Knitlandia

by Clara Parkes

  If a knitter is bringing family, naturally everyone is expected to represent. It’s a joy to watch a knitter parade his or her kin through the fairgrounds. Babies in strollers are adorned from head to toe, carefully tucked in beneath colorful blankies. Husbands or wives dutifully wear elaborate Aran and Fair Isle creations that fit them perfectly. Even sulky teenage boys will acquiesce to wear, perhaps, a simple beanie.

  The festival has its share of tire-kickers, too, those non-knitters who come to see what the fuss is all about. They stand out in their freshly pressed city-slicker attire, machine-knit sweaters, well-polished riding boots, and barn jackets that have never seen a barn. They often bring children who’ve never encountered livestock in any context other than on a restaurant menu. You’ll see them crowded around the sheep-shearing demonstrations or lining the fence for the sheepdog trials. They cheer for the Leaping Llama contest and peruse books in the author’s signing area, even though their contents are mysterious to them. Their willingness to take it all in is endearing.

  For vendors, hundreds of whom compete for the 275 available spots, the weekend is about commerce. Staggering sums can change hands, tens of thousands of dollars per booth. Even in a slow year, the numbers are still remarkable. We hear of shoppers dropping more than $1,000 at a pop. The proximity to Manhattan works to everyone’s advantage. These are among the best vendors in the country, selling to the most affluent.

  The primary merchandise being sold is, of course, yarn. It spills from every aisle, in every texture and hue, machine-made and hand-spun, vat-dyed, hand-painted, and au naturel. Alongside the yarn are heaps of fleece and roving in equally varied shades from off-the-animal’s-back to Technicolor. But also—and perhaps this is what distinguishes Rhinebeck the most from other shows—you’ll find finished products galore. Not just mugs with sheep on them, but elegant hats, sweaters, socks, shearling booties, woven jackets, cheerful fabric aprons, and dresses made from repurposed wool sweaters. All are on hand for those who want to partake but have never knitted a stitch. People are still buzzing about the year Uma Thurman showed up and bought a pile of socks.

  Part of the magic is the fairgrounds itself, 140 well-manicured acres of paved walkways snaking among some 20 barns, big and small. This is no dusty gravel affair; there’s grass and mulched perennial beds and lovingly maintained trees that have managed to hold onto their most brilliant foliage just for us. You amble to the soundtrack of a Peruvian pan-flute band that plays along the main fairgrounds corridor. For years, we also had music from a hand-cranked hurdy-gurdy atop which perched a rather dejected stuffed monkey.

  When mealtime arrives, you’ll have to throw any aforementioned rules about festival food right out the window. This is the Hudson River Valley, my friends, the land of milk and honey and artisanal goat cheese. We’re just a few miles up the road from the Culinary Institute of America. Sure, you’ll still find fried dough, but here it comes in the form of airy and perfectly executed cider donuts rolled in cinnamon sugar and handed to you for a mere dollar. The falafel vendor is so good, you’ll hear people talking in line about how it’s even better than what they had in Beirut. By the time you get to the front of the artichoke line, the smell of garlic and white wine becomes so intoxicating, you’re ready to eat your own arm.

  The operative word here is line. Prepare to spend a lot of time in them. Rhinebeck is the place where you make “line friends,” compatriots thrown together by chance, with whom you dedicate hours of your life in the pursuit of nourishment. Later, when you spot one another on the fairgrounds, yours is the greeting of old Army buddies. I still remember some of the people from the famous Chicken Pot Pie Line of 2007, which lasted just a little over two hours (no, I am not kidding) and had prompted such camaraderie, we could have formed our own village. Last year, a new pizza vendor had a ninety-minute waiting list . . . to get on the waiting list. Non-knitting spouses and family members become vital pawns in the quest for food. Husbands and children are dispatched to monitor the lunch lines while knitters runs back to the barns to pursue those elusive skeins of yarn just one more time. Those who don’t really care will shrug and be satisfied with a basket of limp french fries, a dyspeptic tub of lamb stew, a day-old cookie from one of the vendors with a shorter line. But for the really good food at Rhinebeck, follow the people.

