knitsploitation

I've been trying to explain this for years, and I keep on failing. But here I am, trying again.

It seems like no cultural activity is safe from exploitation by those out to make a quick buck. From food to sex to sports to work, religion to politics to a fondness for puppies: there are calendars, coffee mugs, t-shirts, and countless other tchotchkes trying to divert revenue from the main thing people want to spend their money on to some useless "themed" item.

So the person who loves golf gets bookends made to look like golf clubs. The cat aficionado gets a sweatshirt with a romanticised picture of kittens on it. And knitters get earrings shaped like balls of yarn, bookmarks that say "I'll start reading this again as soon as I get to the end of the row," and books with people talking around knitting, rather than about knitting itself.

I can't stand any of this stuff. Here's just a short list of the reasons why:

• I knit the way smokers smoke. It's a nervous habit that I find relaxing. The main difference is that at the end of an evening, I'll have a sock done whereas the smoker will have a full ashtray. That really is the main difference.
• I knit because I am a tall, big woman. I learned to knit when I was about nine. I stopped growing (at 1.75m, taking a North American size 14) when I was 12. If I wanted a sloppy fisherman-knit sweater, the kind that was popular when I was 12, I was going to have to bloody well make it myself. For the kind of knits I like to wear, that still holds true today.

Furthermore:

• I resent the pop culture norm that "real knitters don't knit with acrylic." I have had the honour of knowing several master knitters who knit exclusively with acrylic. They were all old enough to remember when substandard wool was the only option, and they were thrilled when the synthetics came on the market. Maybe you disagree with them on their fibre choices, but that doesn't make them bad knitters. I for one am grateful to have the choices of fibre we have today, and that includes working in synthetics when it's the best tool for the job I want to accomplish.
• Furthermore, I really hate it when people are snobby about not working with acrylic, but cheerfully buy off-the-rack clothes made with synthetic fibres. You know who you are.
  
• I also resent the consumerist attitude that says knitting today is more about buying yarn and less about making stuff. I like making stuff. The purpose of buying yarn, for me, is to make stuff. It is not to "fondle", or satisfy an "addiction", or any other sex/drug metaphor people want to use to cover up buying habits they seem to be vaguely ashamed of. Sure, I like a nice skein of nice fibre as much as the next person. But I'm not going to buy it unless I have some idea of what I want to do with it.
  
• Most of all, I hate the assumption that knitting today is a "hobby," a "pass-time" that no-one "has" to do. If I want the clothes to fit, I have to make them myself, or else hire a dressmaker, or else shop somewhere that is very well stocked in the medium to larger sizes. If I want cardigans with sleeves that go down to my wrists, I'm going to have to make them. "Hobby" is a put-down for all the years I've spent making sure my skill levels were good enough that I could make things that didn't scream, "this was hand-made by a non-professional."

I have been knitting for 75% of my life. I knitted in high school between classes and put up with other kids calling me "Little Suzy Homemaker," growling back at them (long before Lily Chin appropriated it) that I was an "urban knitter" who was "in it for the fashion." In university I used knitting to convey character during drama class. During my first career as a high school teacher, the half-hour of knitting on the bus to and from work was my only leisure time on workdays, and ensured I'd have something comfortable and decent to wear to class while I tried to cover rent on a part-timer's salary.

For the first twenty years of my knitting, my grandmother was the only other knitter I knew. I raided the public library for books to teach me techniques (Oma lived an hour's drive away and wasn't always there to show me how to do things when I was ready to learn them). We made our own knitting culture, creating work that was about a good job done and the usability of the finished product. We had no trends, no peer pressure, no romance of an imagined "tradition". We just knew hand-made socks were superior to the store-bought ones, and that machine-made hats don't keep your ears warm in Canadian winters.

Now hawkers of "heart-warming" books want me to buy their wares so they can tell me amusing anecdotes about uneven stitches (uneven stitches? I can't make them if I tried, not the way Oma taught me to work them), mother-to-daughter bonding (my mum hates knitting, and my grandmother was taught to knit at school, not home), overcoming "fear" (Oma gave me a bagful of odd balls so I could experiment before working a usable item. I never had a chance to be afraid.). Finally, they keep insisting that knitters are helpless to resist when it comes to buying yarn, even if they can't keep their tension consistent for the length of a row, never mind a whole sweater.

It makes me angry. They are taking my lifelong nervous-yet-constructive habit away from me, then distorting it to push the consumerist angle that it is better to be a good yarn buyer than a good knitter. They are insulting me by telling me that people with seven years' experience in this 800-year-old craft are "experts," even though my thirty years of knitting makes me feel like an intermediate who is finally getting the hang of it. They want to infantilise me and take away my hard-won expertise, my ability to judge what is right for me to create and spend my money on.

