by Clara Parkes
Jeffrey went on with the tour. After the bales are opened and the fiber is picked, it’s blown through big tubes to a room downstairs, where it then gets fed into one of five Davis & Furber carding machines, all nearly identical to the one I’d seen at Blackberry Ridge. I’d never seen so many in one room, and the effect was stunning, like suddenly finding oneself in the midst of a marching band.
Davis & Furber had once been the largest manufacturer of its class in the country, building more woolen cards and spinning mules per year than any other manufacturer in the world. S&D was able to get replacement parts from them until as recently as 1981, when Davis & Furber finally closed, marking the demise of the last domestic supplier of carding equipment.
Each card was surrounded with sliding chain-link panels to keep things—like arms, or bodies—from being pulled in. It’s a common mill nightmare. “The controls are at the far end of the card,” said Jeffrey. “When things are running, you’d have to scream pretty loud to get anyone’s attention.”
We went down another floor and into a spinning wonderland. I counted six Davis & Furber spinning frames, each in perfect working order and all operating simultaneously. Now I was smack-dab in the middle of the brass section of the band, each frame blasting its note at full volume. The mechanics were nearly identical to Blackberry Ridge, except that the felt-covered “scavenger” roller had been replaced by tiny vacuum tubes behind each bobbin. If the yarn breaks, it automatically gets sucked into the tube. Snippets are collected and reused elsewhere. They were in the middle of a batch of fine, tight black wool. The customer name was written in chalk on the metal board at the end of each frame: “Navy.” While the baseball work makes up about half of S&D’s workload, another 20 percent is dedicated to commission spinning for the U.S. Navy.
Down another floor we went. I didn’t realize how much grease was being used on all this equipment until I slipped in the freight elevator. “Careful,” Jeffrey cautioned. “That grease gets carried in here on the bottom of people’s shoes.” If the metal floor was slick, I could imagine how saturated the wood floors were from centuries of use.
Once on the ground floor, the equipment got a little newer, the environment quieter. The most ingenious machine at the mill sits here—a high-tech cone winder that takes spun yarn off the spinning frame bobbins and winds it onto cones that then make the journey across the yard to the twisters. Kraemer had one like it, but it wasn’t being used the day of my visit.
It takes several bobbins to fill a single cone, showcasing the ingenuity of this machine. Nobody needs to stand at attention, shutting everything off when one bobbin runs low, tying knots, and restarting. It all happens automatically by air splicing.
Multiple bobbins sit on a sort of rotating lazy Susan. A strand is drawn up from the first bobbin until it runs out—which the machine is cleverly able to detect. At that point, a little mechanical hand reaches down and grabs the loose end. The base rotates and pops the empty bobbin onto a conveyor tray that carries it to the end and plunks it into a waiting bin. Meanwhile, the base has advanced to the next bobbin. Another small mechanical hand reaches down and grabs the end from that bobbin—“grab” isn’t quite the right word, as it uses suction. Finally, one yarn end is blown open and wrapped around the other, making a glorious “thwoooop” sound.
We wandered back out into the sunshine and toward the twisting building before Jeffrey remembered something he wanted to show us. “It’s out here,” he said, motioning us toward the busy road. Looking both ways, we ran out to the middle of the street. At our feet was a Millbury town sewer cap. On it, the town seal depicted the very same brick mill building we’d just left. He was cut short by Pam’s yell of “Car!” and we ran back to the side of the road and toward the newer building.
Twisting at S&D is nearly identical to what happened at Bartlett, Blackberry Ridge, and Kraemer, but instead of twisting individual cones of singles together, S&D pairs however many strands that are to be plied together and winds them, side by side with no extra twist added, onto another bobbin. Then that bobbin is fed into a machine that applies the actual twist. All of this takes place on equipment that’s varying shades of green metal and covered in the kinds of blinking buttons and knobs you’d expect in a 1950s science fiction movie.
Something had been nagging at me. How did they know exactly how much twist to apply to the yarn, either in spinning or plying? Jeffrey opened a metal cabinet and pulled out a chart.
