Seeking craft shops this special season …
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“Oh my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, “it’s fruitcake weather!”
One of our favourite stories this time of year is Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”, first published in Mademoiselle in 1956. You don’t have to love fruitcake to savour Capote’s rich slice of rural Alabama boyhood. A classic recipe: fold in an unlikely alliance between Buddy and his childlike 60-something-year-old cousin, “More fun than anybody”. Tip the arduous annual enterprise of gathering the costly ingredients needed to bake 30 cakes into tins, from windfall pecans (“Our backs hurt from gathering them: how hard they were to find”) to “rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavourings: why, we’ll need a pony to pull the buggy home”.
The Christmas cakes the pair make “dampened with whiskey, bask on windowsills and shelves”. Though some are made for friends, “the larger share is intended for persons we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who’ve struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt … Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year”.
Ensouled by the hand of the maker, handmade things carry deep narratives, storied and resonant, the sweetest of all gifts, to give and to receive.
This is the giving time of year; presents we exchange hint at who we are to one another. During the last years of her life, my mother gave me artwork she’d made in class at the Philadelphia assisted living facility she hated; a painted goblet, a watercolour in which I am depicted boarding an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, ostensibly never to return, captioned “Susie, come home!” A glazed ceramic wall plate meant to be a portrait of me, capturing my dark eyes, red lips and the hook nose we share. I pass it at least 50 times a day, yet it still catches me off guard: “Susie!” I hear her voice calling me from this relic, a memento mori. Mommy.
What I wouldn’t give for a plate of my mother’s mother’s (my immigrant grandmother’s) stickysweet rugelekh, nutty little horns of folded pastry, or the chance to gorge on her soft and buttery thumbprint cookies, rolled in sparkly sugar, punctuated with a dollop of homemade raspberry jam. Her thumbprint … working hands, gnarled from running a fruit and vegetable store in western Pennsylvania, unpacking burlap sacks of dirt-caked potatoes, stacking and restocking shelves with produce. Arthritic hands, rough and red from washing clothes, old-school, using a washboard, a bar of caustic white laundry soap and a mangle, pegging the stiff linens to a line in the dank, dark basement. Those same crabbed hands that wrote checks and balanced the books, despite not having finished the seventh grade, applied mustard plasters to my chest when I was sick and decorated fancy birthday cakes with buttercream frosting, expertly squeezing scrolls and swirls, chains and pearls and splashy pink roses from a drab canvas piping bag. Back then, we looked forward to birthdays and sick days.
In Capote’s story, Buddy and his friend “work secretly” and exchange elaborately decorated handmade kites, though he’d longed to present her with store-bought treasures. She wished she could buy him a bike, even contemplated stealing one. What will you buy, borrow or steal for your loved one this season? Consider a handmade offering; it may cost more than anticipated, but its intrinsic value will likely soar.
1. I’M SWEETENING the deal in cedarwood+cognac eau de parfum from West Cork’s www.watersandwild.com.
2. I’M SHOPPING Irish dresses in luxury linen, flower to fabric, at www.kindredofireland.com.
3. I’M COLLECTING classic hand-thrown pottery from Cork-based www.shanagarrypotters.com.
4. I’M COOKING up a dreamy stay with coffee, cake and even rugelekh @thatchedfarmproject, West of Ireland.
5. I’M COSYING up to winter’s chill in coppery goatskin Officer gloves. Dublin designed and made by www.georgehorn.ie.
6. I’M TAKING a cameo role in a pendant with stories to tell, from www.sinevasquezjewellery.ie.
7. I’M DANCING in the dark in an @eadachbysaraoneill rock chick print on silk inspired by Ireland’s darker myths and legends.
8. I’M SETTING tables with kelp cutlery from www.atlanticirishseaweed.com.
9. I’M BAGGING a RUXX, designed and made in Ireland. Browse bags, scarves and belts at the Kinsale shop.
10. I’M UPPING my kitchen game with www.burrenbalsamics.com Grande Reserve.
11. I’M SERVING scones with raspberry jam foraged from the walled gardens at www.kylemoreabbey.com.
12. I’M COOLING my heels in denim rouge Emer slingbacks by www.brog.ie.
13. I’M REMEMBERING Christmas cakes past with cookbook author/food writer/stylist @imenmcdonnell
14. I’M BAKING bigger and bolder, inspired by Irish-born chef and baker Gemma Stafford. Who’s all thumbs? www.biggerbolderbaking.com.