  You still have the occasional Fryolator novelties, the deep-fried pickle, the deep-fried spaghetti and meatballs, the deep-fried artichoke, but they’re in the minority here. You’ll also find fresh kettle corn, candied apples, buttery cakes, and flaky pastries, all accompanied by fresh apple cider or, perhaps, a more potent coffee or chai served, of course, in biodegradable cups. Unlike Maryland Sheep and Wool, there are no lamb-only rules at Rhinebeck.

  When the afternoon lull hits, you’ll appreciate something that’s very unique to Rhinebeck. In an exhibition building that’s smack-dab in the center of everything, local vendors sell honey, breads and pastries, miles of cheeses, maple syrup, wines, and cordials. More than just selling them, they offer samples of them, making it possible to get slightly sloshed in the epicenter of sheep-and-wool nirvana. The pièce de résistance of the food building is the maple cotton candy, which is as delicious as it is entertaining. “Ooooh, what’d you get?” people ask, assuming I’ll say Merino or maybe a blend of Cormo and silk. Instead, I shove a tuft of it in my mouth and chew.

  This being a sheep-and-wool festival you will, of course, find sheep. The animal barns, however, make up far less of the focus here than they do at Maryland. Here, sheep provide more of a living museum than a significant marketplace. Yes, there’s still showing and selling going on, but only two hours of formal selling and two hours of ribbon-awarding for the whole weekend. Otherwise, the animals perform a public service for those city dwellers craving a connection with the country. “Say ‘hi’ to the sheep!” I heard one woman tell her daughter, pointing a heavily jeweled finger at an angora goat.

  Besides the usual retail frenzy, Rhinebeck has a deeper frenetic energy because it is the last big show of the year. While vendors are relieved, the stakes are high for knitters. This marks our final opportunity to gather any remaining nuts for the winter—by which I mean anything from a sweater’s worth of artisan yarn to, say, a spinning wheel, loom, or drum carder. Yes, you can order those things online, but it just isn’t the same.

  I suspect Rhinebeck retains its charm, in part, because it is such a fleeting experience. We wait for it all year, saving our pennies, planning our sweaters, plotting our menus, scheduling time away from work, renting rooms and houses, packing our cars. Then on Sunday afternoon when the clock strikes 5:00 PM, a voice over the PA system tells us the show is closed. Like with Cinderella and her magic pumpkin, the spell is broken. Even the light on the fairgrounds seems to change the instant the gates shut.

  Vendors whip into action, dismantling their booths in a fraction of the time it took to set up. Part of me always feels just a wee bit hurt, like they shouldn’t be quite so eager to get out of there.

  But hurry they must, in part because the organizers only give them a few hours to disassemble. By the time the sun has passed over the horizon, most of the vendor barns have been stripped. Only a few sheep remain to reassure us a festival really did happen. Everything and everyone else has been loaded back into cars, vans, trucks, and buses. Having given our last hugs and said our goodbyes, we slowly fan out into the crisp fall evening, headed for home.

  MERRIMENT IN MINNETONKA

  OCCASIONALLY YOU STUMBLE UPON a teaching venue that is so unusual, you feel compelled to return the next year just to experience it again—the adult version of getting off a carnival ride and immediately running back for another go.

  I feel this way about Yarnover, a spectacular bash that has taken place in the Minneapolis area every spring since 1986. Teachers fly in from around the country—and not one or two teachers, but fifteen, a remarkable feat for an event with just one day to recoup its costs. Students pay over $100, more if they aren’t ye
t guild members, to spend a full day at the show, which includes morning and afternoon classes and a boxed lunch. But this isn’t strictly a profit-making venture. It’s the annual gathering of a very big—as in more than 600 members—very active knitting guild representing the Twin Cities and Duluth. Nobody does knitting or knitting guilds quite like folks in cold, northern climates.

  All the teachers arrive the day before, allowing us ample time to unpack and get a good night’s sleep before our early wake-up call on Saturday morning. We line up at dawn in the hotel lobby, groggy-eyed and clinging to our coffees. Two small buses pull up out front. One by one, with suitcases of knitted samples in tow, swatches and sweaters and garments galore, we board. We zoom through freeways and neighborhoods before finally turning into a large Minnetonka parking lot, at the back of which sits a sprawling high school. It is ours for the day, the hallways and cafeteria and auditorium and classrooms.