All the magic numbers were here. What I found most fascinating (or disconcerting) was that the chart made no variation for fiber content. It’s a well-known rule in hand-spinning that longer fibers don’t need as many twists per inch as shorter ones. But this chart gave one number no matter what. If the singles had been given a certain number of twists per inch, regardless of the length or texture of the fiber, there was only one number for plying.
Jeffrey conceded that they could change the numbers depending on what the client wants. “If you want a soft yarn, we can do that,” he said. The U.S. Navy, for example, required a super-strong yarn with ten twists per inch. He walked us over to a small batch of alpaca being twisted with far fewer twists per inch. I’d never thought of specifying yarn in terms of “hard” and “soft,” but in a way, it made sense.
The oldest brother, David, came back from lunch. He, too, was tall and slender with silver hair, thick glasses, and a friendly face. And he, too, wore a green work uniform.
“So, what do you think?” he asked, beaming.
His brother’s path had been so similar to that of Victor at Kraemer. I wondered if this David felt about the family business the way Kraemer’s David did about his. Sure enough, he said he’d never wanted to work anywhere else. Even as a young boy, he loved working at the mill. He’d work eight full hours every Saturday, refilling bobbins for $1 an hour. He said that their father is now eighty-three but still brings the mail most days. If the mail includes a check, he makes them stop whatever they’re doing and take it to the bank. “He has a fit if we keep him waiting even two or three minutes,” David said. “He still comes first.”
We walked past a loading dock full of boxes and into another cavernous space that’s usually filled with fiber for the baseball run. Sometimes they get as many as seventy bales at once. Through another door was a smaller room where the other clients’ fiber goes.
When I first spoke with John and tried to explain my yarn project, that I wanted to help promote his mill to other people who make yarn, he seemed dismissive. “We’re almost at capacity,” he’d said. “Any more business and we’d have a problem.” Any less business and he’d have a problem, too, which is why this room exists. It’s where they hedge their bets with smaller clients.
He walked us to a heap of boxes that belonged to an alpaca cooperative. Members from around the country bundle up their fleeces, one or two or ten at a time. They come in recycled boxes of all shapes and sizes, some with handwritten address labels, others listing a FedEx store as the shipper. When the pile gets high enough, they pop everything open and spin it into yarn.
Moving down the line, I spotted three bales wrapped in heavy-duty clear blue plastic, the product of our friends at Bollman. Just a little farther, I recognized my own bale bag expertly strapped to a wooden pallet and rather impatiently awaiting its turn on the equipment.
It was getting late. We’d stopped their work long enough, and we needed to hit the road if we wanted to avoid rush-hour traffic around Worcester and Boston. After we said our thank-yous, David ran back into his office and came out with a brand-new Major League baseball still shrink-wrapped in its plastic box. “Please,” he said. “I’d like you to have this.”
My heart felt an unexpected tug as we pulled away. I hadn’t met any of these people until that morning. We’d only spoken by phone, and my initial impression hadn’t been all that great. (It turns out whenever the office phone rings, a horrible siren blares throughout the building. Who wouldn’t be a little grumpy?)
We’d
arrived on a day when they were down one key person, another had just left for lunch, and their biggest job was having problems. You’d expect a little impatience, a surreptitious glance at the watch, even a sarcastic comment or two.
There was none of it, nor did any of them dumb down their language or use a patronizing tone. They welcomed us warmly, proudly showing us this place that’s been a focal point for their family for three generations. They took time to explain everything, answer questions, and share their personal stories. Knowing the struggles they’ve faced was at once heartbreaking and inspiring.
The next Monday, I spoke with John. He apologized for missing my visit and for not having spun my yarn yet. His vacation reentry had already gotten off to a bad start.
“We’re having electrical problems with one of the cards, and of course the electrician is on the Cape,” he began. “But we’ll try to run white by Friday, and when we do, you’re the first in line.”
But then his voice brightened. “So,” he said, “how’d you like the mill?”
