Knitting

Finally finished the Cat Bordhi Discovery Sock.

Pattern: Discovery Sock from Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters

Yarn: Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in Oak

Knitting this sock was an adventure. I learned new techniques (knitting on two circulars); I now have my first completed fingering-weight project; I probably spent more time looking at my own feet than I did as a six-month-old; and my mind was generally blown.

Knit myself a little scarf.

Pattern: Kink by Jodie Gordon Lucas

This would mark the first time I have ever cast on and completed a Knitty project within a month of it going live. I am so proud of me! It was a fun, easy to memorize pattern, too, my purse knitting for three weeks or so.

Yarn: Malabrigo Silky Merino in Nocturnal

I must have had this yarn for three years or more. I bought it right when Malabrigo first rolled out the test skeins, from Imagiknit. I’ve cast on three or four projects with it, but it was only one skein and they never worked out. This one did, and now I have a slinky little merino/silk scarf to throw ’round my neck dramatically before driving off in my convertible Duesenberg.

Started a Top Secret Colorwork Project. FUN.

Pattern: It’s a Secret to Everybody.

I cannot tell you what pattern this is, because then it would be immediately obvious what I am up to. I will say that I like the two-row instant-memorize pattern. The prettiest TV knitting I’ve done.

Yarn: Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller’s Full ‘o Sheep.

Yarn snob here, no apologies. But! I found Full ‘o Sheep at Beverly’s, and it’s really nice, so far. The colors are gorgeous together, and the yarn is pretty soft for 100% wool. It’s like Brown Sheep without the itchy. I like!

Sewing (I still do this!)

Sewed an envelope pillow on a whim.

Pattern: made up

Knitting will always be my first craft love. But there is something about thinking, “Hey, what if there was a pillow here?” and going away for half an hour and coming back with a pillow that is terribly appealing. Knitting does not work this way.

Fabric: Amy Butler

Not making an Amy Butler quilt leaves you with A LOT of upholstery-weight fabric). When I am done with the storm of sewn handcrafts I plan to unleash on my home in the coming months, we will be an all-Amy Butler household.

Finally taught myself blind hand stitching so I could finish the pillow I pretended to have finished last summer.

Running

Ran two 5Ks and a 10K. Saw the return of Runner’s Knee while training for a half-marathon. (Why, no, I don’t tend to overdo things. Why do you ask?) Back to physical therapy, it appears. I walked for half an hour today without problems; hoping to start limping around Golden Gate Park by next week.

Other things I did

• Roasted parsley root from my CSA with potatoes, carrots and cubed pancetta.
• Acquired two guinea pigs despite having a lifelong aversion to nonhuman mammals.
• Evaluated a lovely new shul (very favorably, I might add). I think we have found a keeper.
• Started a new rewrite of an ancient manuscript. What was once 18th century historical romance has become 18th century alternate history paranormal (she said with a straight face).
• Figured out how to adapt FlyLady for my own personality: by making simple routine lists and keeping to them.

Plans for the rest of the summer

• Continue to write said 18th century alternate history paranormal (continuing to maintain a straight face).
• Finish Top Secret Project.
• Blog Mad Men.
• Get back to training for a half-marathon (hopefully the San Jose Rock ‘n Roll in October).

In short, writing, knitting, blogging, running. Wish me luck!

These Malabrigo mittens will save the world.

Over the last two decades, an entire industry has sprung up around the notion of packaging the products of Third World craft collectives to sell to the First World. Let’s examine the ways in which First World advertising both misrepresents and romanticizes the work and lives of these collectives to encourage First World consumers to buy their products.

Advertising encourages consumers to bolster their sense of identity by purchasing certain products. An increasing number of Americans are being swayed towards buying handicrafts in particular. “Labeled cultural creatives [emphasis in the original], these individuals are college educated, in their early 40s, and with average household incomes of $52,200. Six out of 10 are women. Values of community building, ecological sustainability, abhorrence of violence, and attraction to the foreign and exotic guide their lives” (Litrell and Dickson 1999, 52). Authenticity, uniqueness, and the hope that the item’s value will increase over time are important factors in the cultural creative’s decision to buy a handcrafted product. This kind of consumer purchases items with a story she can relate later. She is the prime target for an industry that produces handmade items.