  There’s something about entering a school, those long corridors, those shiny floors, that undeniable school smell, that gets me every time. Instantly, I regress. The banners and flyers announcing socials and proms; games and gatherings; contests, competitions, and campaigns, all written in that optimistic scrawl of high schoolers determined to break out of their one-horse town and make a name for themselves.

  The hallways are chockablock with vendors who’ve been there since 7:45 AM setting up their booths for the day. Shelves are assembled, bins stacked, and lights mounted. Extension cords snake their way to the few available outlets in what can only be described as “creative power management.” Fiber, yarns, needles, patterns, spinning wheels, accessories, and sample garments soon spill out into what has become a narrow and most distracting hallway. How surreal to walk down a crowded high school corridor, past the familiar drinking fountains and trophy cases and lockers, and see they’ve all been temporarily transformed into a knitting wonderland.

  For two years in a row, I’ve been assigned the same room, a social-studies classroom with posters of Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt and Zora Neale Hurston, with inspirational quotes printed on white paper, glued onto colorful sheets of construction paper, and taped to the blank cinderblock walls. The chairs are bright orange, yellow, red, or blue, some kind of composite wooden material with the desk surface attached. The room is left as if the teacher heard us coming, put down her coffee, and ran—her mug right there, still half full, on the desk with sticky notes, the crumpled silver foil of a Hershey’s Kiss, an uncapped ballpoint pen.

  I greet the early arrivals and begin to unpack, listening to the squeak of shoes in the hallway, the echo of voices. We’re at the end of a long and potentially confusing corridor, and the knitters, innately distracted by the presence of yarn and fiber, take their time to arrive. Finally, I count the people, count the names on my list, mentally tut-tut the laggards, and close my classroom door—over which a black-and-white Che Guevara poster is taped.

  I take attendance and begin explaining how we will tackle the world of twist and ply in just three hours—then the doorknob rattles. In comes the first latecomer, out of breath, gasping apologies. “Not to worry; take your seat,” I say, checking her off the attendance list. A few minutes later, in come two more stragglers, both carrying several bags of yarn from the marketplace. Guilt is written all over their faces. I cross off their names. Not until we’re deep into that first hour does the last laggard saunter in, the knitting version of Sean Penn’s character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She shows no guilt, gives no apology, just nods while taking her sweet time getting settled. I make a special mark next to her name. Problem student. By mid-semester, I’ll probably be calling in her parents for a meeting.

  As class continues, I flash back to the teachers I watched from my own uncomfortable chair many years ago. How I studied their speech, their mannerisms, even the way they used their chalk, some preferring fresh, long pieces, others breaking off little nubbins. I admired their confidence and authority. I wanted to be one of them. Now, my back to the class, talking while writing notes about properties of wool on the board, I have that eerie feeling of having slipped into the skin of those very teachers. I am Mrs. Serkowski, jotting her equations; I am Mr. Geiss, expertly diagramming sentences. Only I’m not; I’m Clara, writing words like crimp and staple and micron, diagramming twist and ply.

  Occasionally, we are interrupted by laughter from the room next door—which has also been occupied, for two years running, by fellow teacher and extraordinarily funny person Amy Detjen. I have to break up a whispered conversation between two students seated in back. Someone raises her hand and asks to use the restroom. I nod. Does anybody else need to go? Hands shoot up. We declare a ten-minute break that becomes a fifteen-minute break as the last student returns, laden with bags of yarn, another casualty of the marketplace.

  We proceed through our lesson. The students are nimble. They keep pace, sometimes slipping ahead and asking questions that lead, as if on cue, to where I was about to go next. It’s a beautiful morning. We finish just as the stomach growls begin. Some sprint to the marketplace or the lunch line. Others linger to ask questions. A few offer to help me sort and stack swatches. Finally, they’re gone, I take a big breath, wipe off the blackboard, store my belongings, and go in search of lunch.

