knitting.

I like knitting, you like knitting, the world likes knitting.

it’s always time for cartwheels.

| Betsy

Earlier this week, the following quote was brought to my attention:

“How would it look, do you think, if everyone, old and young, would sit down together to knit for a while? Laughter and merriment and riddles and questions and folktales and anecdotes from each person’s life would blend together in the stitches. Then later, when you recalled these events that have gone through your own fingers stitch by stitch, they would speak their own quiet language: Do you remember? Do you remember?” -Hermanna Stengard

It’s taken from the Introduction to Meg Swansen’s A Gathering of Lace, originally found in a 1925 book on mittens.

Yesterday I had a part-time job interview. While the job was pretty non-descript and involved the office triumvirate of cubicle, phone and computer, I enjoyed the interview immensely nonetheless.

The most recent job on my CV actually says “knitting instructor/organizer,” from when I was doing such last year. It’s inclusion on that otherwise ridiculous document not only makes me happy, but goes to prove how needlecraft has entered the cultural conscience.

After the formalities (introductions, job summary, schedule) were skimmed over, the topic turned to textiles. I was talking with two women, one from the southern United States, the other from Spain.

The woman from the U.S. was around my age (late 20s, early 30s) and talked of how knitting is no longer becoming something your ‘grandmother does’ and how surprised she has been recently to see her friends knitting. While I could have gone at length in response to this attitude, I kept quiet.

Then the woman from Spain, who was in her 40s, and had been completely reticent up until this point, sprang to life. Suddenly her entire face lit up and her hands danced as she spoke of all the women knitting everywhere in her native country, how it was just something ‘that everyone does’ and she grinned broadly describing the delicate lace shawls she used to watch women knitting in the park.

And the fluorescently-lit office grew new radiance as the topic changed from ‘insurance’ and ‘deductible’ to needlecraft. It this knowledge that needlecraft lies deep within our beings that inspires me and keeps me curious. Because stories such as these are everywhere, lying in wait from our childhoods, discarded in a pile at the local thrift, held in itchy ancient hands too arthritic now to grasp needles.

It is the way that these stories continually cross economic, political, cultural and language barriers that warm my heart to no end. The hardest part is starting the dialogue, but once you discover its perpetuity it’s just a matter of changing the conversation from the banal to the heartfelt.

Summer is the time for listening to The Reindeer Section.

roots.

| Betsy

Back from the beach, where I had the pleasure of watching dolphins swim in the quiet Southern Georgia ocean waters and the displeasure of talking really loud to my grandfather (who my grandmother states is “deaf as a post”). It was wonderful to spend time with them (I’m of the frame of mind that grandparents are magical) and just talk.

My grandfather delights in telling stories of growing up in rural Georgia, starting out as a young lawyer in a segregated South and later on becoming a judge. As a child, I was always amazed as we would drive around their town and everyone would stop and wave at him like he was royalty. Later on, I would go and watch him hold court, completely weirded out by the fact that my grandfather (the kindest sweetest man) held the power to put people in jail. He still works some of the time, and I’m amazed at his ability to make fair and just judgements regarding any possible situation.

My grandmother and I have graduated from just talking about school or how I had my hair cut. And it is secretly one of the best gifts I have ever received from knitting. Yesterday we drove around town, took a walk down the pier, cooed over the variety of yarns available in the local stitching shop. You see, I don’t knit because it’s trendy or even because I’m fascinated with historical methods of needlecraft. I knit because I can finally talk to my grandmother. After our afternoon out, she sat next to me on the couch and showed me how to deftly wield a crochet hook, and it was so simple and beautiful that it almost brought tears to my eyes.

In the stitching shop, I was fascinated at her fascination with the way that knitting has gained popularity over the past few years. She kept eyeing the yarns and books and pointing interesting things out to me. Although I was ogling all the beautiful craft supplies around me, I kept getting distracted thinking about how very glad I am that something as simple as knitting as increased my vocabulary with my grandmother tenfold.

Often people say something to me along the lines of “I don’t have the patience to knit/embroider/craft,” “It’s too hard,” “I could never do that.” To which I always reply, “Of course you can, it’s easy.” But what I keep forgetting is that sometimes there’s a reason why we learn to certain lessons when.

Every morning I read a passage from Everday Mind: 366 Reflections on the Buddhist Path. The one that keeps popping in my head is from February 8 by Pema Chodron,

We try so hard to hang on to the teachings and “get it,” but actually the truth sinks in like rain into very hard earth. The rain is very gentle, and we soften up slowly at our own speed. But when that happens, something has fundamentally changed in us. That hard earth has softened. It doesn’t seem to happen by trying to get it or capture it. It happens by letting go; it happens by relaxing your mind, and it happens by the aspiration and the longing to want to communicate with yourself and others. Each of us finds our own way.

On my drive down to Georgia after writing the previous post, I was reminded of this. And how sometimes it’s okay not to officially have a Plan B. As long as you remember to be aware of where you are, what you’re doing and what’s around you. Because sometimes the most amazing options uncover themselves. But only when you’re ready.

because sometimes rules are made to be broken.

| Betsy

It is my opinion that one of the reasons why needlecraft has such a long history is due to its ability to be stopped and started frequently as well as its versatility. And one only has to go as far as to read Anne Macdonald’s No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting to find that I am not alone.