Hence "knitsploitation." Like "sexploitation," it's taking something people like and then twisting it until it's merely a set of consumer goods. And like the cigarette smoker who wouldn't necessarily appreciate a book on modern tobacco cultivation, the last thing I need in my life is a book trying to give me the warm fuzzies about a craft that is already warm and fuzzy all on its own.

Make it stop.

blocking en masse

Some people block their knitted stuff just as a matter of finishing it — just one more step towards the end, like darning in the ends.

I was always taught that if you have to block it, it means you did a crappy job knitting it in the first place. Knitters who claim you have to block to "get rid of uneven stitches" make me cringe. How about just not making the uneven stitches in the first place?

My mum told me recently the lace scarf I made her had been admired by a friend of hers, but was astonished that I did not iron my work. Iron? Iron? It's got bobbles in it! And it's made out of Kidsilk Haze! Even the biggest blocking fanatic won't iron bobbles, especially ones knitted into yarn of silk and mohair.

Apparently I have found one who would.

One of the tricks with craftsmanship is knowing when to deviate from your usual best practices, though, and I recently made four things that require blocking. Not ironing, mind you (shudder) —just some stretching to get them in the right form.

Three of the items are Estonian lace: two shawls and a scarf. One is a beret in stranded colourwork.

I waited until I had a nice, quiet stretch of time. In this case, it was Christmas Day. That might shock some folks, but I had a perfectly nice winter solstice celebration on the 20th, thank you.

I woke up, brushed my teeth, and got to work.

Soak

I gathered together everything I needed to block, filled up the sink with cool water, added Soak, and set a timer for fifteen minutes.
Note: Normally soaking several different-coloured items together like this would not necessarily be a good idea, because dye can bleed out and discolour other items. Since all my items were in the same colour range, I decided to risk it. Nothing bad happened to the knits themselves, although the jury's still out on my bedsheet.

During the fifteen minutes, I stripped the bed, put on an old fitted sheet, and scarfed down some breakfast.

Then the pinning started. Some knitters block things lovingly, measuring and re-measuring. I'm more of the school of "er, yeah, looks right, and I'm sick of pinning so I'm going to use some blocking wires now." Here are the two shawls blocked out on the bed, both using a combination of pins and blocking wires:
What's impressive about both these pieces is that they were half to two-thirds the size on the needles before blocking. Lace can be weird that way.

The beret got popped over a dinner plate. I tried just putting it on the mattress with the shawls, but it was draining too much water, so I set up my drying rack and put it on that.

By the time I got to the scarf, I had run out of room on the bed. Also, the scarf is made from Handmaiden Sea Silk, so it tends to smell like seaweed when wet, and I didn't want the smell near the shawls. so I just draped it over the top of the drying rack and gave it some tugs to set the width:
Yes, my living room looks like a workshop.

As of this writing, everything has been drying for about an hour and a half. I'm going to set this post to delay publishing until the first week of January. With any luck, the three items here that are gifts will be in their recipients' hands by then.

I'm not sure how long things will take to dry. If the stuff on the bed isn't ready by tonight, though, at least I have my sofa bed to sleep on. DIYers need sofa beds.

bling!

Usually I don't like beadwork that is too over-the-top. I admire the artisanship that goes into making elaborate neckpieces (if it gets big and artistic-looking enough, it's a "neckpiece," not a "necklace"), but I wouldn't want to wear them.

The Ice Blossoms bracelet (sorry, subscriber-only) is about as rococo as I would ever want to get with jewelry I would actually wear. Even though I decided to use cheap acrylic crystals instead of the Swarovski ones called for in the pattern, the thing is still plenty heavy and drapes nicely on the wrist. The original pattern calls for seed bead fringes around the centre stone in each main motif, but I thought it was ornate enough without them.

I've been making so much stuff in my usual blacks, reds, and purples lately that I decided to branch out a little and make the bracelet multi-coloured in lighter colours. I like the results, but would also love to see it done in more Gothic colours: all jet black, or dark red crystals with amber seed beads. It would probably look good in the cobalt blue that's currently popular too, or the earth tones that are popular in the beading world right now.

The thing I like the best about wearing the bracelet is that the big main motifs are flexible, so they curve to fit your wrist. This is a lot more comfortable than a similar bracelet would be made of same-sized pieces of metal.

Most of the beading is a variation on right-angle weave. You backstitch your way through making different loops, and then frame them in more beads to stabilise the loops and keep them all on the same horizontal plane. The blue beads closer to the clasp were not in the original pattern; I added them to make the bracelet a bit bigger (normal-sized bracelets fit my wrist exactly with absolutely no ease).