This typical American consumer feels that, in purchasing a handmade item, whether imported or through tourism, she is in some way participating in the culture that produced it. In her social circle, the handmade item awards her cultural capital. She is like a representative for the culture the item represents, along with the exotic knowledge that position suggests. She also likes the idea that buying the item does good in the world; buying from a craft collective is appealing to her. Therefore, advertising intentionally builds a narrative around the collective and its products. The general storyline involves a population in crisis, who, usually thanks to the intervention of kindly Americans or Europeans, develops a small industry, producing handicrafts imbued with exoticism.

The Mirasol Yarn Project is one such example. The Peruvian collective, which produces yarn for export, manages every aspect of production, from alpaca herding to marketing. Perhaps to make consumers feel at home, the website emphasizes the actions and perceptions of American and European visitors to the project site over the experiences of the Peruvians who make the yarn. Profits from every sale of yarn fund childhood education in rural Peru. The website makes sure to mention that the idea for the school “came from a visit made to the ranch by Kari Hestnes and Per Svendsen who run Du Store Alpakka in Norway.” The product line itself “was initialized by Peter Mulley from Diamond Yarn in Canada, and he then set about contacting other distributors to make sure the Mirasol Project was supported worldwide with contributing companies in the United States, Europe and the UK.”

There is little mention of the agency of individual Peruvians in the collective itself, other than a biography page for Mirasol herself, the little girl who is the company’s namesake. The biography page, despite being called “Meet Marisol,” contains no biographical information about Mirasol, only photographs and a first-person description of her from Kari Hestnes: “Mirasol is beautiful, but she is marked by the life she lives, the skin is darkly tanned and cracked, her clothes are trashed, but she still radiates something beautiful and very feminine that touches my heart deeply […] I get a strong need to give something to these children, but the only thing I have in my pockets is lip gloss with sun block” (The Mirasol Project). This narrative emphasizes the cultural creative’s need to “do something” when faced with the crushing poverty of this region of Peru. The unspoken answer to the yearning is, of course, to buy Mirasol Yarn.

Marketing photographs of Third World collectives frequently show small groups of workers – usually women – working in a bucolic, often outdoor, setting. The workers smile, projecting satisfaction in their work. Purchasing the products, it is strongly implied, will keep these workers happy. Manos Del Uruguay, another collective producing garments and handmade yarn, offers up several such photographs. Unlike the Mirasol Project, Manos was founded by an Uruguayan woman, Olga Artagaveyta, in 1968. (Durbin 2005) Manos’ website emphasizes the empowerment of individual women through collective action (Manos Del Uruguay). The site even provides photographs of some of the 17 collectives the group boasts. The American influence is not mentioned, although Durbin’s article refers to the grants from NGOs that make the collective possible. They are beautiful photographs of Uruguayan locations, although they do not offer any information about actual working conditions or wages.

In general, the producers who belong to craft collectives are assisted by government agencies, NGOs and outside nonprofits who try to organize the artisans to make products that can be successfully exported. The typical artisan working for such an organization is also female, but, there, her similarity to the American consumer ends. She is usually part of a household, making handicrafts while tending to household tasks. Her goal is to make money to maintain and ultimately raise her family’s status in the community. So it is that, for example, the money made by small artisans who borrow from the Grameen Foundation goes almost invariably to educate the borrowers’ children. (One of the “Sixteen Decisions” chanted by members is “We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.”) Ironically, while the artisan’s handcrafted item appeals to the “cultural creative,” such items do not have the same cachet in the artisan’s community. Frequently, artisans use the money they make to buy items imported from America and elsewhere, such as appliances, electronics, and, in one example, Stallone T-shirts.

When these projects are successful, women’s lives improve dramatically. As the Grameen Bank publicizes, women overwhelmingly educate children of both sexes, which, in turn, uplifts an entire family. Women also delay marriage and childbirth when they have financial independence, and their families support them when they see the clear economic benefits. This can have tragic results when the community sees this empowerment as a threat to the male status quo. In one Chiapas village, the female organizer of a pottery collective, Petrona Lopez, was murdered. “Petrona was clearly a threat to a patriarchal order of households wherein women’s production was controlled by their fathers or husbands. All men in the community were threatened by the autonomy women gained in the cooperative and condoned the act that released them from the threat” (Nash 1993). Marketing certainly does not emphasize the risks female workers accept when they band together to form collectives.

