Blogtour: Arctic Lace

Today I have a special guest here at MindofWinter: Donna Druchunas, author of Arctic Lace: Knitting Projects and Stories Inspired by Alaska's Native Knitters. Donna is touring the knitting blogosphere for the debut of her book, and since I find the subject so intriguing I asked if I could take part and interview her. Enjoy!

1. What inspired you to write Arctic Lace? Were you originally interested in the traditions of the Yup'ik and Inupiat women or was it the Musk Oxen and its luxurious fiber that drew you to the subject?

This is what everyone wants to know! I read an article in the Jan/Feb 1996 issue of Piecework Magazine about the Oomingmak Musk Ox Producers' Co-operative in Anchorage. When I read about this group of 200+ Native Alaskan women who knit fine lace with musk ox wool, I was hooked. I could hardly believe that such soft, fine yarn could be spun from the fur of such a prehistoric-looking animal. I was equally interested in the women who did the knitting, the knitting techniques and patterns they use, and the animals that provide the fiber for the qiviut (kiv'-ee-yoot) yarn. The more I read (and I bought and borrowed over 100 books), the more interested I became. Eventually I decided that I needed to write a book about this story before all of the people involved in the beginnings of the co-op died and the information was lost.

Musk Oxen in a sprinkling of snow2. I know that you previously wrote a book on knitted rugs. Is lace knitting a long-time interest for you, or was this book a departure from your usual projects?

This was a big departure from my previous projects. The projects in The Knitted Rug were mostly knitted on needles size 10, 11, and 13 while the projects in Arctic Lace were made with tiny needles size 1, 2 and 3! The biggest departure for me, however, was that I had never knitted lace before. In fact, the few times that I tried to knit lace, I failed. I think I had a lot of chutzpah to decide to write a book about knitting lace when I never had been able to knit lace successfully! I was actually afraid that I wouldn't be able to pull it off. But during my research, I found information about a knitting workshop given by Ann Schell to the first group of knitters in 1969. I used her tutorials to teach myself to knit lace. With a few changes to my approach, I found that knitting lace was actually easier for me than knitting cables or colorwork, which I had been doing successfully for some time.

The three keys to my success were:

1) Using charts instead of line-by-line instructions, and understanding how to read my knitting so the chart was not a confusing bunch of symbols to me but a picture of the knitting telling me stitch-by-stitch exactly what to do.

2) Using knit two together through the back loop for the left slanting decrease. The traditional decreases of ssk or sl1-k1-psso never worked for me because they required three motions to create one stitch, which disrupted my flow of reading the chart. K2tog-tbl is done in one motion. It creates a twisted decrease, but this does not show up enough to bother me in the fine lace yarns I used for Arctic Lace.

3) Practicing new stitches on worsted or sport weight wool yarn instead of fine laceweight yarn. I usually swatch on size 7 or 5 needles first, so I can learn the stitch and clearly see what I'm doing before I try to work the pattern in the fine yarn. I also swatch in the laceweight yarn as well before I start the project. I know that sounds like a lot of swatching, but I'd rather make mistakes on my swatches than on my actual project, especially if I am using expensive yarn like qiviut!

I talk about each of these three keys in Arctic Lace and I have included an updated version of the tutorial that Ann Schell used to teach the co-op knitters in the 60s.

3. Is it traditional for the Yup'ik and Inupiat women to knit lace primarily, or this just the facet of their knitting tradition that you found yourself interested in?

Knitting first came to Alaska in the hands of missionaries, so the techniques and patterns that were used were Russian, European, and American. Today, just like the rest of us, many Yup'ik and Inupiat women learned how to knit from their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, or neighbors. And just like knitters everywhere, they each have their favorite types of projects, yarns, and knitting techniques.

The lace patterns used by the Oomingmak Co-op were developed specifically for items to be sold commercially. The co-op was created with the specific intention of providing income to women in areas of Alaska where little or no other work was available. Because the lifestyle of Native Alaskans in rural villages has been changing drastically in the last century (snow mobiles have replaced dog sleds as the main form of winter transportation, for example), the people have more need for cash to purchase commercially available items to make their lives more comfortable and to help complement their subsistence lifestyle.

In the early days, before the co-op was incorporated, the women who were involved in the project (the boss was a man named John Teal who had the vision to start the project and it was the 50s and 60s when pretty much every boss was a man!), did a lot of experiments with spinning qiviut fiber and making different types of sample products with it. After trying many different things, they decided to create a line of lace accessories using patterns that were inspired by various Yup'ik and Inupiat arts and crafts designs.

The lace works well with qiviut because the fiber is so very warm and expensive. I find that I can wear a lightweight qiviut scarf on days when I would normally wear a sweater, and I never feel a chill. In addition, the co-op makes their laceweight nachaqs (hoods) out of just 1 ounce of qiviut and scarves with just a little more than that, so they are able to make quite a few items out of small amounts of yarn. Even so, the items start $175 US and a 1 ounce skein of yarn usually goes for about $65-70 US.

