And I'm sending you out this signal here

Today's post, about what is coveted and what is priceless, is at Toxophily.

You've got to set them up

Today's post, about the long journey of yarn to find its purpose, is at Toxophily.

Insta-Hat

It's fun to say. Try it! Insta-Hat!



More pics, and the story, over at Toxophily.

Summer's end

Labor Day weekend is the unofficial end of summer, but the weather has picked this moment to give us a last blast of heat and humidity. In the wake of Tropical Depression Isaac, which brought us some much-appreciated rain, the heat index is soaring into the triple digits again. Regardless of how it feels, though, some things are coming to an end, and other things are beginning, just as they do every year.

I'm focusing on the things that are ending. It's not just nostalgia or regret; some of those things I'm glad to see end, at least temporarily. Two of my major summer writing projects, the TV Club Classic coverage of Sports Night and the regular coverage of Breaking Bad, are going on hiatus until next year, and it's a relief. Those pieces take a lot of concentration, time, and anxiety every week, and it will be nice to have them off my plate for a while. Sports Night's last season 1 post went up this past Wednesday, and Breaking Bad's last episode of the current half-season is tonight. It's still a couple of weeks until the other shows I cover regularly (How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family) start their seasons, so I've got a nice break coming up.

It's also pleasant to have the kids' birthday party and the Ravellenics behind me. Last week I went to the Rhea Lana sale and bought most of the clothes they'll need until next spring (I hope). I still haven't cleaned out their closets of too-small items, or unpacked the bags of jeans and jackets I hauled home from that sale, but at least I'm more than halfway ready for colder weather. And with all the Ravellenic administration in the past, I've gleefully started what I hope is a binge of knitting things to keep other people warm, whether they are friends or strangers in need.

We've been having our master bathroom remodeled this summer, and that's nearly done, too. The pace would be considered too leisurely for people more outcome-focused than ourselves, or for a room where the loss of function is more disruptive. But we're just proud that we've gotten the process underway after years of knowing it needed to be done.

That's also the way I feel about starting a conversation with a financial planner this summer. We haven't finalized much yet, but stuff is in the works: more life insurance, rearranging some assets to provide more focused retirement funds, college savings, and an easier way to keep track of it all. I'm so pleased with myself for finally moving in this direction after living so long with the uneasy feeling that I wasn't properly taking care of business, that I'm not in too much of a hurry to get everything signed and squared away; it's enough that the ball is rolling.

Maybe this change of seasons isn't really about things ending, or about us moving on. It's about not having wasted the time we've been spending. And that goes for time with the kids, too, which right now is not a matter of long looks backward, but lovely moments that still linger in the now.

And the public wants what the public gets

Today's post about a lucky break and the Olympic spirit is at Toxophily.



And check out my medals! Toxophily is now wearing them proudly. The Ravellenic Games weathered an early controversy, benefitted from a huge outpouring of support from the knitting world and publicity far beyond its borders, and were an unqualified success, far beyond the few awards I earned. Full report coming soon!

Hold your head up, you silly girl

Today's post about uncharacteristic perfectionism is at Toxophily.



We're pausing here and taking a deep breath before plunging into vacation with family next week. After that it's time to flail toward the start of school like the Olympic swimmers in the 50 meter sprints. See you on the other side!

She is dancing away from me now

Today's post about a highly unlikely shawl is at Toxophily.



Three separate people -- well, one married couple and another person -- have mentioned that they miss this blog. Message received, universe! I've got a lot of Toxophily posts in the queue, but I'll also try to do some prose writing here, too.

How tough must we be to ask for more now?

Today's post about a hat by choice it at Toxophily.



Normally I'd put a picture of the hat here. But CG was being very silly during our modeling session. Most of my shots feature the buck teeth she's growing more prominently than the hat. So here'a a throwback shot of her on the swingset last weekend -- reminding me of how many of those pictures I took of her swinging in earlier years. How she's grown!

Rip it up and start again

I spent a marvelous hour or so last fall at a yarn store in San Francisco called Artfibers. The owners formulate their own yarn bases and hand-dye them to produce a large loft of amazing, unique fibers. When I walked out after a happy morning swatching, I had 400 yards of Ming, a half-merino half-silk blend in a colorway that reminded me of bronze, copper, gold and amethyst.

Last night, having bound off an enormous Malabrigo wrap destined for my mother-in-law's shoulders, I couldn't wait to start another project. A scarf, a rectangular scarf that I can knit on my beloved Signature straights, worsted weight, large and satisfying stitches in a yarn that would be a treat for my hands and eyes.

