The Yarn Whisperer

by Clara Parkes

  The puzzle part makes me realize how much a good mystery can be like a good knitting pattern. It takes you on an adventure, engages your mind, paints a pretty landscape, maybe even surprises you now and then, but always reaches the expected resolution. It has no errata, no missing instructions, no unexpected third sleeve or illegitimate son thrown in at the end to tidy things up without regard for the original plot line.

  Like writers, designers tell stories in their own way. They each have their telltale plots and characters. They employ certain kinds of charts and keys and knitting techniques, use specific language, again and again, reflecting a unique and persistent creative style across everything they do.

  Long before I knew how to knit, I was already hooked on mysteries. While my brothers occupied themselves with endless games of Dungeons and Dragons, I hid out in my room and read my Hardy Boys. (No Nancy Drew for me. I got my brothers’ hand-me-downs and became so fond of Frank and Joe that Nancy didn’t stand a chance.)

  I liked these books because you knew nothing truly bad was ever going to happen. No matter how high that house on the cliff or how creepy that tunnel leading to the old mill where the counterfeiters were holed up, no matter how fast the waters rushed or how loud the bad guy’s gun went bang, you knew nobody would get killed and everything would be resolved by the last page. The best week I ever spent was at home on the couch recovering from a highly exaggerated case of the flu, with a bowl of ramen noodles, a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, a bottle of ginger ale, and my stack of Hardy Boys for company.

  When we visited my mother’s parents in the summer, I’d sleep in a tiny room under the eaves at the end of the house, with windows on three sides. It was my grandma’s hideout, and in it she’d placed all of her beloved mysteries. Nothing fancy, just Bantam, Dell, and Pocket paperbacks priced at 45¢, the “newer” editions running a more decadent 60¢.

  Here I met Hercule Poirot for the first time, that belovedly eccentric Belgian detective with the tidy moustache, who always referred to himself in the third person. I loved how he refused to eat two soft-boiled eggs unless they were identical in shape and size. I marveled at the way his brain seized on the most minute details—a shard of glass, a clump of garden dirt—how he always seemed to know when a postmark was genuine and when it had been altered. As great as modern television’s Monk is, he has nothing on Poirot.

  I jumped shelves and began reading Agatha Christie’s other stories, especially those featuring Miss Marple. Far more mild-mannered and unassuming than Poirot, this innocuous little old lady had the strength to stare down the most ruthless of criminals. But her real gift was her simple ability to draw parallels between whatever she was facing at the moment and her experiences in the small town of St. Mary Mead. “It is rather reminiscent of when the spoon went missing at Hartleygate Manor,” she’d say, “and everybody blamed the servant, Molly, until she finally left, and then the spoon was later found, but by then, oh, my, it was too late, now, wasn’t it?”

  Strangers would dismiss her talk as the random babblings of a crazy lady. But someone, somewhere, knew better. He or she did listen. And soon, as the plot unfolded, other people began to see that this woman was, in fact, more intelligent and observant than the rest of them put together. They would crane their necks for a better listen and cling to her every word. It always began with a gentle clearing of the throat, an, “Oh dear, I fear I shall explain things badly, you see, for I lack your modern training and all,” followed by a discreet suggestion that they check behind the vicarage, or look in Lady Something-or-Other’s medicine cabinet more closely. Always, the answer is there. Agatha Christie was the Elizabeth Zimmermann of the mystery world, a masterful storyteller whose language was as consistently engaging and inventive as the plots themselves. In The Opinionated Knitter, you can almost hear Elizabeth clearing her throat à la Miss Marple before she suggests, “There are few knitting problems that will not yield to a blend of common sense, ingenuity and resourcefulness.…” I’m sure she meant to put a “my dear” in there somewhere, too.

  Even my father got into the mystery game one summer when he was living with his future in-laws down in Washington, D. C. He decided to read my grandma’s entire collection of Agatha Christie books. He figured Christie had to have a code, some sort of secret formula she used to create her plots, and he was going to crack it once and for all.

