Handmade With
Love
by Ellen Mitchell (from Newsday December
20, 2001)
FROM THE East River to the East End, as
throughout the entire country, people are
searching for a way to navigate the uncharted
waters left in the wake of Sept. 11. More
than a few have discovered that giving
something of themselves this holiday season
offers safe harbor.
For some, it is a way to reaffirm family
values, for others a way to fly in the
face of commercialism or perhaps to cope
with a shrinking economy, and for all it
has brought some personal solace. Women,
and this seems to be a woman thing, are
making and baking everything from origami
boxes to oatmeal cookies to give as gifts
for Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa.
In a small yarn shop almost in the shadow
of the Williamsburg Bridge, Dinna Diaz,
Mitzi Good, Laura Foley and Mary Walker
have met each Monday evening since mid-September.
The four previously unacquainted Brooklynites
have been learning to knit under the watchful
eye of Linda LaBelle, proprietor of The
Yarn Tree.
The increasingly more sophisticated results
of their labors will be given out to family
and friends as Christmas pres.ents. Creating
their own gifts has never before been a
priority with any of the group.
"After the World Trade Center,
I couldn't turn the TV off, I couldn't
sleep. I lost my job because my
company's sales went down and they
cut staff. Knitting takes my mind
off it," Walker said.
Her maiden effort, a cloche, played big
in Kansas. She wore the hat there at Thanksgiving,
and left it with an admiring grandmother.
Now she's making a two-piece set, a hat
and long scarf for her mother.
"The natural yarns are much
better than some acrylic Wal-Mart
hat," Walker
added.
Good, who came to the first knitting class
on Sept. 17, was putting the finishing
touches on a matched set of mother/ daughter
hats and scarves for her sister and niece.
"This group was here and we talked
about knitting. No one talked about the World
Trade Center. It was the first day I felt
normal again," she said.
"It means more to people to
give them something you made," said
Diaz, as she clicked needles feverishly
to finish assorted hats and scarves
for her mother and two sisters-in-law.
"Time is precious, and if you're
taking time out to make something
for someone, it means you think
they're special. I would love to
receive something handmade myself," she
said.
"I've been crazy knitting since
the World Trade Center," said
Foley, who has advanced to the
stage where she is making a pillow
with a cable stitch down the middle
for her father.
"Knitting makes me feel good.
I used to go out all the time, I
was never a home person before,
but now I'd rather stay home, watch
a movie and knit," Foley added.
"And there's nothing going on
anymore in the neighborhood anyway," Good
agreed.
"Everybody tells me it's important
now for them to make something," LaBelle
explained. It is clear that her
knitting lessons offer much in
the way of group therapy as well
as in hats and scarves.
One hundred miles to the east, on the North
Fork, Jackie Scavone and her daughter,
Arianna, have put the finishing touches
on a gingerbread house, which they will
soon present to grandma. It is the first
time in her life that Scavone has handmade
any gift, and she's doing so as much for
her children, Arianna, 3, and Jake, 11/2,
as for herself.
In fact, Scavone is reluctant to take her
children to the mall in today's uncertain
atmosphere.
"Going to the mall without my
children doesn't bother me, but I
prefer
not to take the kids there," she
said.
"We're doing things together
to make them appreciate the giving
as opposed to the getting," said
Scavone, who is making peanut,
hazelnut, sesame seed, "all
kinds of" brittles as gifts.
"Everybody I speak with feels
thankful to have the people they
love. We
have to make sure we appreciate
them and not take them for granted
this year by going out and buying
a quick sweater and that's it," she
said.
The Scavones traditionally travel between
Christmas and New Year's. This year will
find them close to home and hearth.
"We're not afraid to fly, but
we just want to spend time with family
and friends who are important to
us, and everyone's here. We're
lucky," Scavone said.
Linda Scarduzio, a cook at SUNY Stony Brook,
is putting her professional skills to use
for gift giving this holiday season. The
Smithtown mother of two boys, Danny, 12,
and Jason, 7, is spending all her free
time in the kitchen rather than in the
shopping malls.