I started out by looking for inspiration in my Ravelry stash and queue, but when I visited my yarn wall to poke through the yarn possibilities in person, the Artfibers cone practically fell into my hands. What better indulgence, I thought?I gathered the yarn and my needle roll and headed back to the living room to find a pattern.

I didn't expect that search to last all night and most of the next morning. Here are some of the patterns I tried.



Serafine by Molly Whiddon. I saw some lovely projects showing how this clusters and highlights variegated yarn. But after starting it, I was unhappy and wasn't sure why.



Tipsy Rib Scarf by Pamela Wynne. Very promising, since this pattern was created for this specific yarn. But I only got a couple of rows in before I made a mistake, and since I wasn't sure that a simple knit/purl pattern was what I wanted, I moved on.



One-Row Handspun Scarf by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. The one pictured is by Raveler purpleemma in Ming. Isn't it beautiful? I kept coming back to this, hoping it would work. I love one-row lace patterns. They're what I so often crave when I crave a rectangular worsted-weight scarf on straight needles knitting experience. And this wasn't the only one I tried.



Sinful Ribbed Scarf by Classic Elite. Nope.



Swish Scarf by Lisa Sisk. Nope, but this is the one that made me realize what was wrong with all these patterns I was rejecting. The fringe you see is made by knitting six stitches in stockinette on one side of the scarf, then dropping them all at the end. The lace pattern wasn't doing it for me at all, but the stockinette was gorgeous. Aha! Need to look for patterns with major swaths of stockinette!

Unfortunately, stockinette and rectangular straight-needle scarves go together like ... things that don't go together well. Stockinette rolls up from side to side, and scarves have to lay flat. Was it possible that this yarn, which begged for beautiful columns of knit-stitch V's to show off its iridescence, would be incompatible with my desire for a simple unshaped scarf?



The Prismatic Scarf by Huan-Hua Chye. I thought this would be the one. There's three knit stitches between those slipped-with-yarn-in-front bars. But the bars were distracting rather than enhancing. They looked messy. I needed even more stockinette.



SciWiNoNa (Scarf With No Name) by weezalana. Ahhhhh. Finally. A scarf with wide stockinette panels (five stitches across) and no yarn-overs or slipped stitches to detract from them.



As soon as I got past the garter border and started the pattern, I knew my yarn had found its pattern at last. The metallic sheen to the fibers, the deep tones of the colors, all glowed in the smooth stockinette surface.

One of the great virtues of knitting is its ability to be unravelled and worked again. I knit the first inch or two of this scarf half a dozen times in the past twenty-four hours. For a material so precious, it was worth the trial and error to find its proper match. Trust your instincts, learn from your mistakes. Rip it up and start again. The investment is small -- just time and effort. The reward is beauty, and the pleasure of making it. Few activities afford so many opportunities to do it over and get it right.

When you know down inside that I really do

Today's post about dressing a growing girl for summer is at Toxophily.



And summer it almost is, at least by the holiday calendar here in the U.S. Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Endings and beginnings

I'm in Chicago for the spring board meeting of the AAR. This is my sixth and last spring board meeting, at least on this shift. I joined the board in 2007 as a regionally-elected director. I voted myself off the board in a governance restructuring in 2010. I was asked to stay on for two years as treasurer until an election could occur for that position. And here I am nearing the last meeting with this shifting, ever-changing group I joined so innocently when my daughter was two years old.

Earlier this week, I found out that another position of responsibility I've held since 2007 is coming to an end. The Ravelry Welcome Wagon has sent an individual welcome message to every new member of the site for the past five years. Almost two million people have joined the site in that time. I've personally sent over 27,000 welcome messages. It's a daily ritual for me -- open two tabs, post in the thread for my designated letter of the alphabet indicating where I started, copy the welcome message template from Evernote, and start clicking on the new user page until I reach the person I ended with last time. I've developed a system that I can do very quickly. And yet I reflect every time I click the "send message" button how special it is that we do this intentionally as users, rather than having the system automated.

Such a system is unsustainable at a large enough scale, however, and the pioneers whose brainchild the Welcome Wagon is have decided to shut down the effort rather than try to keep the ship afloat in increasingly high seas. I'm glad to see that the volunteers don't question their resolve or their decision. We're counting down to the last welcomes coming on May 1, and celebrating the legacy we've left for hundreds of thousands of knitters and crocheters.