I found these ornate toggle clasps for $2.50 for ten clasps. They go great with the ornate style of the bracelet.

More beading stuff

I finally found a way to get seed beads back into their bottles without losing half of them into the carpet. Teaspoons are too big for the job, but if you can find a little souvenir spoon, they work great! They're small enough to fit into the standard medicine-bottle style of seed bead containers, but big enough to scoop up a decent amount of seed beads at once:
Finally, a reason to collect those spoons.

a learning experience

Rypan Designs seems to be taking over my entire beading life. Since they seem to be pretty good, maybe that's not entirely a bad thing. I just finished making this vintage-style bracelet based on one of their kits. The kit uses size 8/0 seed beads; I used size 11/0s because I tend to use size 11/0s for everything. It makes for a narrower, more delicate chain. Arguably I could have stuck with the 8/0s and made a wider chain that probably would have suited me better, but I liked the smallness of this when I was done.

The black beads in the photo aren't really black. They're clear but very dark brown and kind of remind me of Coca-Cola. I meant to buy black and at first I wasn't sure about the choice, but in the end it somehow makes things more vintage-y and I like the effect, especially since the petal beads are matte and the centres are metal-lined.

This is the first time I have worked peyote stitch and gotten it to wind up looking like peyote stitch, instead of a very sloppy and ill-formed herringbone stitch. Making the side petals (the parts of the daisy that stick out from the main ribbon of stitching) work took about eight tries, but eventually I was able to form them consistently.

I seem to have a thing for beaded daisies at the moment. I'm currently working on a modified version of a Bead & Button download (first search result; it's a subscriber-only download, sorry), using those size 11/0s instead of the 15/0s the pattern calls for. The photo will probably be up eventually. The current bracelet-in-progress has a ladder-stitch base of bugle beads. The daisies float on their centres above the base, which makes them sort of bobble-headed, but in a nice sort of way. I'm looking forward to seeing how the finished product works out. The thing about working these daisies is that you have to expect and welcome some variation into each motif — unlike other stitches, it doesn't work if things are too uniform. Which is good, because the inexpensive beads I insist on using won't give uniform results no matter how well I stitch them.

modern is traditional

"Modern or traditional?"

I hate that question. It divides all tastes with a hard line that has the Victorians and all that came before them on one side, and the modernists on the other. For the former: embellishments everywhere, natural materials, a complicated palette of tertiary colours. For the latter: everything stripped down to absolute basics, man-made materials, primary and very simple secondary colours.

It completely leaves out all the joy of juxtaposition you get when you take that hard dividing line and try to blur it a bit. Which brings me to my latest finished objects:

Gothic cross necklace

This was made from a kit I got at a beading expo a couple of weeks back. It's by Rypan Designs Beadwork, and, like all their kits, was very easy to put together. I like how they use basic beads to make their kits, so that after you make the first one, you can always make more to justify the cost of the kit to yourself. Their three-drape Victorian Gothic necklace was the first beading I ever did, and I've made at least half a dozen versions of it since.

Henry VIII collar

This design came from The Anti-Craft. You can check the link for their explanation of why it's called Henry VIII. I like that it uses up almost an entire vial of seed beads -- great way to stash-bust! The first two rows are completed simultaneously using a two-needle technique, which is nice because after the relatively slow start, the next two rows zoom along. I went for plain glass drops, but there is a lot of potential to change the look of the collar by using different colour combinations and drop beads.

Hemlock doily (1941)

My bedroom furniture is a great example of the modern-is-traditional aesthetic. It's from IKEA, so you can bet that not a single scrap of materials is superfluous, yet it has the scrollwork and bedknobs of a Victorian metal bedframe.

In this set, the wardrobe and night-stands are metal and scrollworked as well, plus the shelves have punched-hole patterns on them in the shape of Scandinavian eight-pointed stars. The metal seems to pick up dust like crazy, and I've been looking for tablecloths for a long time. I've never found any that I liked, though.

Then it occurred to me: the ever-knitting Emily at the Naked Sheep took a vintage doily pattern and worked it in a heavy worsted-weight yarn to make a shawl. What if I took the same pattern and worked it in the original fine crochet cotton to make a doily?

Emily told me where to find the pattern, I guesstimated that I would need one size larger needles than what the original called for to get the size I wanted, and off I went.

This is an extremely quick knit. I started on a Sunday and was done by the following Thursday.

