I’m always kntting, and this autumn, I’ve been knitting for charity, and sewing knit squares together to make blankets. Here’s me and my partner of seventeen years with blankets two and three at the donation point. I’m on the left, holding the one I dubbed ‘the ugly blanket’, which I knit all the squares for myself from scraps and oddments of yarn I’ve bought or inherited from failed knitters over the years. We’ve got two more with just ends to be woven in before they’re ready to go, bringing our personal household total to five blankets, plus all the plarn my partner’s been making that other people are crocheting into water resistant sleeping mats. Not bad for about a month’s work.
EDIT: I should clarify, the five blankets were not all knit by me, just assembled, with the exception of the Ugly Blanket. That one’s all me.
Inexplicably annoyed by men writing about knitting!
???????
The tags on this are extraordinary:
girlfriend: *does a completely harmless craft that she enjoys, creating something while she watches tv*
boyfriend: “what is this anti-feminist spinster shit, i’m so alienated”
this is literally why I feel like I have to apologize for sewing
“sweetly oblivious old ladies” Hon I 100% guarantee to you that those old ladies are aware of you, your bloodline, your daily habits and your breakfast order and gossip about how rude you are as soon as you leave.
“If you want to eavesdrop on someone, knit or sew or some sort of womanly craft. Men will act as though you are deaf and blind even when shown evidence otherwise.” – Tricksters’ Choice.
I sourced this one a while back and I was really glad I did. It’s from the book Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, an anthology in which “twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow.” The passage in question, from a story by Andre Dubus III, describes the writer’s state of mind after going through some problems with his family and having a fight with his girlfriend. Part of his difficulty is that their class disparity has recently come to the fore (his family is working-class, she was born into wealth; the “busywork” line seems a little more pointed), but mostly it’s that he feels disconnected from his roots and craves the easy connection to the past that his girlfriend’s art represents. Look at the way that even this out-of-context passage is written: his apparent contempt barely disguises his envy of her ease and skill, “her fingers working the needles and yarn without having to peek.” The entire arc is about how, finding himself compelled by her craft despite himself, he asks her to teach him to knit so that he can make a Christmas present for his aunt, and, in the process, comes to realize that there is more to knitting than the shallow ideas he read into it before he really understood it.
It’s sad that a man who wrote honestly about the impact that a “womanly art” had on his life got skewered (no pun intended) on the Internet because of this contextually necessary lead-up passage in which he outlines the negative stereotypes that stood in his way and pokes fun at his own immaturity.
My partner and I used to do a biannual local craft market, selling our own handknitted and handmade goods. One of the elderly ladies who ran the trash and treasure side of the market was talking to us about it, about how her own mother? grandmother? I can’t remember, was never without something to do with her hands. She said that she talked to her about it, and she said, “Well, Bea, sometimes a lady needs to sit down.” Bea clarified that she was talking euphemistically about pregnancy. She was also talking about male expectations of female productivity. That if your man came home at the end of the day, and said, “well, what have YOU done all day?” that you could then trot out a list of mending, knitting and handcraft (in addition to the staples of cooking and cleaning) to justify your upkeep. So, yeah, if a dude has a problem with a girl doing handcraft in her spare time, he should know that it’s his damn fault women are conditioned to be busy and productive even in her leisure, and maybe question exactly what benefit he brings the family unit by playing video games.
FYI yarn bowls are not, as it might sound, bowls made of yarn. They are bowls meant to HOLD yarn while you’re knitting, with a spot for the end you’re working with to come out while being held in place so the ball doesn’t roll away. Like so:
The bowls in the post are just really fancy-ass yarn bowls.
Was finally able to get a picture of my mittens with a snowy backdrop.
Happy Winter Knitting Everyone!
I don’t know how you colourwork. I try and it turns WRONG and completely inflexible and horrible. Meanwhile, I drool over fair isle gorgeousness and wonder WHAT IS THIS WITCHCRAFT. It’s beautiful, hon.
knitting in the dark 