Knithropology

I love to share things I find on the internet but haven’t had the chance to do so in quite a while,  which has led to a massive algae bloom of bookmarks in my browser. So, in an effort to clear some of the clutter, I’d like to present the first edition of Knithropology Newsround.

Now, I say news, but since there are loads of things from ages ago (some from 2006!), this one won’t be very fresh unless you’re an archaeologist or have just discovered the internet. There will definitely be newer things next time. And it will be shorter. Probably.

Right. In the news (cough) recently (double cough):

Sheep and sheep farming:

• ‘Mystery’ skin disease in farmers
• Shear delight: spray that will protect sheep from the elements
• Dukes give sheep farmers lifeline
• Is it wrong to dye sheep?
• Great ewe-dini escapes her pen
• Soays’ natural selection on the hoof
• I wouldn’t want to shear this flock
• Sheepshearers the next heroes of Australian athletics?
• Suburban comfort for massive ram
• The rise of the urban shepherd
• Farmers warn against sheep tags
• Silence of Scotland’s hill lambs
• Fighting leaves male sheep blue
• Sea eagles blamed for lamb deaths

Other animals used for fibre:

• Microchip shawls to save wildlife
• Congress To Raise Alpacas To Aid Struggling Economy [oh, if only]
• Pair dress in ‘dead dog’ jumpers
• The golden fleece: Peruvian vicuña

Fibre from plants:

• Rash thinking: using nettles for textiles
• Nettle fabrics set for catwalk
• Handspun recycled newspaper yarn

Fibre from the science world:

• Coming of age for ‘future fibres’
• High-tech Textiles Pave The Way For Glowing Garments

Crafted clothing:

• Kingdom of Style: When Wool is Cool
• Jumpers keep chilly chickens warm
• Crocheted chicken jumpers
• Santa Helmet Ho Ho Ho!
• Knitted Gas Mask Hat
  
• Hamburger Dress

Fibre-crafted miscellany:

• Knitted Digestive System
• Chinese takeout box
• Ziggy Stardust doll
• Lampshade that knits itself
• Knitted bicycle
• Body Technology Interfaces
• Crocheted wasp’s nest
• A charity project you may not have seen: wildlife rescue nests
• The Women’s Institute knits a billboard for Sky TV
• Petrol station cosy
• Sewing the earth back together

Folks to look out for:

• Fearless Planet
• The Australian Aids Fund, Inc.
• Buy Handmade
• Knitting for Charity
• Ed Bing Lee: Knotted Artworks

Textile culture:

• Textiles - whispering soul of India
• India’s ‘healing’ herb-dyed cloth
• Knitmare on Elm Street
• Sew, don’t gamble, suggests Arviat seamstress
• Craft the vote!
• Campaigner goes bust after calendar boob
• Paula Lalish’s exploding knitting needle
• Punk knitting: Has youth culture gone mad?
• The rebel knitter’s guide (featuring the much-maligned mazzmatazz)

Whew, Firefox is a lot lighter now!

Later this week: a knitting update and the unveiling of a new section of the website. In the meanwhile, our favourite knitting detective, Emerson Cod, is back on our screens tonight in Pushing Daisies!

Last weekend I chanced upon an advance reader’s edition of Knitting for Good! by Betsy Greer and thought I’d give it a bit of a review. You can purchase the released version at any good bookshop from 11 November 2008.

(Please note that this review is of a book that may change significantly before its official release date, and be assured that problems with formatting, spelling or other errors which may have occurred during the production of this early release will not factor into my opinions.)

Knitting for Good! bills itself on the front cover as “A Guide to Creating Personal, Social, and Political Change Stitch by Stitch”. Betsy uses herself as the centre, and as she explains her history as a knitter, she shows how her knitting caused her to interact more positively with her family, her community and finally the world.

She draws lightly off related texts, but this is clearly not an academic work nor a manifesto - this is a codification of her personal journey as a knitter and an exhortation to the rest of us. Her manner of storytelling is engaging and easy to identify with; she darts between being incredibly idealistic and incredibly practical, which is endearing - I think many of us skirt those same boundaries with our own knitting.

