Book Review: Pockets

Last week I told you about the great contest happening over at Feeling Stitchy - and I mentioned the book Pockets. Oh. . . Pockets! I love this book so! It's a children's picture book, but - in all honesty - I don't know that many children who would be interested in it. The themes and the vocabulary go right over their heads. Adults, though. That's a different story. Especially adult stitchers. We swoon over this book.

The story begins when a broken-hearted young woman turns up in a town full of somber, hard-working people in the middle of a prairie. She asks if they'll let her stay and offers to work. They ask if she can sew. Can she sew?

The woman closed her eyes to speak: Cotton shirts, frocks and pantaloons of bandle linen; also doublets, farthingales, damask mantuas, petticoats of drugget cloth, demi-saisons of watered silk with calamanco braiding, gowns with panne velvet godets. She knew the patterns and stitches for gigot sleeves and virago sleeves, sacque capes and pelerine capes; of fabrics she knew bengaline, brabant, abbot cloth, sarcenet, batiste and armozeen. Her fingers were nimble with fretwork and gimped embroidery, smocking and couching, tucked seams and batuz work.

Whoa, missy! Her detailed response worries the people of the town. They're plain and simple folk who had "stripped themselves of distraction, the better to work." They want her to make plain clothes with "stout cloth, sturdy seams, and careful hems."

And so she does. But she's unhappy. One day, as she was making a new dress for herself (in gray, of course) she turns the pockets inside out and begins to embroider them. And oh does she embroider them! Look at this image!

After that she was happier. She embroidered the insides of all her pockets and let her fingers tracing the stitches take her to magical places.

After a while she feels sorry for her neighbors and begins to embroider their pockets too. I love this description of the results.

One the day after a soaking rain, the mayor's wife was seen wearing a new gray dress, standing rigid in the doorway of her house, with her hands in her pockets. Shortly afterward, a passing child heard her sobbing wildly upstairs and ran for the mayor. That good man and the doctor patted her shoulder to no avail. They did not suspect that she had been assailed by visions of the golden towers of Constantinople, with its sweaty crowds roaring in the hippodrome, and the dolphins leaping beside the red-hulled caiques in the Sea of Marmara, and the markets full of pomegranates and murder.

Markets full of pomegranates and murder. Isn't that a fabulous image? The mayor's wife was wracked with grief for several days, but after that she began to collect small flowers. "She put these in jars on the windowsills and taught herself to sing."

And so it goes throughout the town. The blacksmith begins to laugh while he hammers at his glowing forge, and a husband and wife fall in love again. Soon the people are painting their homes "crimson, azure, and gold," flying flags from the rooftops and holding dances in the courtyards. And the woman - whose heart is now healed - goes home.

Pockets was written by Jennifer Armstrong and illustrated by Mary GrandPre. It's out of print now, but I did a quick Google search and found several used copies available online. Treat yourself! It's a lovely book - and utterly inspirational for any stitcher.

Best,
Wendi