There are many other pitfalls on the way to becoming a success story like Mirasol or Manos Del Uruguay. First and foremost, producers of handicrafts are dependent on the global market. They do not produce a “necessary” product, and in an economic downturn, demand for their products will by necessity decrease. When a market is developed for a product, that market can become suddenly flooded with inexpensive, mass-produced knockoffs from, generally, Asia. As well, tastes change quickly; if there is suddenly no demand for an item, a collective is left with equipment and raw goods but nowhere to unload them. There is constant, ruthless competition in the global market from East Asian countries. Chinese yarns and other textiles are produced much cheaper than the handicrafts, which is, of course, why advertising must be used to explain or justify the higher cost.

When men in a community realize the craft collective has a potential for success, they often become involved in the management of the collective. Because they are not artisans and are primarily concerned with increasing the collective’s bottom line, they frequently reorganize in ways that increase profits but are detrimental to workers. One common tactic is to divide artisans in to “pieceworkers” so that each worker specializes in a tiny portion of production. No one woman gains the knowledge to assemble an entire item, so each woman is dependent on the collective. If the collective disbands, the women may not have transferable skills.

A side effect of pieceworking is to reduce the pride of craftsmanship that brings enjoyment to artisans. Further reductions to this enjoyment can occur when artisans find themselves producing to North American tastes, at the expense of their own, culturally dictated aesthetics. In one situation, Guatemalan weavers were upset when told that North American consumers did not like the “hot pinks, limes, and oranges” they traditionally wove into their hangings (Lynd 2000). Some even continued to weave with traditional colors, despite being paid a discounted price for items that “did not meet quality standards.” Clearly, it was a difficult situation, as expressed by the American who was overseeing the collective: “On the one hand, we want to help the women succeed in the international market. On the other hand…we do not want producers to lose the integrity of their weavings” (Lynd 2000).

Worst, wages may be disproportionately low. In the production of Peruvian sweaters in one male-run collective, “in a classic example of middlemen reaping disproportionate profits, knitters earn between US$5 and US$20 for a sweater, while the garments may sell in the U.S. for as much as US$200 or US$300” (Page-Reeves 1998). One USAID program not only underpaid workers, but actually left participants worse off than before. They encouraged a collective to take out loans, then used information gleaned from the collective to actually develop factories to undercut the market (Page-Reeves 1993).

In an increasingly crowded marketplace, advertising often must project an additional cachet to get the consumer’s attention. So it is, for example, that Campbell Soup produced special pink “breast cancer” cans of soup for a limited time; by purchasing a can of soup that contributed a tiny fraction of sales to breast cancer research, consumers could sate their guilt over not financially supporting the race to the cure. Ben and Jerry’s ill-fated Rainforest Crunch convinced shoppers that a purchase would help save the Amazonian rainforests. Consumers like to buy products that make them feel good about themselves. Buying “breast cancer” chicken soup implies that the consumer is a good person who cares about breast cancer.

Although the goal of helping individuals parlay often ancient skills into modern financial success is laudable, it may minimize help for more widespread solutions. This makes the consumer force complacent. My buying a skein of organic yarn spun by a Tibetan refugee is very nice, but it does not lead me to lobby Congress to put pressure on China. Nor does it encourage me to seek information on how my purchase really affects the man or woman who spun the yarn. We have the power, as consumers, to ensure that “voting with our pocketbooks” makes the lives of individuals throughout the world better. Looking beyond advertising to the realities of production can be the first step.

Works Cited
Durbin, Paula. “Manos Del Uruguay: The Bottom Line.” Grassroots Development: Journal of the Inter-American Foundation 26, no. 1 (2005).
Ghista, Garda. “Towards Economic and Women’s Liberation Via Grameen Bank.” ProutWorld.org. (Retrieved May 9, 2010.)
Litrell, Mary Ann, and Marsha Ann Dickson. Social Responsibility in the Global Market: Fair Trade of Cultural Products. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1999.
Lynd, Martha. “The International Craft Market: A Double-Edged Sword for Guatemalan Women.” In Artisans and Cooperatives: Developing Alternative Trade for the Global Economy, edited by Kimberly M. Grimes and B. Lynne Milgram, 65-84. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2000.
Manos Del Uruguay. (accessed August 13, 2008).
Nash, June. “Maya Household Production in the World Market: The Potters of Armantenango del Valle, Chiapas, Mexico.” In Crafts in the World Market: The Impact of Global Exchange on Middle American Artisans, edited by June Nash, 127-154. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Page-Reeves, Janet. “Alpaca Sweater Design and Marketing: Problems and Prospects for Cooperative Knitting Organizations in Bolivia.” Human Organization 57, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 83-93.
Page-Reeves, Janet. “Sweater-Knitting and Project Aid in Bolivia: A Critique.” Anthropology of Work Review 14, no. 2 (Winter-Spring 1993): 34-36.
The Mirasol Project. (accessed August 13, 2008).