In her introduction, she charts the course many of us take: learning to knit, being terrified and intimidated at the possibilities, slowly getting more confident, becoming a knitter, becoming a charity knitter, becoming a politicised knitter and finally, spreading the word. The process brings to mind the tagline to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage ethos - “Where are you on the road to River Cottage?” Well, where are you on the road to…Knitted House? Yarn-filled Apartment? Stringy Dorm Room? Whatever you want to call it, it is something that many of us sense and understand, and we can plot exactly where we are, and know that the steps ahead are already beckoning (Knithropologist, no longer terrified, knits for family, friends and charity, am relatively politicised and will spread the word only in appropriate situations. I’m still on the road.).

I suspect that, because this is so familiar to many knitters, Betsy’s book may not break much new ground for those of us who are already tuned into knitting as being more than a hobby (though there’s nothing wrong with knitting as being just a hobby - ack, hobby is such a loaded word, I’m sorry for using it), but for people who haven’t quite made the jump from knitting as hobby to knitting as a gateway to all sorts of ideas and insights, this text really could be quite galvanising. I was especially touched by the sidebars sprinkled throughout the book, each written by people Betsy finds inspirational; the sidebars bring perspectives that accentuate and compliment Betsy’s own views and add to the overall impact of the book. After reading some of the sidebars, I was ready to take on the world - if these folks could do it, why can’t I? Whenever I need a kick up the brain, I’ll definitely read through those again.

The patterns included are a scarf, hat, baby blanket, cushion cover, pet bed, a cuddly lion, socks, vest and a jacket. Most knitters would be able to take these on no matter their knitting level.

I hope, possibly naively at this late stage, that the final edition will have actual photos to go along with the patterns, as the drawings aren’t incredibly true to life and might confuse more novice knitters; though I concede that if one was confused about basketweave stitch, finding pictures of it online wouldn’t be too difficult. I can see also where costs could prevent photos, and I long for the days of colour plates. And this is a small quibble, but I wish the knitted globe on the cover had actually been knitted rather than…digitally manipulated? I can’t for certain tell what they’ve done, but I think I’d be so much more impressed if it had been knitted - and if there was a pattern for it included!

Since this is a book which addresses the personal, I should probably talk about what I got out of it. A few months ago, I made a list of things I want to do with the latter half of 2008, and one of those things is “Make charity knitting at least 25% of my knitting.” Well, with all the baby showers, the birthdays, the squirrels raiding my garden and the need to use up that damned Malabrigo, that hasn’t yet happened. Discouragement had set in, but luckily for me, Betsy gently reminds her readers that charity items can be whipped up in as little as a couple of hours.

That’s one of those strange things I know intellectually - just like I know that I don’t have to eat all the fresh homemade peach cobbler in one day -  but the reality of it had slipped away (just like the cobbler, om nom). So it was time to reassess; if I knit a hat or relatively simple but functional scarf every week, I would be well on the way to my >25% and would still have time for other knitting projects. And it would make sense to take charity projects on the bus - why not have something easy to pass the five hours of transit time I have every week? Really, given the choice of hauling a nearly-finished heavy wool cardigan or an rather lighter Irish Hiking Scarf around for a couple of days, I know what I’d prefer - and come Monday I’ll pack my bag accordingly.

So there we go, folks; the book has worked on me, anyway.

Knitting for Good! by Betsy Greer. Boston: Trumpeter Books, November 2008. 150 pages. ISBN 978-1-59030-589-8.

Good grief, folks. My apologies for being away so long; life was full of excitement. I earned my bachelor’s degree last month - on 8 August, which was of course a special day for other reasons - and took a week off work after that to knit and celebrate. And then…life went a bit mad. I’ll try to be here more often; I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’d been eaten by moths.

8 August, then. Opening day of the Ravelympics. I went pre-event insane and put three projects into the running: Masala Bay (Montego Bay Scarf in Handmaiden Sea Silk, colourway Masala), my Razoresque Cami (Razor Cami for WIPs Wrestling) and (this might be the most insane bit of it) a Central Park Hoodie. I’ll spare you the inevitably crushing details and give you the results.