  He made it through all the books without ever figuring out her secret. But he did offer one observation. Christie was never truly sympathetic to the culprit. She’d paint pretty odious pictures of all of her characters at first—after all, that’s the job of any mystery writer, to paint everybody as a suspect—but over time each person would gradually become more human, except for the true culprit, to whom Christie never showed mercy.

  From Agatha Christie it was an easy leap to my grandmother’s other guilty favorite, the mysteries of Georges Simenon. Suddenly we crossed the channel to a murky, gray Paris where the November cold was settling in and Inspector Maigret was hunkered in his office at the Palais de Justice, a haze of pipe smoke swirling around his head as a petty criminal squirmed in the seat across from him. Here the stories grew slightly more brutal in nature: the stabbings, the prostitutes, the severed heads. But again, the people and the environment created a vivid portrait that was as engaging as the plot itself. Paris came to life in these books, in Simenon’s masterful descriptions of the streets, the smells, and, always, the food eaten by Inspector Maigret at every brasserie and bistro he passed … they were so strikingly animated that I could almost see, smell, and taste them. And always, fairness prevailed.

  Even now, the Maigret stories are my popcorn, my chaser after a heavy meal. The summer that I was finishing up The Knitter’s Book of Wool, my daily routine was to write all morning, have my lunch out on the porch, and then spend the rest of the afternoon tucked into a Maigret mystery. I’d blow through one book every two days, sometimes in just one day alone. It kept my mind clear, and I love thinking that perhaps a tiny bit of Maigret’s Paris managed to drift in and settle among each morning’s woolly words.

  Many of the newer mysteries leave me cold. They seem to thrive all too often on gratuitous blood-splatters, not only telling us that the leg was severed by a chainsaw but making sure we hear the sputter of the engine and the whir of the chain as it makes its first slice into human flesh. These stories, like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, delve deep into human darkness, their conclusions reached with a realistically tired cynicism. Good may have prevailed today, but the evil and darkness lurking within each of us will ultimately win.

  Thankfully, there’s no blood in knitting patterns; nobody dies or loses a limb. But they can have characters who are always leaping, chasing, and being shot at. These are the knitting patterns where each row has action, your needles are performing constant acrobatics without ever getting a moment to slow down and breathe. They are packed to the gills with excess adornment, the American Idol contestant who insists on singing twelve trilly notes when just one steady, true one would suffice. They are laden with knitterly drama and pyrotechnics, often resulting in a spectacular garment that feels too special for everyday wear.

  Other contemporary mysteries follow an even worse, cutesy “mystery lite” formula—the bulky garter-stitch scarf made out of a particularly uninventive and lifeless skein of yarn. Nothing bad happens in these books, you figure out the whole thing by page three, and then have to spend the rest of the time enduring the combative flirtings of your attractive and naturally slender heroine and Harrison, or Hadley, or Morgan, the incredibly handsome barrel-chested fire chief of her small Connecticut town.

  No, for me a good mystery is the quiet kind that makes the nuance of human character an integral part of the plot. It’s the knitting pattern in which yarn and stitch are kept in perfect balance. These mysteries speak to the very nature of human psychology—to the fiber itself—to who we are and what makes us do what we do. They work with yarn rather than against or in spite of it,
sometimes even stepping aside so that the yarn alone can enjoy center stage.

  These stories let us meet and analyze all sorts of people we’d never encounter in real life. We snoop in their drawers, we eavesdrop on their conversations, we try fabulous new stitches and techniques and materials. We’re given clues and then slowly figure out who, among all these characters, would have had any reason to kill the eccentric and much-disliked master of the house. (It was the daughter-in-law. Always is.)

