Letters
Letter from Paris: Summering on Île des Écharpes
Dear friends,
As I’ve mentioned before, July and August are for French people the primary months of the grandes vacances, the month-long vacations to which all working people are entitled by law. You are not required to take your vacances in the summer, but it’s easier to arrange when almost everyone else is also having their vacances.
The first, smaller wave has already left the city. A bunch of restaurants and shops have their shutters down and their congé annuel (annual leave) notices taped up. I love that the notices are almost always hastily scrawled on the back of a menu, or a torn envelope fished out of the wastebasket. You can see the burning desire to get the heck out of Paris in every jittery stroke of the pen.
I’m still here; but in my head I’m far, far away. I’m looking out across the water from a place where the blowing sand stings as hard as the mosquitoes. Where the pool is always closed for repairs, yet by sunrise all the good lounge chairs have been taken. Where the tropical drinks cost as much as a Subaru and they arrive, if they arrive at all, tasting like lukewarm bathwater.
Greetings from Île des Écharpes. Scarf Island.
It’s a bland rectangular outcropping in the Sea of Ennui, somehow both frustratingly narrow and endlessly long.
It’s my own fault that I’m here.
Last winter, I finally figured out my scarf game. Wearing a scarf is a Parisian sartorial cliché; but unlike the beret and the poodle, it’s actually based on truth. In Paris, a scarf helps the world to know at a glance who you are …
… and it also keeps you from getting sick. If you go out in Paris with your neck uncovered, you are guaranteed at best sniffles and at worst whatever it was that killed Violetta in La Traviata.
Perhaps you are a medical professional, and you are about to bang out an angry comment telling me that’s hogwash. Go ahead. I didn’t believe it either. I learned the hard way. If you come here and swan around the Rive Gauche with your musculi cervicales on parade and end up coughing like Fantine, don’t come running to me.
Anyhow, last year I realized that almost all my scarves were too long and too wide for the way I live in Paris. They were fine in Chicago. In Chicago, you want something heavy and long. Heavy enough to wrap around your face five or six times to keep your lips from freezing together, and long enough so they can use it to drag you out of the snowdrift after the rescue dogs locate your body.
Here, you just need something that keeps the damp (it’s always damp) off your neck and chest. It should be easy to put on and take off as you go in and out of doors, and small enough to tuck neatly into your bag without crushing your emergency macarons.
I counted fourteen scarves in my wardrobe. Thirteen did not satisfy these requirements.
So I began to plan for new scarves. There are many ways to get a scarf, of course. One can buy them—instant gratification. One can weave them or sew them—still relatively quick. Or one can knit or crochet them—slow. Guess which of those I get paid to do?
As often happens, my personal needs got entwined with my professional duties. I am preparing a class on linen stitch for my Patreon group, and linen stitch makes gorgeous scarves.
Of course there’s more to linen stitch than just the basic method, so one must of course knit a scarf for each variation.
Around this time I was also tapped to appear in Season Ten of Knit Stars, and decided to teach shadow knitting. Shadow knitting makes gorgeous scarves.
Of course in addition to the class one would like to have kits. For the sheer thrill of it we (Knit Stars, Canon Hand Dyes, and I) decided to have two kits, with two colorways for each kit, and a doublewide option for the main pattern of one of the kits. Each of those requires a finished sample.
Any fool could have seen where this was heading. Not me. I am not just any fool, I am deluxe. I have add-ons, end-user modifications, and lace trim.
Here on Scarf Island, I have been a resident long enough to become a local landmark. I am mentioned in all the guidebooks. I serve as the point of departure for the little choo choo that will also show you the old courthouse and the war memorial.
Will I ever leave? Perhaps. Just today, I bound off this warmer-weather scarf in French linen yarn from Natissea. It had been so long since I bound off anything that I almost couldn’t remember how.
That leaves me only … let me see … four to go.
As the French say, [expletive redacted].
Cordialement,
Franklin
I always look forward to these missives and you never disappoint, Franklin!
I still haven’t finished my FIRST linen stitch scarf!
Thank you for a light hearted start to the day. You are amazing. You are inspiring. You bring joy.
I’ll be going to scarf island with your season 10 class and kit.
And the scarf picks up a bit of the color in the embroidery on the jacket!
Nicely done!
The truth of the scarf thing. I arrived with 1, left with 5. The thing that impressed me most was how effortlessly chic everyone looked styling said scarf. I came home and knit another. I may need to join you on Scarf Island needles at the ready and tepid drink in hand.
Monsieur, on a day where my body chose violence, leaving me to do *accounting* while supine, your missive has brought a smile. Thank you, and I echo your expletive redacted. Bonne chance!
I applaud your devotion. I love the look of linen stitch & once looked up how it was done. At which point I decided I was doomed to admire it from afar.
Thanks for the terrific despatch from the Island!
Bon courage Franklin!
Those little snarks! How do you do it? Hello from balcony island in Maryland at 7 am. Already steamy. 380 stitches on the needle of a shawl.
Wonderful. You always evoke smiles, ideas and inspiration. It sets my brain in action for the whole day. Thank you.
Kathleen
Linen stitch is so elegant, shows off handpainted yarns to perfection and so worth the time it takes.
I’m not just any fool. I am deluxe.
Same, same.
It is always a joy to read your letters.
Ha ha ha, you never fail to make me laugh and lighten my load. All the best to you this month and always
I am from Chicago (suburb) too, and your description of the necessary scarf made me laugh!
I do love a scarf and I have many but I lack the skill to casually throw on a scarf. My 86 year old mother can toss a length of something (anything really) around her neck and/or head and she looks like she’s off the meet her French lover. I, on the other hand, look like a farm girl in a 16th century painting, carrying a lamb, and being chased across a field.
I love, love, love your writing! I laughed all the way through this while sipping my morning coffee. Thank you for starting my day in the best way possible!
How about a smiley face for that shadow knitting? Just a thought. Maybe for the more simple-minded knitters of us. I’m sure you have thought up something much more clever and tempting. My experience of summer in Paris was not damp, but for the truly damp winters I was saved on a walk by sensational onion soup and crépes in a Breton restaurant. That was 50 years ago. Do they still have Breton restaurants in Paris? Love the scarf characterizations. You are the best at that. Can’t wait to see what you have come up with, Franklin!
great article….what a hoot!
You redacted « mince » ?!?