The Razoresque Cami was finished just in time. The cotton in the yarn (Lana Grossa Novella) hurt my wrists a bit and triggered some wristy badness that would get me later on. Despite knitting on this through bits of my two graduation dinners and a graduation breakfast (woof, what a food-based weekend) the yarn didn’t have enough give for me to knit comfortably for too long.

I finished the Masala Bay the Monday after the Ravelympics (so no medal) and it is wonderful. Oh, how I love it. I can see myself making many more as gifts in the future. The yarn is stunning to regard, feel and knit and the end result is an absolute peach. I’m so pleased. Here, have a look (though I despair that my camera brings out a stripiness in this scarf that isn’t as noticeable in real life):

I wore thIS scarf when I had my photograph taken for work recently, which was a nice chance to show it off…except that the picture was printed in black and white. Ah well.

And last but not in the least silly, that Central Park Hoodie? It isn’t a CPH by any stretch of anything. It’s a top-down raglan pullover (with a seed stitch steek strip - say that ten times fast! - at the front) with a staghorn cable on the back, small staghorns on the sides, and, as of yet, no hood. I only managed to knit it to just about where I’d separate the sleeves and body before some sort of carpaly tunnely nonsense hit and I had to put it down. I’m working on it at a safe pace now, though I’m having to frog a bit because one of the cables got away from me, and not in a way I could fix without frogging. So really, this is no CPH. I’ll put up a picture of my Staghorn Cardigan when it looks like less of a Cascade 220 Heathers lump and more like a garment (But you can see the lump on my Ravelry projects page if you’re into lumpy things).

But wait, I hear you saying, there’s something here that doesn’t add up: the Razoresque Cami was nearly finished before the Ravelympics - how could I possibly have been working on it for so long? Well, friend…let me tell you a story.

Yarn overs. They always frustrated me, always dogged me - why didn’t mine look right? Why were they too small? Why were they so hard to knit into?  For two years, I’ve been nearly unable to do lace. Why?

(big sigh)

I was wrapping the wrong way! As the folks from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which just returned to our screens last night!) might say, “God damn it, Charlie.” Once I started wrapping properly, thanks to a combination of videos and text descriptions found all over the internet (three cheers for the internet!), I was insistent that my Razoresque Cami would not bear the shame of my inexperience - so I frogged it. Again. Alllllllll the way back to the ribbing. Again. From 95% to 5% finished. Two weeks and some wrist pain later, I had this to show for it:

Not bad. I feel like an ice cream van on the beach when I wear it (because of the colours, not the size), which is rather nice. I’ll have to wear it the next time we make and serve sorbet at home. I rather like the way it fits - it shows the world that I have breasts and a waist and doesn’t make me look like a sack. That’s my life’s goal, really. “My driving force in life has been not to look like a sack. Or a sausage, but mostly a sack.” I cast on loads of extra stitches to go up to my 44″ bust, and I’m really pleased with the results. The lace stretches very nicely. In fact, it stretches so nicely that I need to buy an appropriate bra to wear it outside the house, which is the perfect excuse to make another one in a different yarn!

And of course, finishing the cami and getting my head round the YOs meant I could start and complete Masala Bay (like I said, no medal but yay for my knitting pride!). Now when I look at lace, instead of being confused as to how they got their holes so holey, I think, “Yes, I can do that. Lad, bring me my laceweight!”

So, in the pipeline now? Finishing the Staghorn Cardigan, casting on a Autumn Forest Malabrigo Koolhaas for The Lad, a top down raglan cardi for me (which I cast on out of boredom and haven’t yet listed on Ravelry), making a baby blanket for an oncoming child (I made two bibs earlier this month but gave them to the mother before I could get pictures) and some scarves for folks in my life who really deserve them. Oh, and finishing this:

I frogged my Malabrigo So-Called Scarf in Curacao and let the yarn mope around for ages until it could figure out what it wanted - and I think it finally has. It’s a Curacaopotis! I’m really thrilled, and it should be finished tomorrow if I really put my wrists into it.

Ah, and one last thing - want to know what the best graduation present ever is? A fifty-dollar gift certificate to my LYS. Thanks, Karen. I’ll be sure to put it to good use.