Writing

Firsts

Having leafed over into a fresh year, it’s the perfect time to start something ambitious, right? I’ve written here before about my love and respect for Bohus knitting, and this winter I’ve finally decided to stop dithering, stop making it too precious, and just plunge headlong into my Wild Apple kit.

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I’ve got extra momentum to tackle this magnum opus because I’ve been fueling up on Bohus research and happily immersing myself in the wonderful new Bohus book. In a bolt from the blue (the likes of which I haven’t known since the day Jared Flood emailed me and asked if I’d be his copywriter!), Vogue Knitting came knocking last August with an offer I couldn’t help but accept: an open-ended article on Bohus history to lay the foundation for a “Swedish Modern” design collection. I felt this was an important opportunity to tell the remarkable tale of the Bohus Stickning company, including the modern chapter of the reproduction kits. And I immediately set about seeking permissions to reprint as many pictures of the original garments as I could shake out of the bushes. Everyone I spoke to in Sweden—Solveig Gustafsson, dyer and recreator of the Bohus originals; Pernille Silfverberg, angora farmer and new bearer of Solveig’s torch; Viveka Overland of the Bohusläns Museum, author of Bohus Stickning: The Revival—was utterly lovely and so very generous in sharing knowledge, providing photos, and reading my drafts. Susanna Hansson, Wendy Keele, and Meg Swansen replied to my queries and offered encouragement stateside. This month my article is in print and on newsstands!

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The photos you see here are of designer Kerstin Olsson wearing her 1963 design Rain Clouds (left); the model at right is wearing a version of Karin Ivarsson’s The Swan (1966). Below is Emma Jacobsson in the Bohus Stickning stockroom in 1964. Both are from the Bohusläns Museum’s excellent collection.

And as for my Wild Apple, I’ve joined in the third color—only twelve more to go! I’ll be a little mournful when the yoke is complete; these tiny stitches and mesmerizing interplay of colors are totally hypnotic.

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What challenges are you setting yourself for 2016, knitting or otherwise?

Words

Picture, say, a scarlet ibis alighting on your dining room table. The flabbergasted wonderment you’d feel is roughly akin to my reaction when an email from Jared Flood appeared in my inbox one utterly normal November day. My first thought was this: That’s it. The Nigerian spammers have found my weakness. I’d better let Brooklyn Tweed know their corporate email has been hacked. Then I opened it anyway. Jared wrote that he was seeking a house writer for Brooklyn Tweed, someone to help with all the different sorts of copy he needs to generate and doesn’t have time to write himself because he is rather busy designing and knitting and photographing gorgeous garments and also making yarn and running a fully fledged business. He thought of me. (!) He also wondered if I’d like to write a longer piece for the BT Winter collection, a knitter’s reflection on winter, in any form I wished to give it. I quickly reviewed the rules for dating, such as I remember them from before I met my husband half a lifetime ago. I waited what I hoped was a seemly 45 minutes before I wrote back YES. I schooled myself to avoid exclamation points.

I’m an editor by trade. Writing is the backbone of my craft and I often do a deal of it for my authors. When I worked on children’s books in New York there was often a gifted illustrator who needed help to shape a cohesive story or a middle-grade fantasy novelist who needed coaxing beyond formulaic plots and stock characters. Lloyd Alexander once accepted my suggestion for a line of repartee, so I was always going to die happy. In my current work, my writers are teachers in the traces and their energies are best spent on the children in their charge, so I polish and enhance their reflections or simply interview them and draft the articles myself. Editors don’t take credit, though. You might see them thanked by the author in a note, but you won’t find their names in the fine print alongside the jacket designer or the photographer who captured the author’s image for the back flap. And I’m very comfortable working offstage.

But I’m trying to push myself a little harder, to keep growing and seeking new possibilities. I don’t want to plough myself under intellectually as I accept the physical and emotional work of motherhood. And human beings need to reach for what might be beyond their grasp in order to learn and grow. So I said yes to Brooklyn Tweed, yes to being a writer with her name on her work. And today you can read a little essay called “Winter Words” in the middle of the new lookbook. I promise I am not at all offended if you huff right past it, slavering for the luscious cables and textured stitches and coastal scenery in the fashion story called Shingle & Copse. I’d do the same. A new Brooklyn Tweed collection is like a land rush. But maybe you’ll page back and read it later on.

Of course, with the ibis on your dining table, after the shock and amazement pass, practical thoughts are going to creep in. What do you do with it now that it’s here? What if it won’t just fly back out the window? What if it voids its capacious bowels all over the important tax documents and your great-grandmother’s linens? Should you feed it? It’s a queer, naked feeling, knowing your words are out standing together under the scrutiny of many thousands of eyes. Let me know what you think of them. Maybe you’ll feel like writing your own origin story. Leave a link in the comments if you do, because stories are good food for humans. They’re how we make and share meaning from the raw stuff of the world. And being a writer is connective — strands of words knit us together across great spans of the globe. A pencil and a knitting needle are nearly the same tool. Cheers, you writers and you knitters, you people of the sticks.