cry.

The copy's in beautiful shape. Sound and complete, right down to the hand-colored plates demonstrating netting.



Note the errant smudge of red left by the colorist, who was probably a tubercular orphan, aged four, or similar. Poor kid.

This is not, I hasten to add, a first edition. It's a third edition (1842) as shown by Mrs Gaugain's preface.



She notes:

The Work has again undergone a thorough revision by me, and from the Receipts all having been worked by many of the subscribers–the best means of ascertaining its correctness–several little inaccuracies in the former Edition have been detected and corrected.

Inaccuracies corrected? Does this mean–can it be?–that am I holding the corrected version of the Pineapple Bag?! Did she fix the decreases at the bottom?!!



No.

English Notebook: Three

Last Bits and Bobs

True to my promise, these photographs from the England trip have no relationship to one another except that what I saw, I liked. And what I liked, I tried to photograph.

This was especially challenging in a setting like King's College Chapel in Cambridge, where the lighting was extremely subdued. It was tough to get a decent shot of anything without recourse to a tripod, so the haul was very small. I suppose I could have tried lying flat on my back in the aisle, as one misguided tourist did; but as he was politely but firmly escorted to the door I'm glad I didn't.

I'm more for details than sweeping views in a space like that. Sure, the vaults and the stained glass are spectacular. They've also been photographed thousands of times. I spent a lot of time admiring them, but the camera turned on for smaller things.





The book above was on a chorister's desk. I had to shoot it "blind" by craning my short, peasanty arm over the top of the desk, therefore the odd angle and framing. The note at the bottom of the cover says NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY. I've been listening to the annual "Festival of Lessons and Carols" live broadcast from the chapel for years, so it was more than a little thrilling to stand where the music is made.

Even walking past London's Greatest Hits (like the statue of Eros at the center of Piccadilly Circus) I tend to be more attracted to obscurities. These are carved into the entrance of a theater spitting distance from the Piccadilly tube station, half-hidden by posters.



One of the things I notice, in looking them over, is how much of what I love in the London cityscape boils down to color and pattern.



Near Portobello Road. (Click it.)



Somewhere in Kensington. (Click it.)

No visit to London is complete without my friend Jane, who is (surprise) a knitter. Jane arranged for us to have dinner at Brown's Hotel. (I had grouse, of which there is no picture. It was delicious.)

Jane introduced us to her splendid fellow, Nick, who is not only charming but the perfect size to model the Fair Isle sweater Jane had just finished. She took endless pains selecting the colors, none of which shows properly in the photograph because the aggressively trendy hotel bar we were in was lit primarily (and dimly, of course) with purple lights. (Because nothing flatters the human complexion like purple light.)

Still, here is Nick and the sweater.



The sweater isn't even for him. He just agreed to model it. Jane knit it for somebody else. Is that a cooperative boyfriend, or what?

That's not even the most of it. The rank and file of knitters have to carry our work in bags. Not so Jane. Not since she met Nick, who's in a band, and who gave her a yarn road case. A yarn road case. So she can tour.



Love you, Jane. You'll want to hang on to Nick with both hands, dear. And he to you.

There will be one more England entry. About...shopping.

English Notebook: Two

I spent one entire day in England at Loop.



Loop is a yarn shop–the English often say "wool shop"–in a London neighborhood called Islington, on a sort of street called "Camden Passage."

When they call it a passage they aren't trying to be cute. Look.



It's exactly that–a narrow passage between old, low buildings. Most of Loop's neighbors sell antiques, and on certain days of the week the streets around fill up with more antiques dealers.

This is the Loop classroom. It holds eight, including the teacher. If you're going to teach at Loop it helps to be small and/or short.



Loop's owner, Susan, has a gift–there is no other word for it–for arranging her stock in beautiful and unexpected ways. You don't just see the pretty things, you feel inspired to take them home and play with them. Before classes began, I had the place to myself and spent the time drinking it in.











I was so enchanted I wanted a picture of me in the shop, as a souvenir.



The students were lovely. We gathered around the table and had tea and little pecan tarts, and played with at lace and old patterns. The day flew.

To top it all off, I had the pleasure of the company of Jean, whose work and words I've admired almost since the day I began writing this blog. She knits everything, but it's her lace that first grabbed my attention, and I doubt I could have finished my first major piece of lace without her. She alerted me to Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting, and to Bridget Rorem's lace alphabet.

Jean came all the way from Scotland to meet me at Loop. I was almost too shy to ask if she'd have a picture with me after class. (My first impulse, on seeing her coming down the stairs, was to run over and hug her in shameless American fashion.) But I spoke up, and she obliged.



If you're one of Jean's fans, I can now tell you with certainty that she every bit as witty, sharp and fun as you'd think from reading her blog. I have a good mind to find a way to get up to Scotland and stalk her in her natural habitat. Fair warning, Jean. (And thank you.)

If you find yourself in London, you probably ought to go to Loop.  Really, you ought.

By the Way: 2012 Holiday Ornament

The annual Panopticon Holiday Ornament is ready to go. This year, the theme is yarn...and puppies.



Just realized I spelled "blogspot" wrong in the watermarks. Aw, screw it.

