Head over heels for the perfect kippah

The kippah, or yarmulke, may be small in size, but it has a mighty presence in Jewish men’s lives. Not just men, but the mothers of men, who have to make sure that their sons have something to wear. This can be challenging, as boys – and sometimes men – treat kippahs like disposable plates, using and losing them.

It wouldn’t be so much of an issue if they were priced like paper plates, but kippahs are expensive, often retailing for more than R200 a kippah. So, what’s a mother to do?

My history with kippahs goes back almost 20 years, to the time I was living in Paris in the Marais, the traditionally Jewish section of this ancient city. We were living on Rue Chapon. Chappo is a synonym for chapeau (hat), and rumour had it that the street was named after the “Jewish hat” people wore. It was just a curiosity to me then. Little did I know that kippahs would soon become larger than life because I had two sons who both went to King David and had to wear one every day.

My boys never had a kippah when they needed it, and invariably, there would be a last-minute scramble to find one in the car on dropping them off at school. Each kippah would inevitably disappear into the black (velvet) hole reserved for kippahs. Replacing pretty versions with generic black nylon kippahs, I was amazed – actually dismayed – by the price of these scraps of sewed fabric. How could they be so expensive? And we thought uniforms were pricey! How would I survive 24 years of kippah wearing school days? I would have to make them myself!

So began a sewing/knitting/crocheting adventure, and I realised why they are so expensive. Kippahs are, to put it bluntly, not easy to make – you could even describe them as a dark art. My first attempt at sewing a kippah was so laughable, it was good for nothing other than being hidden in my car to use in emergencies in the dark.

I moved on to crocheting kippahs. Endless YouTube videos followed, at which women with heavy accents (Hebrew? Russian?) spoke about how to make a “magic circle”. But the magic of the circle eluded me, and my kippahs either ended up looking like a warped plate or a bubble that had shrunk in the wash.

“Keep your tension even. Use a smaller crochet hook,” were my sister’s instructions, but this made no difference. It turns out that as well as requiring “magic circles”, kippahs need to have an exquisite balance between increasing and not increasing stitches to get that rounded shape.

It’s a bit like life – moderation, balance, and judgement is everything. Also, how do you know when one row starts and the other ends? Kippahs are infinite – one row blends into the next. Clearly, I wasn’t evolved enough for this task. Who knew you had to be a sage to do this work?

I decided to consult an experienced craftswoman, my brother-in-law’s mother, who has been sewing and knitting for close to 70 years and has even sold her work to shops. She can’t remember when she started making kippahs, but does admit that she has ripped up her work “many times” – which is what happened to my work when she saw it.

My mentor taught me to increase gradually and only when needed, and to chain stitch at the end of each row, a hack (hook?) not found on the internet, but passed on by word of mouth over generations. Even the words “chain stitch” imply some sort of female conspiracy.

After a couple of hours of double-treble crocheting – which incidently is called triple crochet in the United States just to add to the general sense of confusion – my kippah resembled the half-moon shape sought after by craftspeople since the beginning of time.

It’s all about mathematics, says accomplished artist and self-described “craftivist”, Stacey Rozen, who goes by the name @curioussleuth when she’s “yarnbombing” the neighbourhood. “If you don’t have higher grade maths, you can’t crochet,” she says, talking about “denominations of five; number series; and times tables”.

Rozen, who gave a talk at the recent Goethe-Institut’s TextILE event exploring the synergy between crafts and technology, says the perfect kippah starts by creating the perfect circle. It’s ultimately all about engineering, she says, pointing out that knitting patterns are essentially coding without a computer.

“Craftivism is a gentle process,” Rozen says in response to my comment that unsuccessful kippah making can make you commit harakiri – but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t lethally effective.

In an article titled “How knitting won the war”, Rozen writes about a top-secret mission by the allies in World War II for accomplished craftswomen to code essential information into knitted garments and send them across enemy lines. “The granny who was coding during World War II was the first developer of computer programming today,” she says.

She sends me the mathematical equation for a perfect circle. It’s all a bit overwhelming for this maths-challenged mother who has trouble following instructions. “Imperfection is really nice,” Rozen says, referring to her many creations which have tiny mistakes in them. It’s small consolation from this accomplished crafter, but I’ll keep it in mind the next time I’m inspired to make the perfect kippah, and it turns out to be the perfect waffle.