Hooking is a way of life for North Sider
May 3, 2010
May 3, 2010
BY MARK J. KONKOL Staff Reporter
Bree Gordon is a hooker. She even has a hooker alias -- Crafty McSchnafty.
"I'm a hooker with a lot of experience," Gordon says with a sly smile, over coffee in Uptown. "My mother named me after the classy call girl in the movie "Klute." So, really, I was born for this."
Bree Gordon is a crocheting craftswoman who is part of a social knitting circle at Mother's on Division. She also fronts a Ukrainian wedding band.
Gordon says her husband doesn't mind. In fact, he's very supportive -- after all her hooking brings in a little extra cash.
Wednesday nights, you'll find Gordon working the room at Mother's on Division with a bunch of other hookers. They drink beer and listening to rap music while they go about their hooking -- crocheting (and knitting), that is -- during the singles bar's weekly knitting circle dubbed "Stick 'n' Bitch."
While other kids were learning the trick to downing a beer bong in one gulp at New Mexico State University, a nerdy friend was teaching Gordon how to crochet. A perfectionist, Gordon quickly fell in love with the exactness of the yarn work.
"I find it's like architecture, building a structure," she says. "I like the math and perfection of it. Every time I knit self-striping socks to look identical, I do a little happy dance."
But it wasn't until her husband had a serious health scare a few years back that she really got, well, hooked on it.
"He was in the hospital for a month, and I had hours and hours sitting there to either go crazy or do something," she says. "I knitted 300 scarves. My husband didn't have insurance, so I raised a little bit of money selling those scarves. I sold all of them."
Her husband recovered after a kidney transplant. And Gordon, who lives in Edgewater, took her yarn work to the next level. She graduated from rectangular blankets and scarves to hats and leg warmers. A while back, she put together her first bikini.
And she has recently come up with a new knitted concoction she calls the "fruit suit." It's a yarn button-up wrap for the brown-bag lunch set aimed at protecting fruit from getting bruised. Plus, Gordon says, the fruit suit will ripen a green banana overnight.
"It's really ridiculous," Gordon says. "But I got the idea from my always-serious friend who, after she had a couple glasses of wine, said, 'I want you to knit a sweater from my banana. But make it look just like my banana.' She cracked herself up. A couple days later, I had one for her. She was giddy."
Now, Gordon knits fruit suits for apples, bananas, oranges, peaches and pears and sells them for $12 apiece on her website, craftymcschnafty .com.
A secretary by day, Gordon says she hopes that one day all this hooking and needling might become a successful business.
If not, she's still chasing the dream that lead her to Chicago in the first place -- to sing the blues. She fronts a Ukrainian wedding band called Rendezvous.
"I don't know the traditional songs, but in the second set, I sing some Donna Summer, Lady GaGa. I'll sing anything. I'm a stage hound."