I Like to Swatch

From Fleisher's Knitting and Crocheting Manual, 1906:

Nowadays, every woman who gives thoughtful preparation to her wardrobe includes a variety of knitted or crocheted garments, because of their artistic beauty and their comforting warmth. Wherever women meet, the art of knitting and crocheting is discussed–the newest garments, the best stitches, the prettiest colors. Many have recently been converted to the charm of this work, realizing that machine made garments do not equal in softness, beauty, and distinctive elegance, those made by hand, and that, therefore, the time spent in knitting and crocheting is both pleasant and profitable.

Pleasant and profitable. That goes right to the heart of why I fell in love with knitting.

Pleasant, in the sense that needlework steadies me sufficiently to keep me out of the Police Blotter. Profitable, in the sense that after the pleasure fades I am left with something tangible and (amigurumi and novelty fruit handbags aside) useful in exchange for my time.

The longer I'm at it, though, the less I find I care about the tangible outcome. I had been knitting for years before I learned about gauges and swatching; once I learned about them, it was another few years before I learned to care. I didn't want to swatch for the thing, I wanted to make the thing. A rogues gallery of the elephantine and miniscule hats that followed would be shown here as evidence, if said evidence had not been destroyed.

After the fifth gift hat a friend refuses to wear because she could easily fit her own head and those of both her children inside, you start to get the message: Swatch. Swatch, and learn something.

Nowadays I love practicing, experimenting, playing with process.

When I get the "What's that you're making?" question, about half the time the true answer is "Nothing in particular." But that draws puzzled looks and prolongs the conversation, so usually I just say it's a scarf. Non-knitters are satisfied, since they can't tell the difference and don't really care. Knitters glaze over at the word "scarf" and will happily change the subject, which allows me to go back to swatching.

A new-to-me technique is my favorite thing to swatch. Recently I sat down with a book that's been on my worktable in the "PLAY WITH THIS" pile for ages, Alasdair Post-Quinn's Extreme Double-Knitting: New Adventures in Reversible Colorwork. Full disclosure: I saw the book before it came out, and liked it. I liked it so much that there's a quote from me on the back cover, saying so.

But this was the first time I really sat down and threw myself into working from it. I'd played with two-color double-knitting before; but it was of the slip-this-side-then-slip-that-side variety and I found the process tedious and the results unsatisfactory.

I like Alasdair's method, though. You get a firm, handsome, dense fabric with it. And when I say dense, I mean dense enough to wear as a winter hat in Chicago when you are a bald male of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent and therefore are genetically designed to crumple at the first blast of January wind from Canada.

Alasdair takes "Extreme"–a sadly overused word these days, often denoting either a modest level of skill or an immodest level of bad taste–seriously. His basic method in two colors is a bit of challenge to begin with; but he blows past two-color reversible patterns into working it in the round, shaping it, adding extra colors, working different patterns on opposite sides of the same fabric, double-knitting cables and other textures, and building three-dimensional double-knitted objects. He would probably have zoomed onward into metaphysical double-knitting that alters the time-space continuum if the editor had not at last told him to Put a Lid on It.

I waded into the shallow end with a wrist warmer. The design in the book is cute–a pair of opposing spirals–but as usual I had to get funky and Make It My Own so I adapted a pair of charts from a book I bought at the university bookshop in Reykavik. One is either a flower or a snowflake. The other is a dragon, a griffin, and a Boston Terrier all at the same time.



The result–worked in DK leftovers from my stash–was fun to knit. It's a real charge to flip your work inside-out and see the same pattern with the colors reversed.

This was fun enough that I know I'll take another crack at it, albeit with smaller needles. Alasdair urges you to work at a tightish gauge, and he's right. This specimen, worked with a size 4, would benefit from sliding down to size 2.

My wristlet looks more than a little frowsy and is much too big for my wrist, yet I keep getting compliments on it at the coffee shop.



Yeah. Cup sleeve. I know I said it was going to be a scarf, but I really meant to say cup sleeve.

On the Unusualness of Squam

When I travel to teach, my hotel doesn't usually look like this.



My hotel room doesn't usually look like this.



The path to my classroom doesn't usually look like this.



My classroom doesn't usually look like this.



I don't usually have one of these,



upon which to do this with Jess, Ysolda, and Gudrun.



There are not usually bedtime stories by the fireplace with Casey and Eloise.



There are not usually random acts of owl-bombing by a mysterious knitter.



I do not usually look like this,



and cry a little when it's time to leave it all behind.



Thanks, Squam.

Love,
Franklin
xoxo

This Place Looks Familiar

I'm in New York City again–which is fine by me. This was my last glimpse of the dining room table (where the packing happens) before my suitcases and I rolled out the door.



Yes, I leave notes for myself as I pack. And I make lists. Many lists. Seven, this time. Otherwise I'd arrive at the gig with three kilts, a dozen mismatched knitting needles and one shoe.

This time the gig in question is the second coming of Vogue Knitting Live! at the New York Hilton.