I like being in positions of responsibility and influence. I like being in positions of service that make a difference for lots of people. And I'm leaving a couple of those positions soon. There are plenty of other things I have planned, that the demise of these responsibilities will help make time for. But I'll miss them. It will be painful seeing April and August and November roll by without anticipating a trip to see the AAR staff and my board colleagues, without strategizing and sympathizing about board issues and politics. It will be a lack and a loss every day to click over to my Ravelry tab without the need to spend a few minutes copying the welcome template into a couple of dozen private messages, replacing my name in the salutation with the user I'm welcoming. I will miss that more than anyone can imagine. It was a perspective on a site and a community I dearly love, that kept me grounded and connected and allowed me to answer a thousand random questions, showing people that there are people on this site, not just forms and forums and bewildering folkways.

I'm going to need an avenue of service to replace these. Stay tuned. I predict it won't take me too long to say yes to some other massive endeavor that will eat up six years of my life.

It's our love that makes it shine

Today's post about a well-traveled scarf is at Toxophily.



I lost the original WIP of this scarf -- in the same yarn but a different green colorway -- somewhere between the parking lot and the mammography clinic of the local hospital two years ago. Now finally it's been finished!

With a smile on your face, and then do it again

Today's post about a sweater to celebrate change is at Toxophily.



It's a winter sweater for a year that winter never came, already put away to wait for the cold. No matter. Summer isn't forever.

Knitting is a political act

In honor of International Women's Day, I'd like to consider not only how women have risen above their culturally designated "station" to change the world -- and those are often the women we recognize and celebrate, like Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Madeline Albright, and Eleanor Roosevelt -- but also those who have changed the world by doing what society has assigned them to do.

 

The sneaky secret of empowerment is that it doesn't have to consist in grasping after a power beyond our mandated reach. It doesn't have to smash any ceilings. Not to belittle those who do; they are heroines, courageous beyond most of our imaginings. The backlash they suffer for daring to be more than what their peers imagine them to be is not something most of us would sign up for, or endure if we did.

But delving into the history of women's work, of the domestic sphere, as limiting and degrading as women can experience it to be (when it is all they are allowed to be), one finds powers that the defenders of the status quo have consistently overlooked.

The making of things empowers all of us. But it empowers women especially because the things we have been assigned historically to make are so fundamental, and therefore so radical. The cloth that we wove, the food that we cooked, the family structures we defined -- these are the root experiences of the human being. They are what we point to when we seek to differentiate our culture-bearing ancestors from their animal relatives.

As culture became more complex, women could chafe at being left on the ground floor, as it were. But oh, what a central position, what a powerful position that hearth and home can be. I'm not talking just about being a force behind the throne, influencing the men who go out into the world unwittingly carrying our ideas. I'm talking about shaping the physical world -- bending it around a needle, transforming it over a fire, shepherding it from helpless infant to independent adult.

When we knit, when we weave, we claim not only the powers that our politically active sisters gave to us over the past century. God bless them and what they did; no one in touch with their own humanity could wish it otherwise. But we can claim and exercise something deeper and more basic: the connection between our power to bear children and our power to beautify, adorn, warm, protect, and craft meaning into the world. Those powers meet at the hearthfire, where women inherited the jobs that were compatible with childrearing by virtue of being interruptible, not too dangerous, and practiced close to home. We found our pride and purpose there, something no one gave us and no one can take away. No matter how far we travel from that fundamental place, from those roots, we will always be able to call it back with the simple act of taking up the needle or the shuttle.

I'm following the Twitter feed of @RosiesWWII, the diary of a Seattle housewife who goes to work at Boeing after her husband joins the Army.  Rosie's friend Betty is constantly knitting for the troops, including during the bus rides to and from the factory, and during her lunch break. Rosie tries to learn, too, but finds it confusing. So much for the notion that all women are born with those domestic skills in our genes. Like riveting, it's a learned skill.  Like military training, it is passed from knowledgeable people to novices. Like all human occupations, it's a particular form of the urge to create merged with the imperative to survive.

Try telling Betty or Rosie that knitting is not a political act. That it's a hobby, a pastime, an unimportant and accidental aspect of life. Do it or don't do it -- you are making a political statement, about the way you want to be a woman. Be proud, be ashamed, be aggressive, be passive, keep it in a closet, take it out in the board room or the halls of government. They are all political acts. Because how we choose to be women, what we embrace and reject and leave behind and pick up again, our pasts and our futures, are political realities. They are our 95 theses, posted on the doors of our houses and offices and churches and trailing behind us as we move through our communities.