  Agatha Christie may have kept her secrets to herself, but at a very high level, all mysteries do follow a certain formula, just as knitting patterns do. They always have the thing that happened, a murder or theft, extortion, kidnapping—a shawl, sweater, pair of mittens. They have a cast of characters, each with his or her reasons for being a likely suspect, and each with similarly compelling reasons why they couldn’t possibly have done it. In knitting patterns, yarn and needles comprise your cast of characters. Our plot is the pattern itself. A good designer lays it out in a logical sequence that moves us ever forward toward resolution.

  Sometimes we’re led down one path that proves to be a dead end, the red herring. This is the point in our project when we realize that the instructions we’ve been diligently following actually had a second part that began, “at the same time.…” None of which we’d seen or done.

  By then another body is discovered, a building burned, a priceless masterpiece stolen. Our stitches look utterly peculiar, and we realize we’ve gotten dangerously off track. Faulty stitches fixed, we race toward the real culprit, hoping to reach him before the bind-off. Just in the nick of time, our hero or heroine figures it out. In a dramatic climax, the whole dastardly scheme is revealed and the perpetrator brought to justice. The stitches are bound off, shoulders seamed, tails darned, fabric blocked and ready to wear. The end.

  Just as I’ve progressed from being a follower of other people’s patterns to the tentative creator of my own, I’ve also started to dabble in writing my own mysteries. I keep them in a notebook I’ve jokingly titled The Knitter’s Book of Plots. Just as I have no illusions of being a fabulous knitwear designer, these stories need work. But the act of writing a plot is a great mental game. Like swatching, it lets you establish your gauge and piece together all sorts of scenarios, figuring out the what-ifs until everything makes sense, your numbers match, your plot is foolproof. You can do all of this without ever having to follow through and cast on a single stitch or write a word of dialogue. Some of the best patterns were conceived on paper before any stitch was knit. Of course, some of the worst patterns were conceived this way, too.

  There are good mysteries and bad mysteries, good patterns and bad ones and truly ghastly ones. A bad mystery is enough to put you off mysteries forever, just as a bad pattern can send you off your knitting for a good long while. The lousy mystery leaves ends undarned. Its plot is flawed. The characters may be weak, their behavior not always consistent; the yarn is a poor match for what the pattern is asking of it. The writer omits crucial facts. The conclusion was reached too hastily, the hem of your sleeve is far shorter than any human arm would ever be. You’re left scratching your head when the pattern later instructs you to pick up the stitches that you’d placed on the holder. What holder? What stitches?

  The very worst of the lot are those that end by revealing a new undarned end, a shadowy figure shaking his fist and shouting, “I’ll get you for this!” before slipping away into the bushes. Advertising a sequel to badness is unconscionable.

  But the good mystery? You’re sad to bind off and eager for the next adventure. Once you stumble onto a designer and designs you like, you’ll knit anything they put out. You derive comfort and inspiration from their creative process. You might even spend a whole summer trying to decipher their formula.

  AUNT JUDY

  EVERYBODY HAS AN Aunt Judy. That may not be her actual name, but we all have that one aunt we especially adore—the one who was there for us in ways our parents couldn’t be, who loved us unconditionally, and whose house was the greatest place on earth to visit. You know the Aunt Judy I’m talking about. What was yours named?

  Mine really is an Aunt Judy. She’s my father’s oldest sister, and she lives in Michigan with my Uncle Russ in a yellow house with porches on all sides, surrounded by a garden more overrun and magical than the one in the children’s book by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

  We used to visit Aunt Judy often. I associate her with laughter, playing in the pool, eating ice cream, running around barefoot. There was a complete lack of drama around Aunt Judy, just pure, unadulterated childhood happiness—even when her Saint Bernard, Toby, fell in love with my mother and had to be locked in the basement.

  Aunt Judy was a schoolteacher, and she spent every spare minute out in her garden. Her parents were passionate gardeners, and she shared their fascination with all things green. She dutifully planted her yard according to a plan her father had drawn for her. After he died, she and my grandmother traveled the world visiting gardens. She’s a master gardener and can tell you the Latin name of almost any plant—and not in that snub “watch me speak Latin” way, but more like a kid who’s showing her favorite toys to a friend.