Classes start tomorrow, but the yarn huffers are already here in force. Walking from the front desk to the elevator I must have passed at least two dozen. Guests who aren't here for Vogue Knitting Live! are already looking adorably alarmed. You can hear the internal monologues and whispered conversations as they pass.

"Is that...knitting? But...why are they all knitting? Omigod one of them is a guy! Is this a New York thing? What the hell is going on?"

Well they should worry. We will accept nothing less than world domination.

Am I the Walrus?

When I was in second grade, my science class did an electricity experiment that went haywire while I was touching the metal end of the apparatus. I looked a smidge odd until my eyebrows grew back; yet on the whole I thought the experience of being briefly connected to a live current was pretty cool.

This may help to explain why I like New York City so much.

I saw it for the first time in the late 1980s, courtesy of a gracious college roommate who invited me to stay with his family in Manhattan during Spring Break. My parents, upon hearing our travel plans, were full of grim foreboding. The words filthy, noisy, crowded, and (above all) dangerous were thrown about. They didn't mean to be wet blankets, truly they didn't; but my great-grandmother got mugged on the street in Brooklyn in 1966 and after that whole place went straight to Hell.

On the afternoon of the first day, I dutifully called home to reassure my mother that I hadn't been kidnapped and sold into white slavery like Mary Tyler Moore in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

"Well?" said Mom, "How is it?"

"I found it!" I sighed. "I finally found the place where everybody walks at the same pace I do!"

That was not the right answer.

Americans who are not New Yorkers are not supposed to like New York. They're allowed to like certain things about it, maybe. A good musical, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or spotting Yoko Ono shopping at Barney's Uptown. But then they're expected to go home to a split-level house with a two-car garage and complain about the rushing, the crowds, the noise, the dirty streets, the overwhelming muchness of it all. Real Americans (as we were repeatedly reminded during the last election) are supposed to live in the suburbs and like it. Real Americans are supposed to prefer placid, empty, quiet, tidy.

But who would want a placid, empty, quiet, tidy New York? Not me. That wouldn't be New York, that would be Pyongyang. You may have it.

I go to New York to plug in. I love the way it wakes me up, even when it's unpleasant. Take, for insance, the smell of the subway underpass at 42nd Street. I'm not saying I savor that aroma, but you must admit it cannot be taken casually.

This month I went to the city to play with the good people at Lion Brand Yarn Studio on West 15th Street in the Union Square/Flatiron neighborhood. I gave a talk (and people came! and they laughed!) and I taught three classes (and people came! and we all laughed!).



The Studio serves as a public face for the company and is completely adorable. I don't care if you've never touched a skein of yarn in your life–you cannot ignore a display window that looks like this.



A closer view of the walrus. They were considering naming him "Franklin." I hope they did.



And the Inuit fisherman.



These folks go way beyond the customary yarn store mode of a-couple-baskets-of-yarn-plus-a-limp-sweater. The Studio interior is punctuated by spolia saved from previous installations, so you never know what you're going to encounter when you turn a corner.

I'm afraid I had only a pocket camera of limited capacity, but here are a few snaps of what I found.

In the larger upstairs classroom, spare materials for students who may have forgot something.



The needles are size US 300. Not sure about the metric conversion. Wouldn't want to take them through airport security.



This guy sits in the window of the smaller classroom, looking out to West 15th.



Hug it? Knit it? Hug it? Knit it?



On the way into the company owner's office, there's a crocheted Empire State Building complete with a couple of sightseeing tourists.



Inside the office, there's a vintage-style postcard (eight feet wide) celebrating the city's icons.



What you can see a little more clearly from this angle (click to embiggen)



is that the letters are three-dimensional and contain knitted and crocheted versions of (partial list!) Patience and Fortitude, the NYC Public Library lions; the giant Cup o' Noodles from Times Square; the Statue of Liberty; a Yankees cap; the Flatiron, Empire State, and Chrysler Buildings; the World Trade Center in memoriam; the Guggenheim Museum; and a hot dog cart that's half the size of the nearby hot dog. Underneath is the Brooklyn Bridge and a street crowded with a police car, a fire truck, a couple of taxi cabs and a tour bus.

At first I thought the little dude on the Brooklyn Bridge was a suicidal jumper, but it turned out to be the Phantom of the Opera consulting a city map. (Yes, he is so a New Yorker. He's been running in Manhattan since 1988.)

In the same room, there's also a chair/trellis hybrid crawling with butterflies and summer flowers.



I was trying to come up with a "country seat" joke here, but it wouldn't gel.



This is a box of something. I don't know what's in it. I was afraid to lift the lid.



Down in the basement, among the yarn storage bins, a friendly bunny keeps the staff company while they sort stock.



A wall map, about five feet across reminds one that there aren't Red States or Blue States, only states that like to play with yarn.



Kind of a nice thing to remember as the political candidates try to convince us otherwise.

While I was there, they caught me on cameras both still and moving:



I'm so happy I remembered to get my hair did. Also, I have a boycrush on Patty Lyons, the maven/doyenne/manager/queen of the LB Studio. She arranged the whole splendid shindig with such mastery that when she told me to stop fussing and relax, I actually did.

It was fun. I woke up. I hated to leave. I can't wait to go back. Hint, hint.