  The long cafeteria line moves swiftly. We have a choice of sandwiches: ham, turkey, roast beef, or, for the vegetarians, cheese. I pick a white paperboard box marked TURKEY, grab a bottle of water, and look for a place to sit. I spot a few familiar faces, but their tables are full. “Sorry,” they mouth silently before turning back to their groups. I keep walking past tables of friends, insular circles, all staring at me. I spot two strangers at a big table. “May I join you?” They nod. I sit down and smile. They leave. I eat my lunch in silence.

  In addition to my turkey sandwich on white bread, with mustard and mayo packets on the side, I have a small bag of Lay’s potato chips, a bright red apple, and, in its own paper pocket, a chocolate-chip cookie. Extra napkins are at the bottom of the box. I’m wondering why my mother hasn’t packed my usual thermos of Progresso Lentil Soup or leftover Chinese food when I glance at my watch and realize I have to get to class.

  By the time I get back to my classroom, a few new eager beavers have already arrived. One has put an apple on my desk (I mentally put a star next to her name on the attendance list). Others are politely pawing through my swatches and samples, unable to resist the lure of a heap of handknits.

  The afternoon is a replay of the morning, until a great lethargy overtakes the group at about 3:00 PM. Eyes glaze over. Eleanor’s gaze has taken on a disapproving tone. Zora isn’t even talking to us anymore. “You think that’s good spinning?” Gandhi seems to be asking as he deftly demonstrates how cotton really should be spun. I hear the clock’s faint tick, tick, tick over the drone of an annoying noise I realize is, in fact, my own voice. I eye that cold, half-drunk mug of coffee.

  Finally, the bell rings and class is dismissed. Some are out of there like a shot, hoping to make one more pass at the marketplace on their way out. Others line up with questions or comments, with lovely stories, or with one of my books to sign. Some bring mystery skeins (“Could you tell me what this is?”) or bags of fiber from their sheep, or their friend’s sheep, or their friend’s dead grandmother’s sheep, hoping I can identify it, or, at a minimum, praise them for having the foresight to keep it all these years. The apple giver is now at my table, carefully stacking my swatches and samples, matching them according to size, slipping them into the bags and packing them into my suitcase without my having had to ask. I mentally give her an A for the semester.

  We have fifteen minutes to pack up and get out of school before the clock strikes 4:45 PM. I move the chairs back into place, give the chalkboard one final swipe, return the half-drunk mug of coffee to its rightful place on the desk. There is no time to dally or I’ll miss my ride home.

  The wheels of my suitcase make forlorn squeaking sounds on the polished linoleum floor. Once-anima
ted classrooms are now dark and empty, the vendors packed up and gone. Out front, the bus idles impatiently, waiting for the last of the teachers to climb in.

  That night we will gather again at the hotel, just the teachers, for a celebratory dinner in a meeting room right off the indoor swimming pool. Over plates of chicken Florentine, steamed broccoli, and rice pilaf, we’ll exchange notes. The main topics of conversation: how lovely the students were, what a rare event this is, and at what exact time in the afternoon did each of us grow tired of our own voices. Nods all around. One person insists this never happens to her because what she’s teaching is so exciting and her students are so amazing. Somewhat deflated, we return to small talk over slices of pie.

  I relish the surreal state of time travel while it lasts, feeling part teenager, part a grown-up version of my favorite teachers. I go to bed resolved: The next morning, I’ll break out of that one-horse town and make a name for myself. Really, I will.

  STASH-WRANGLING IN THE MILE-HIGH CITY: Denver

  ’TWAS THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS when I flew to Denver to film a class for the online learning platform Craftsy. Founded in 2010 and launched in 2011, this heavily funded start-up has capitalized on the market for online craft instruction. They’ve plucked top names from the teaching circuit, capturing their best classes and extending them to a vast and eager virtual audience. Their rise has been meteoric.

  This was my second time at Craftsy. My first class—called “Know Your Yarn,” all about, as you might guess, the structure and properties of different yarns—had done so well that they’d invited me back for a repeat performance. But where do you go after a class about yarn? My answer was a class about dealing with yarn. That is, managing your yarn stash so that it remains a source of inspiration rather than overwhelm.