Whatever choice you make, do it consciously. I am not entirely comfortable with the new domesticity. I judge the way some women promote it or live it out. I am suspicious of their motives or their stance. Yet I recognize more and more every day that this is limiting and counterproductive. I realize this partly because of the judgment on whose receiving end I have been. When I continue on my path of making and connecting with the history of women in these crafts, I do so with the newly sober knowledge that the path has meanings I didn't choose.

Yet the only way to change those meanings is to keep choosing to enact the ones you believe in. Does my knitting limit me? No. Not being a knitter, being helpless before the tools and materials of the craft, laughing off my inabilities as if they were charming ineptitudes, afraid to begin lest I fail not only myself but my gender ... that was what limited me. And all those realities were my choice. They were not imposed on me by history or culture.

We are freer to acquire skills in this internet age than we ever have been before. Ignorance is no longer an excuse; the lack of a teacher in close proximity makes no difference. What inspires me and empowers me is that my connections are not only person to person as our bodies occupy the same time and space. We can be given power, inspiration, courage by people we will never meet in the flesh, thousands and millions of them, living out a way to be woman or man that we find freeing and creative -- and we can turn it into material reality. That's the key. Not just psychological liberation, but transforming matter, shaping the physical environment. Making it real.

How does participation in craft, especially those traditionally associated with women, give you power?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Thanks for reading the manifesto.

Sticking to your knitting

Becoming a knitter six years ago has focused my attention on craft in a way that I've never experienced before. The relationship and frequent disconnect between technique and creativity is thrown into sharp relief by learning a new skill, and working to become better at it.  I am intimately obsessed with the details of executing a craft discipline.  I am often mystified by the ability of its master practitioners to internalize those details so thoroughly that they can imagine a world rendered through that set of motions, or see the world to be filled with the raw material that this craft transforms.

This afternoon I watched the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about a sushi chef of 70 years experience who runs a ten-seat restaurant tucked into a hallway corner in the Tokyo subway underground. His creativity and perfectionism is so famous that people wait months or years for a reservation, and the minimum bill is 30,000 yen or about $350. The unprepossessing stall has three Michelin stars.

Much of the documentary focuses on the repetitive discipline of getting that good at something. Years of practice are required -- apprenticeships lasting most of a lifetime. Jiro, his sons and apprentices, and his adoring customers state over and over again that the key is to do only one thing. To do it every day, to aspire to reach ever new levels of achievement in that one solitary thing.

Years ago I might have found this intriguing but unrealistic. Most of our jobs require that we acquire many skills, and master few or none. But now, after thinking through the nature of craft with two seminar classes, I think there are ways for most people to take this as a challenge. How many of us develop an ability to perform in some area, and then expect that we will use this skill in a cruise control or autopilot mode while we advance ourselves in other ways?  I wonder if teaching is like this for many academics. We learn to teach, we get reasonably good at it, and then we take that knife ou of the drawer and wield it whenever the occasion arises, without feeling we need to continue deepening our appreciation or understanding of that activity. We can do it, so we do it, and if we are still learning skills they are likely to be in areas related by professional affiliation but not necessarily by methodology or material, like administration, writing, research. It's a well-known fact that most academics consider the appropriate wage for teaching to be fewer and fewer assignments to teach as the years go on. Is such a system --- are such ambitions -- likely to produce great educators?

No one would expect a knitter to become a master of his craft, to reach the highest levels of skill, by doing something other than knitting. No one would expect an athlete to become a champion by doing something other than practicing her sport. Performing one's craft and reflecting on one's craft are the only two activities associated with honing one's craft. In how many areas of our culture do we expect, for some odd reason, perfection to be achieved by diffusion of effort rather than concentration?

Faster than the speed of light she's flying

Today's post about a magical gift is at Toxophily.



We've been having weather that's almost as beautiful as Cady Gray. How's by you?

The haze I'm wandering around in

Today's post about a sweater that was fated to be is at Toxophily.



Granny Lou and Papa are here, Noel is in Utah, and we're warm, well-fed, and strong. Further dispatches as events warrant.

Whose problem is it?

I encourage my students to knit in class ... or crochet, or play with Play-Doh, or sketch, or make rubber band balls, or whatever they want to do with their hands that doesn't involve language.  That means no surfing the net, no texting, no writing poetry.

The sight of someone knitting in class can be surprising to some people.  They may even be disturbed by it.  They may think that knitting means not paying attention.  From what students who knit in other classes tell me, most instructors have no problem with it; they're focused on performance, not appearances, and as long as the students demonstrate clearly that they are engaged and learning, they give their blessing.

