Iceland, a country of volcanoes and hot springs, short ponies, and wooly horned sheep, is also a land with a super-long and cold Christmas Eve. Sure, the dark skies often host theatrical colored light displays of aurora borealis, but still…by mid-December, daylight lasts a scant five hours The sun rises around 11 am and sets between 3 and 4 pm.
Jolabokaflod, “Christmas book flood,” is Iceland’s charming way to deal with the holiday’s extra helping of darkness. On Christmas Eve, gifts of new books are unwrapped, and folks snuggle in for a night of reading. Hot chocolate is the drink of choice. Not surprisingly, Iceland sells the most books per person in the world.
To help fabric and textile lovers who’d like to indulge in their own cozy snuggled-in evening of reading and chocolate, consider these:
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
This novel written in the Southern Ontario Gothic style is Atwood’s fictionalized rendering of the story of Grace Marks, a servant woman, who may (or may not) have been a cold-blooded murderess. Each chapter features a quilt block evocative of the events of Grace’s life. As always, Atwood weaves a compelling tale.
Diary of a Lacemaker by Sukey Hughes
A Dutch girl flees her abusive home in the 1700s and ends up working on a South African wine estate. Her secret passion for lacemaking is soon joined by another secret: her forbidden affair with a local man. An immersive story of a time and place not typically featured in fiction.
Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes by Claire Wilcox
This fascinating memoire by the Senior Curator of Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum gives. a look at life through eyes often filled by the sight of silk gowns, pearl buttons, Victorian nightdress, and whalebone. Wilcox writes with a deft touch.
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington
While sitting out a tornado warning in the basement of an Ohio hotel last summer, a fellow traveler (whose Jewish grandmother survived World War II by taking on a new identity and fleeing to Africa) shared her love of this book. It is the true story of women who survived the Holocaust by sewing for their lives, creating fashionable clothing for the women of Nazi society.
The Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini
Readers who enjoy digging into a series will appreciate the opportunity to read all twenty-one of the Elm Creek Quilt books. The series follows a group of women entrepreneurs. And, after completing the series, there’s more. Chiaverini has additional books, including one about the African American seamstress who created clothing for Mary Lincoln.
The Indenture of Ivy O’Neill by (me) Diane Helentjaris
In my book about Ivy, a young Irish girl taught as a child to weave and create natural dyes, leans on these skills as an indentured servant in Colonial Maryland. In between weaving and dyeing and harvesting tobacco, her adventures include kidnapping, murder, and romance.
The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St. Clair
I love my copy of this book, a gift from a friend, which came already to read with yellow highlights and margin notes. This non-fiction book makes the case for the importance of what is often looked down upon as “women’s work,” the ability to make cloth. It goes ‘way back in time, to ancient beginnings, and up into the present.
The Lacemakers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri
A young fashion designer seeks refuge in Ireland and becomes embroiled in the goings on of a village lace-making group of women. This book is a warm, but not soapy, read which kept me reading apace.
The Lady and the Unicorn: A Novel by Tracy Chevalier
These exquisite unicorn tapestries, made in the 1500s, were lost for centuries until rediscovered in the 1800s. Pants-wearing, tobacco-smoking woman writer George Sand publicized their existence in 1844 in her novel Jeanne. This novel, by the author of The Girl with One Pearl Earring, creates a fictionalized backstory for the tapestries now exhibited in France. (A similar set are on display in Manhattan at the Met’s Cloisters Museum.)
Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle by Clare Hunter
This non-fiction book explores the beauty and strength of sewing. Especially for women (and other marginalized groups), needles and threads have proven power. When imprisoned, Mary, Queen of Scots, sneaked out messages through her needlework. Over the centuries and around the world, needles and thread have continued to express powerful messages — whether through Argentinean mothers’ headscarves embroidered with the names of their “Disappeared” children, the AIDS quilt, or pink knit hats, Sewing can be subversive.
Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser
Today as fast fashion, upcycled, recycled, vintage, and home sewn duke it out for attention, this nonfiction book fills in the blanks. Organized into five fiber-based stories (silk, wool, linen, cotton, and synthetics) it shares the important history of cloth in an infinitely.