CHAPTER 12
HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR AT THE HAUNTED DYEHOUSE
Promises, promises.
It was actually two months before S&D would spin my yarn. Elsa had warned me that I’d need to be both patient and persistent on the journey. I was fine with the patience. I’m good at drifting down streams. The persistence part was much more difficult. It’s not in my nature to be a squeaky wheel, to push back at someone else’s timeframe, to pester.
But that’s what it took to get the yarn out of S&D in time to meet the final deadline in my Master’s of Yarn-Making program.
Having spun this yarn at the biggest mill yet, it made sense to dye it at the biggest dyehouse I could find. The kind you’d rely on if you were starting, say, an American yarn company. Or a sweater company, although mine was looking less likely by the minute.
My options were even slimmer than those for mills. I knew of only two commercial dyehouses that were suitable for a job of my size. Of those, I chose the most obvious option, a business that knew me and where the bale had begun its journey.
On Halloween, I loaded up the car one last time and headed south on the Maine Turnpike, exited onto Route 1, and followed it south through the town of Saco. I passed storefronts decked out with ghosts and goblins and pumpkins, my car went bumpety-bump over the train tracks on which the Downeaster Amtrak train travels on its way to Boston, and finally, after passing over the turbulent waters of the Saco River and into Biddeford, I turned right into the familiar parking lot of the Saco River Dyehouse.
This was it: the Great White Bale’s last stop. A collision of delays and other commitments (not the least of which was a book launch and tour) had kept me from seeing the finished yarn until I arrived in Biddeford. I’d asked S&D to spin me a well-balanced three-ply yarn, that kind of Number 2 pencil yarn you could use for just about anything. They’d done a fine job, although I detected a hint of shagginess. I’d seen the rough baseball stuff that had gone through the cards, the sturdy wool they’d been spinning for the U.S. Navy, the long alpaca fibers. Those should’ve been my clue that the cards were calibrated for something not as short and delicate as Eugene’s wool. Still, even in its flat and oil-laden state, the yarn was beautiful.
The realities of making any yarn in this country had worn me down. I was just glad it was done.
A few things had changed at the dyehouse since my explosive bale-opening escapade at the beginning of the year. A new brewery occupied the empty space we’d walked through to reach the back of the dyehouse. The Quince offices now had the look of a well-oiled fulfillment operation. And the dyehouse had expanded to fill nearly every available square inch of space. A work schedule that was once relatively open was now filled with jobs as more yarn companies heard about what was happening in Biddeford. Not content to dye just wool and other protein fibers, Claudia was working to bring in package dyeing operations that would open them up to the synthetic realm.
When I’d first toured the place in January, right after the dyehouse had started up, it was still under the direction of Don Morton. A master of color on fiber, Don had been in charge when the dyehouse was in Massachusetts. There he helped produce a full spectrum of colors for yarn companies such as Reynolds, Jo Sharp, and Paternayan. Don had wanted to retire. But when that dyehouse folded and Claudia, Pam, and two others teamed up to buy the assets, he’d agreed to come along for the transition. By April, Don had left and Muhammad Malik had taken over as dye-master.
Claudia made introductions and then left us to get on with our work. Malik, as he likes to be called, hails from Lahore, Pakistan. He comes from a family of chemists. He has his master’s in chemistry, and his sister, father, and father-in-law all work as chemists. It may therefore not come as much of a surprise when I tell you that his wife, Raana Jabeen, is also a chemist and has worked as his assistant for years.
With diligence and luck, Malik worked his way up the textiles ladder from lab worker to lab manager, then supervisor, then mill manager, and eventually general manager with the multinational Indus Group. In that capacity, he was responsible for the dismantling of cotton mills in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama, as Indus moved operations overseas. Over the course of three years, his team filled 358 containers with the guts of these mills, shipped them to Pakistan, reassembled them, and brought the equipment back to capacity. So high was Malik on the corporate ladder that during his last five years in Pakistan he didn’t even have to open his own car door—someone else did it for him.