The new Tundra and Snow line of products produced by the co-op combines 100% qiviut in natural color with a wool/silk blend in white to help keep the costs down. These items are incredibly warm, as they are made with stranded color work. I can't imagine wearing them except in the arctic!

Blocking scarves at the Oomingmak shop4. Is there a thread that runs through your publications (other than the obvious - knitting!)? I know you have an interest in women's issues and it also seems that you have a particular interest in cultural knitting "niches" that most knitters may not be aware of. How does that interest inform and shape your writing?

I write about whatever grabs my attention. I call the decor in my house "things that I like" and I guess that's my philosophy about choosing writing projects as well. My next book is a pattern book called Kitty Knits that has no history or cultural information. However, I do have a strong interest in women's history, particularly as it relates to textiles. I know how to knit, crochet, embroider, sew, felt, needlepoint... and so forth. My mother and grandmother taught me all different needlework techniques when I was a child. So while I'm focusing on knitting for the time being, I have ideas for books in other areas as well.

I also want at least some of what I write to have a greater purpose. That is, while I like to have fun and produce books that are fun to read and knit from, I would also like to be able to bring awareness to readers about issues that might otherwise fall under the radar. I don't think many people in the lower 48 know much about the Eskimos of Alaska. (The word Eskimo is an umbrella term that includes several related groups of Native Alaskans. In Canada, the term Inuit is preferred.*) There are very rich cultural heritages throughout Alaska and learning about the Native Alaskan peoples and their cultures can enrich all of our lives.

5. Which piece did you most enjoy creating for the book and what is it about that piece that you like?

My favorite piece to knit was the North Star Tam because it was challenging. It starts at the crown with 8 sts on double pointed needles, and you use yarn over increases to shape the hat and at the same time to draw a star on the crown. I also love the color of the yarn. Yellow is one of my favorite colors, and I used a gorgeous gold qiviut yarn from Windy Valley Musk Ox farm for the North Star Tam and Scarf set. You can't see the color in the book because the photos are all black and white, but I think the color is a perfect match to the design of this project. I also enjoyed designing this because it is the only pattern not based on an Eskimo design, so I got to let myself go wild, so to speak. I still stuck to the theme of Alaska, but I did not try to incorporate any existing design elements into this pattern.

Chevron Scarf from Arctic Lace6. Did you attempt to stay close to tradition when creating patterns, or did you find yourself branching out on some projects and giving a piece a bit of your own voice?

For most of the projects, I chose a Yup'ik or Inupiat object and let the decorations on that object speak to me until I could figure out how to transfer the shapes into lace knitting. The signature patterns of the Co-op are all inspired in this way and I wanted to create designs that were authentic to their tradition. I did depart from that for the North Star set as I mentioned above and for the Moebius Scarf, which uses a pattern created by Dorothy Reade. Reade was very influential in helping the Co-op test different types of spinning and production techniques, and I wanted to honor her contribution to the Co-op by featuring one of her original lace designs in the book.

7. What was the most difficult aspect of researching and writing Arctic Lace? Were you surprised by anything that you learned about your subject or yourself along the way?

The hardest part of the research -- and writing -- was deciding to stop. There is so much information about each of the topics in Arctic Lace, that I could have spent 10 more years on my research. My original manuscript was twice as long as the book is now. I had to decide what to cut and what to leave in. Some of the information I cut was published in Piecework magazine in an article called Needleworkers of the North. But most of it is just languishing on the hard drive of my old laptop and will probably never be used for anything.

I was surprised in several ways during my research. I was surprised to learn that musk oxen have no musk glands and they are not oxen. They are actually most closely related to sheep and goats. Early explorers misnamed the strange "buffalo" they saw in Canada, and the misnomer stuck.

I was surprised that musk oxen can not survive in areas with deep snow. They can only dig through a few inches of snow to find food, and if the snow is deep for long periods of time, they can starve.

I was surprised that many people in Unalakleet, a village of 600 people I visited, had pickup trucks even though you can't drive to any other town! I'm sure the trucks are nice when it's 50-below and you have to go to the post office or on other errands, but I just had no idea that I would see so many cars or trucks in an Eskimo village with no roads to other villages.

I could go on and on, but I was most surprised to discover that I love knitting lace, and that it is actually easy!

Thanks to Donna for this wonderfully informative interview. I hope it will pique your interest in this book and in the knitting traditions of the Arctic and the wonderful fiber of the musk ox. The blogtour continues. If you would like to follow the story, you can find the schedule here.

*Note from Julia: I was interested in the origins and uses of the term Eskimo, so I looked for a little more information on Wikipedia. The women who Donna worked with while researching Arctic Lace refer to themselves as Eskimo, so she uses it here. It does seem that the Inuit of Canada prefer not to be referred to as Eskimo, however, so I wanted to be sure that my readers understand that the term is only used in the context of the interview to describe people who use it to describe themselves.