But other students in their classes might feel differently. An outstanding student of mine told me about a classmate of hers in a major seminar who found her knitting difficult to take.  He made numerous references on Facebook to "the crazy girl who knits," exclaiming: "I fb and text in class but knitting?!"

I hope I don't even have to point out the craziness of that claim of crazy.  This guy believes that chatting on Facebook and carrying on text conversations on his phone is his God-given right as a red-blooded student.  Maybe he knows that the professor wouldn't exactly like it if it were waved in his face, but playing on your phone is as American as apple pie; you can't really expect someone not to do it.  Knitting, though?  That's just nuts.

Now, doing anything in class that is unexpected or unconventional draws attention.  People wonder if it's okay.  They worry that you're setting a bad example, and they suspect that you're getting away with something.  My question is whether that is your problem or theirs.  If your performance is not being affected -- maybe even is being improved -- is there a reason to be disturbed?  Maybe there's concern that others around the knitter are finding it disruptive.  My worry is that disruptiveness is a vague idea that has historically been used to keep all kinds of diversity of learning styles, teaching styles, and even student and faculty demographic segments from making an appearance in the classroom.

Knitting in class isn't just a practical act.  Taking such an activity out of the sphere to which it's been relegated -- the domestic, private sphere -- and into the larger world is a political act.  It's a statement about gender, about the material world, about the body, about value.  Is there any reason not to make the classroom safe for knitting?  I haven't yet seen the evidence against it, and I can muster several rooms full of outstanding students who will vouch for it.

Progress report

On the night before our Craftin' for CASA sale, I spent a couple of hours with students in the class organizing, pricing, and tagging our items.  One of them showed up in quite a state.  She was nearing the end of a headband, but something had gone wrong several rows back and she didn't know how to identify or fix it.  "I've been crying about this for the past hour," she confessed.  "Can you help?"

I could -- by doing something that my novice knitter students often regard as a source of dread. I took the needles out of the stitches and ripped back to before the mistake, then showed her where she went wrong.  She resumed knitting, and in a few minutes, she was all done.  Not only was it a crisis averted, but her relief revealed something larger.  Going backwards, she now knew, was a way to go forward.



I spent most of the weekend working on yet another short-sleeve cardigan in beautiful Misti Alpaca Chunky, a yarn from my stash that has been tantalizing me for years.  Yesterday I chugged through so much of the second half that I woke up today in an uncharacteristic state of anticipation.  When I get close to the end of a sweater, I want to work on it every available second.  It's like leaning toward the finish line.

And then I counted my stitches after dividing for the neckline and realized I was missing one.  Much more counting ensued, along with looking back at the pattern.  Gradually the problem became undeniable: I had neglected to do one set of increases back about a quarter-cardigan ago.  I was not only one stitch short, I was two rows short.  The left front was not going to match the right front.  Two rows in a bulky weight is half an inch.  I had to rip out almost all the work done yesterday and today.

After unravelling almost two 100 gram balls of yarn -- about 200 yards -- I put the knitting aside.  The day's other project beckoned.  I needed to start my next set of drapes, and I knew that the first step would take awhile.  These were much longer pieces to cut squarely and accurately than the ones I used for the bedroom.  I worked for two and half hours measuring, pressing, folding, cutting carefully and with much hesitation, then spreading one of the drapes and a lining piece out on the biggest chunk of floor space I could find to pin and trim.  Two and a half hours on one curtain, and no sewing got done.

I'm not within sight of the end of either of these projects.  On one I lost ground; on the other, I barely got through the preliminaries.  You'd be hard pressed to call that progress.  But I made great strides toward the cardigan I want, rather than the one I was zooming through yesterday heedless of my error.  I have a pinned drape ready for the sewing machine next time I get a chance to sew (probably next weekend).

Projects like this don't spoil if they sit.  They wait with infinite patience for you to pick them up again.  Backwards or forwards, the work you do on them makes a difference.  The sense of momentum is not within them, pulling you along; it's all your perception.  That means that if you can change your point of view -- ripping out is a step toward the finished product, prep work is work and not just prep -- you can see progress in whatever you've done.

You know karate now, from a show

Today's post about knitting for myself -- finally -- is at Toxophily.

 

Have you made your Archies list yet? It's a cherished annual tradition -- or will become one, if you start now!  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your version so I can see what was important to you in 2011.