"I'll do a lot of pesto sauces
and tomato sauces and put them in
little
food baskets. I'm going to write
something about the way my life
has changed and include that with
the baskets," said Scarduzio.
She has also gone back to basics by pulling
up backyard nuisance vines and turning
them into simple holiday wreaths.
"I feel very uncomfortable even
looking around at all the Christmas
decorations. People are really
poor and dying, and we have such
opulence in the United States.
All I can think about is the families
who are not going to have a good
Christmas this year," she
said.
And what about her two sons?
"I'll buy commercial stuff for the kids," she
admitted.
Gina McManus of Huntington is making her
own greeting cards, because "I want
my signature on something this year.
"I feel my husband and I have
been fortunate through this terrible
time in many ways, and I wanted
to do something from the heart,
a more personal touch."
Her cards carry the word "peace" in
gold-embossed Old English script mounted
on layers of gold and green papers. McManus
has made about 75 cards, each one time-consuming
and expensive.
"You certainly don't save money
making your own cards. In fact,
it's probably more money, and with
the time that goes into it, I don't
know how people make money making
cards," she said.
McManus' husband, James, was at work on
the 25th floor of Tower One on the morning
of Sept. 11. After the initial attack,
his office was evacuated through a skyway
into Tower Two. He was emerging from Tower
Two as the second plane hit. He escaped
unscathed physically. The couple lost several
close friends in the attack, and their
parish, St. Patrick's in Huntington, lost
more than 20 members.
"It's an ongoing healing process.
It's going to take a long time," she
said.
For Devorah Fong of the Ditmas Park section
of Brooklyn, the cost of making her own
Christmas gifts has been minimal compared
to what she might have spent if she'd gone
out and purchased the more than 100 miniature
origami boxes she has created since Sept.
11.
"Some I'll give to friends,
some will go to the teachers at my
children's
school. My children, my family
will all get boxes. It's become
an obsession ... an enjoyable obsession," said
Fong.
"I've taken the anxiety and
turned it into creativity."
Fong's "obsession" came about
as an offshoot of her involvement in making
unity buttons and ribbons to be sold to
benefit the Windows of Hope Fund, set up
to aid food industry workers who've lost
their jobs as a result of the attacks.
She went to the craft stores so often that
she started making hair clips for her daughter,
Riza Jaz, 11. A friend, Ellen Martinez,
saw the hair clips and taught her how to
make an origami box to hold the clips.
Once the gift-giving frenzy subsides, Fong
plans to sell the remaining boxes and donate
the proceeds to the Windows of Hope Fund.
"Each box will give lasting
pleasure. It will capture something
of the
recipient's life and talk to that
person," Fong said.
A friend who recently purchased a new home
will receive a box with a miniature key
on the lid. Her daughter's history teacher
will likely delight in a box with a flat
globe on the top. Her son, Julian Guy,
8, will be getting a 2-by- 2-inch green
keepsake box decorated with a tiny baseball
diamond and minuscule silver baseball.
"He could keep something like
a ticket from a special game in it," Fong
suggested.
"There's been such a feeling
of helplessness," she said. "We
feel out of control. We are told
to be on higher and higher alert.
Making something for someone else
is very satisfying and soothing."
This writer has shared their experience.
Last summer at a craft fair, I was intrigued
by a series of Zen gardens, a group of
small, charming oases containing miniature
plants imbedded in sand and with a tiny
rake to draw through the sand.
After Sept. 11, the Zen garden idea seemed
an excellent one to re-create. Adapted
now as beach gardens, my creations, complete
with driftwood, shells, stones and tiny
beach pails, will go to close family members
and friends.
It is my fervent hope that they will enjoy
as much as I do just sitting and thinking
of the beach in summer and running the
tiny rakes through the sand, at those times
when none of us cares to remember what
it is impossible to forget.
Ellen Mitchell is a freelance writer.
Copyright (c) 2001, Newsday, Inc.