  My brothers would always run off with her son, Roger, and do older “boy” things together. I worshipped her daughter, Kathy, who was also older than me. In her I had an actual friend, a girl with whom I could stay up late having whispered conversations in the dark. The year Kathy redecorated her room with jet-black carpet, silver wallpaper, and matching silver Venetian blinds, my brain nearly exploded from awe. My parents’ divorce made our visits less frequent, and soon our age difference broke the spell. She started working in the summers and then moved into her own apartment. We visited her there, but it wasn’t the same.

  Once I reached my twenties, I didn’t see my aunt or my cousin very often. And I certainly didn’t reveal many of the exciting upheavals in my life. We wrote Christmas cards and kept the conversation light, but when Clare and I made our cross-country move to Maine, we made a pilgrimage to Aunt Judy’s house. She welcomed us with open arms.

  I used to think that my knitting lineage could only be traced back through my mother’s side of the family to my grandma, but late in her life I learned that my “other” grandma—Aunt Judy’s mother, who insisted on being called “Grandmother”—also knew how to knit.

  She was a violinist, and her husband was a composer and conductor. They met at the Eastman School of Music, the same school where my parents met some thirty years later. When they were first married, my grandfather arranged music for Buffalo Bill’s radio program and my grandmother played violin in the Buffalo Philharmonic. This was in the early 1930s, when women rarely worked outside of the home, and they certainly didn’t perform in orchestras. She was one of the few women who did, and she later spent thirty-seven years as concert-mistress of the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra.

  But back in Buffalo during rehearsals, the conductor sometimes focused on one part of a piece, leaving several of the musicians twiddling their thumbs. My grandmother used the time to pull out a tiny sweater she was working on, presumably for my aunt, and sneak in a few rows. But the conductor noticed. He glared at her, and then her knitting, until finally she put it away. After the rehearsal, the conductor came over. “Mrs. Parkes,” he said in a heavy Hungarian accent, “What were you doing just now?”

  Before she could answer, he began to critique her knitting. Not that she was knitting, but that her technique was wrong. He grabbed her sweater and promptly began demonstrating the “proper” way to knit.

  She gave up knitting not too long after that. It didn’t give her nearly the pleasure that playing violin and puttering in the dirt did. A year after my grandmother passed away, Aunt Judy decided to come to a knitting retreat I was putting together in Virginia. She seemed a little untethered by her loss, as if she’d lost the “tock” to her “tick.” Try as she may, her daughter, Kathy, just couldn’t share in her mother’s love of gardening. Her thum
b was not green at all, and I know she felt bad about this, as if she were letting her mother down. But Kathy was intrigued by knitting and by the prospect of getting to see me. She asked her mother if she could come along.

  “Of course you can,” said Aunt Judy. “But you realize you’ll have to learn how to knit?” A minor detail.

  On an airplane headed east from Detroit, at an altitude of approximately 35,000 feet, my Aunt Judy put knitting needles in Kathy’s hands for the first time. She had no reason to like it, especially since she’d been given a bent pair of scratched aluminum Susan Bates needles and a frayed, pilly old ball of synthetic yarn. Yet Kathy took to knitting like a fish to water.

  My Aunt Judy hadn’t knit since her kids were young, so her technique was, like her own needles, a little rough around the edges. Every few rows, the empty needle would slip from her hand and hit the classroom’s linoleum floor with such a clatter that everyone would stop what they were doing and stare. It was such an effective attention-getter that it became our official gavel, gong, and dinner bell. “Where’s Aunt Judy?” I’d ask, and then patiently wait for her to finish her row before taking her needle.

  Aunt Judy and Kathy fell in love with knitting together. They quickly replaced those old aluminum needles with fresh new ones. They took classes and made road trips to farms and yarn stores. Between them, they began amassing quite a collection of yarn. By the next year’s retreat, Aunt Judy was doing colorwork and Kathy was putting zippers in vests. They haven’t missed a year since.