The only thing that took me a long time to get around to was the pinning out and starching. I finally pinned out the doily on my bed's mattress (with a fitted sheet underneath it!), sprayed the starch on, and let it dry by itself. That worked perfectly. You can see in the final photo that I decided to make it a bit pointier than the original.

my (unblocked) Hemlock with Emily's shawl at the Sheep

the blocked & starched Hemlock doing dust-prevention duty on my night-stand

Now I just need to make another one for the other night-stand!

More things I've finished lately

Some of these things have actually been off the needles for months, but I would set up stupid "efficiency" tasks for myself like: "Oh, I'll darn in the ends on these when I finish that other pair of socks I have on the needles," and then I would go off and work on something else, and both projects would languish. But here's the latest this week:

Bacchus socks

These are from the Fall 2008 issue of Interweave Knits and are the first socks knitted from the toe up that I've ever got to fit a human foot. I like the idea of having a full toolkit of methods for knitting, but I really don't get why people are fanatical about toe-up socks. Then again, I still don't get why people are fanatical about knitting in the round, even though I'm knitting in the round a lot myself lately (although expecting that to change somewhat this fall when I start making sweaters and jackets again).

I'm not the biggest fan of making bobbles, but these were no more than two bobbles per round, so it was fine. I like the use of ribbing to make the whole sock a bit more shapely. I had to make these wider and longer than what the pattern called for, but everything worked out in the end.

Celtic knot socks

These are from the same issue of Interweave Knits as the Bacchus socks — lots of great patterns in this issue! These were also written for toe-up construction, but since the texture pattern is symmetrical, I knit them cuff-down since that was easier on my brain.

Beaded earrings

I bought all the beads and findings for these a couple of years ago, and they've been languishing in my bead box ever since. One night I spontaneously decided I was sick of them using up the space in the bead box, pulled out my pliers, and put them together. I had to redo them once (but only once). In the end they seemed to turn out:

French Girl lace jacket

I finished this one a while ago, but (as you can see) have been having trouble photographing it. To make this one, you knit two halves —cuff to centre back, and then cuff to centre back for the other side — and then knit the collar separately, using a three-needle cast-0ff to attach it. The three-needle cast-off is what gives the jacket structure — there are absolutely no seams anywhere else. My two big modifications for this one from the original pattern were to make it long-sleeved and to add a garter stitch border to the bottom, instead of the single crochet originally called for.

The back gusset adds some nice shaping to the jacket and makes it a bit more difficult to see where the graft line is that joins the two halves at the back (it's along one side of the gusset and up the centre back).The collar is made from the twisted edge up and then joined with a gathered three-needle cast-off. I'm finding French Girl Knits has some great construction ideas that make you think "Hey, I could use that for..."

Now what?

I started my first knitted doily today, and even though I took several hours out to visit some friends, I am still 60% done by the round count. The rounds are getting bigger and bigger, of course, but there are also more plain rounds, so the progress has actually been pretty linear.

I'm also working on another French Girl constructed-in-two-halves jacket. I need more jackets, and since I am sitting down in a cubicle most of the day, I prefer knitted ones. It would be loved to post finished photos of both of these soon, because that means they're getting used!

Old-fashioned skills in the age of small appliances

My youngest brother recently moved to an apartment with less cupboard space, and so I inherited his breadmaking machine. The manual got lost a long time ago, and it doesn't seem to be available on-line, but I found some tips for "operating any bread machine" and some basic recipes.

This morning I threw all the ingredients into the machine, set it for a basic whole wheat loaf, and pressed the start button. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly until I followed the recipe instructions about checking the dough's consistency.

The instructions said that you were supposed to pause the bread machine (like lifting the lid on a washing machine, I suppose) and check how sticky the dough was, then add either water (for dry dough) or flour (for too-sticky dough) until the correct consistency had been achieved.

So I opened the lid... and the bread machine kept kneading away. I poked at a part that was nice and far away from the mixer blade, and it was definitely too sticky, so I added some flour and closed the lid.

After a few minutes, just like the instructions said, I checked again — still too sticky. This time I pressed the Stop button to make the machine stop long enough so I could be super extra sure that the machine would mix in the new infusion of flour properly.

But when I pressed the Start button, the machine screamed at me and started blinking "H-E", which I guess is some sort of error. It wouldn't start no matter what. Apparently on this model, Stop really means "something awful is happening! STOP!"

I dug the dough out of the machine's baker thingy, threw it in my favourite bread-mixing bowl with some flour, and kneaded it until it was the right consistency. Then I tossed a tea towel over the bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes, before shaping the loaf and putting it in a loaf pan. 45 minutes later I had a perfectly nice loaf of bread with a crumb density that is perfect for sandwiches:


Next time: must remember not to push the button, or not use the machine.