Here he was, a man who’d played a direct role in the demise of American textiles. I wanted to dislike him, to see him as the enemy. Wasn’t he responsible for hurting the people I’d been meeting? But I couldn’t. He was just Malik. So our manufacturing decline may have happened to fuel his professional success, but was that his fault? As terrorist attacks and drone strikes in Pakistan put their lives in danger, he’d pulled strings at Indus and moved Raana and their son to Las Vegas. Now, they had found their way to this fledgling dyehouse in Biddeford, Maine.
Still grappling with culture and climate shock, Malik and Raana had thrown themselves headfirst into their work and into helping their son—now a senior in high school—apply to colleges. “God chooses our path, not us,” Raana told me with a smile and gentle bob of the head. “So we will be here as long as he wants us to be here.”
They were ready to begin working on my yarn. First, they needed to know what color I wanted them to dye it. I learned another interesting and/or disheartening fact: While some people bring fabric snippets or vintage handknits or photos of artwork or landscapes or whatnot, all with the intent of choosing a completely original yarn color, others opt for a much easier path. They bring a sample of a yarn in a color they like. Malik and Raana analyze it under a special light and presto. They have a dye formula.
“So this means I could pull a Quince yarn off the shelves and you’d copy the color for me?” I asked. They both smiled nervously and tilted their heads in a way that said, “Please don’t go there.”
I’d heard that they preferred to work from Pantone color numbers. Since knitters are always just a step behind the Paris runways (okay, maybe two steps), I pulled up the coming year’s Pantone color forecast and rather foolishly chose Pantone 18–3224, otherwise known as Radiant Orchid. A magenta some might describe as “bold.” Magenta was the first synthetic color ever created. How fitting that it should be the color for my first big synthetic dye job.
Raana did the first round of heavy lifting, translating my request into just the right small-batch dye formula for a sample. She tinkered with beakers and burners in a small lab until she had two close matches to my color. The three of us stood side by side at a little table with their special full-spectrum lamp shining on the yarn snippets and my original Pantone color chip.
Malik picked one that didn’t quite match. Raana disagreed in the most masterfully indirect way. She paused and made “mmmm” sounds as he talked, deftly leading h
im to choose what she’d wanted all along, a shade somewhere between the two, and to think it was his idea. Satisfied, she scaled her recipe to suit 120 pounds of fiber that we’d dye in the four-hundred-pound tank, the biggest in the dyehouse.
In addition to Raana there was a young man named David, who had quickly learned the ropes from Don. A diesel mechanic by training, he eventually grew tired of working outdoors in Maine winters at a job that was brutal on his body. When his wife got pregnant he knew it was time to stop. “They couldn’t pay me enough,” he said.
David’s day involves a near-constant shuffling of materials from bin to tank to extractor and back onto poles, or “sticks” as they call them—when not fixing broken motors, that is.
“You’ve got great new equipment being made in England, Australia, Pakistan, and China,” he said, “but there’s no money to bring it here. Textiles have died so much in the U.S., all we’ve got is the old stuff.”
My yarn had already been moved off the S&D cones and wound into skeins. They were heaped in a big bin with a label that said “Clara Parks.” (If I had a dime for every time the “e” was left out of my last name I’d have enough money to start a dyehouse of my own.) One by one, each skein would need to be slipped onto one of the metal poles that fit inside the dye tank.
We had two jobs going that day. First, we would load the biggest tank with the 120 pounds to dye. Second, we would put the remaining sixty pounds of yarn into a smaller tank for scouring. I wanted people to have one skein of each so they could see the yarn before and after it had been dyed.
By the time I arrived, David had finished loading up the large tank and was getting ready to load the smaller one.
I asked him how he knew how many skeins to put on each pole. He smiled and pulled out a calculator and began explaining. “You see, you take 120 and divide by 2.2062, which gets you pounds to kilograms, to grams, approximately sixty times one thousand kilograms, divided by one hundred, which gives you . . .” I regretted asking. All I know is that the final number was twenty-seven skeins per pole.