In the first instance, regarding mid-century knitters, from pp. 142-143:
“Being without work” remained so unthinkable that knitting was still encouraged to employ “minutes which would otherwise be wasted.” Knitting was endorsed for housewives already exhausted from other chores: “A woman who has been at the washtub or at housework all day cannot easily sit down to plain needlework; her hands are ‘out of tune’; she cannot, perhaps, even feel the needle, it is too small; but let her be able to knit readily (having been taught at school), and she will add many an inch, at spare moments, to her husband’s or her children’s stockings, which lies ready to be taken up at any time.”

Trade the words “washtub” and “housework” for “computer” and “the office” and you have today’s milieu. But, by finding something that can be abandoned and worked on at one’s convenience, we have found a way to shrug off the drudgery and banality, if only for a row or line or sleeve. Time spent crafting often takes on a meditative quality for me as I start thinking in colors and patterns and stop thinking about memos and phonecalls. Unlike other pursuits, needlecraft allows you to be able to work for a few minutes on a project and then get back to another (often more tedious) task, feeling a bit more rejuvenated, accomplished and perhaps even, useful.

In the second instance, see p. 330:
“…as huffily as late nineteenth-century women had derided products of the new industrialization; another begged the young to assure that their garments bore their own personal, creative stamp in “this plastic, manufactured world…”

On a more personal note, I turn to “the jerk hat,” as you can see me wearing below.

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The joy of this particular garment is that after I made it and didn’t want to waste my efforts on the proposed recipient, I could allow on a 3rd grade sense of creativity to nurse my wounds. Juvenile? Of course. But, it reminded me that at the end of the day, it’s my knitting. And that I can do whatever I want to do with it. (In the end, it was properly restored sans snark, and now lives in Philadelphia.)

I think that people sometimes forget that.

Don’t you, okay?

This entry was fueled as I kicked it old school with Teenbeat 50. I can’t believe that Teenbeat is 20! Rad!

down with irony!

| Betsy

Lately I’ve been seriously entertaining the idea of persuing my PhD in either cultural anthropology/sociology/cultural studies.

I want to have the chance to research the issues surrounding craft, domesticity and modernity from a historical perspective in order to figure out what is happening in the present.

Because on the one hand, it seems like it’s just about the teeny tiny world of craft and the current resurgence, but when you look at the other, there’s a whole wealth of history holding up the present pillar. Crafts have been something that humans have always done, given a bit of free time and spare materials.

Sometimes I worry that women my grandmother’s age view this current re-interest in crafts as just a trend based on irony. Lately I’ve become sick of irony, and how irony has become the cornerstone of our wardrobes, leisure time and vocabulary. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to actually meet people who are real. And who have genuine interest in things, and genuine passion for it.

There is nothing I love more than when I am crafting in public and someone my grandmother’s age comes over and tells me stories about how she (or he!) used to knit/crochet/embroider. I want them to teach me all the skills they have learned before the current upswing where every town had numerous knitting circles. I am craving learning those skills that are passed down from generation to generation not passed down via printed pages on a book.

In researching knitting for various projects over the past few years, that’s what I have come to be most endeared by. The lack of pretension, the eagerness to share and communicate and the pure love of the craft. And no, I don’t think that irony is something just in the world of craft, in the past few years it’s inundated more than a few facets in my life.

I just want to return to the real.

Oh, and speaking of the ‘real,’ there’s nothing better at making you feel more connected locally if you volunteer! So go see who needs your help in your area, thanks to volunteermatch.org!

oh, canada.

| Betsy

Baby, it’s cold outside!

And up here in the north where I am for the week, we’re about to get hit by some more snow! While the Southerner in me loves it, I realise that I’m lucky to be in a place with heat and insulation and to be wearing warm clothes.

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There is a charity called Blankets for Canada dedicated to making blankets that keep people toasty up in the Great White North. Here’s a bit from their website:

“Just spend at least 8 minutes a day crocheting or knitting and soon you will have an 8″ x 8″ (20cm x 20cm) square. When you sew 48 squares together you have a blanket 48″ x 64″ (120cm x 160cm). To be given FREE to organizations who care for those who have no shelter or are in need of warmth.

Strips can be made instead of squares so less sewing together is required. Just make the strip 64 inches long (that is 8 squares) and as wide as you want – 8″, 12″, 16″ or 48″. It makes for a lot less sewing together and less sewing in ends.

Making the blanket is fun to do and a good way to use up those scrap balls of yarn that are laying around the house. Squares can have many different colors in each one. This makes for a very colorful blanket too! You can use any stitch you want. It’s a great way to try a new pattern.”

Often when I’m sitting around in my house idle I forget that I could just take a few minutes and make a square here or there that will eventually add up to a blanket. That sometimes the simplest things provide more comfort than the most complex.

Lately in some circles there has been much talk about moving to Canada, what about making blankets to keep Canadians warm instead?