I knit most of my kippah on the Sabbath. We’ve recently begun trying to keep the Sabbath more — well, not more, but better.

The Sabbath, the seventh day of the Jewish week, begins at sundown on Friday and lasts until sundown on Saturday. It is a day of rest in honor of the seventh day of creation, when, according to Genesis, God rested. During that time, an exhaustive list of activities are forbidden, including work, turning on light switches, and cooking. One attends both evening and morning services at the synagogue, and eats a festive Friday night meal and a cold lunch on Saturday.

As the lady of the house, the way I have traditionally kept the sabbath is to race home on Friday with a challah under one arm, either prepare a multi-course meal or order something, sweatily throw food on the table, and then…light the Shabbat evening candles, setting the stage for a few moments of peace.

We bless the kids, bless the wine, bless the bread, and have even gotten to the point where everyone will sit reasonably still during Birkat Hamazon, the blessing after the meal. Then, after possibly singing a Shabbat-related song, we start running around again, trying to get people to brush their teeth and put on their pajamas and stop using Google Maps Street View to pretend to be a 31 Balboa going inbound.

The moment of peace is lost, and I’m hyperventilating again. As far as I was concerned, the Sabbath was about me working like mad to make a day of rest for everyone else.

I just finished a very interesting book by one of the founders of Jewish Renewal, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He suggests that, instead of discarding “old-fashioned” rules and rituals, Jews find ways to breathe new life into them, trying to see the restrictions as fluid boundaries that we may or may not choose to transgress, and incorporating new traditions. (He has no opinion on run-on sentences.) I liked this idea, so I went for it.

Friday night two weeks ago, I took the youngest around the house before bed and we lit candles in every room, welcoming the Sabbath with as much light as possible. That night, the kids fell asleep by candlelight. In the morning, we put STOP signs on the TV and the computer, but we did not forbid the little one to go to his soccer game. (We didn’t drive there, however, but took the bus.) We did listen to music or play musical instruments if we felt like it. We used the coffee grinder and the bathroom light.

I decided, if I was going to knit, to knit something on a Jewish theme, so I knit a kippah. At one point, the kids were playing a board game on the floor while the adults dozed on the couch, and I thought, groggily, “Shabbat is awesome.”

I am normally a very frantic person, but I felt pretty calm on Shabbat, to the point of napping, something I can generally only do when ten months pregnant. I can honestly say we spent quality time together as a family, just hanging out and chatting and snoring. (Alarmingly, Facebook got along just fine without me.)

In short, Shabbat A+++++++. Would observe again.

(Pattern: A Kippah To Knit by Donna Druchunas, knit in Koigu KPPM. A very lovely and straightforward pattern with excellent results. I wanted to knit it on two circs, but I did not have enough circs.)

Sure, these are noble pursuits that I would, in theory, eventually like to see to fruition. But, honestly, at 5:40 PM — a soul-chilling time when I must remind myself that The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Bedtime — it is impossible to view my life from such a distance. It is easy to answer questions like “Why am I here?” and “What is the meaning of all this?” when I am sitting in a lovely teahouse, sipping Lapsang Souchong and languidly jotting down notes. You would not wish to hear my answers to these questions when it is 5:40 PM and I have suddenly noticed, midway through a one-pot dinner that has used all the pots in the kitchen, that the little white grains of sand in my child’s hair can’t  really be sand because they are moving of their own accord.

It has been 5:40 PM several times a day for about six weeks now, a day or three of peace followed by just a string of horrid little surprises and unpleasant personal epiphanies. Unnecessary arguments have been had. Bills have shown up out of nowhere. It has rained every time I let down my guard. I’m certainly not an optimist on the sunniest of days, and so, when everything is sucking,  I tend to throw in the towel immediately. The problem is that, in real life, there are not really many ways to throw in the towel. You  can say “I give up,” but that’s not a permanent solution. There is a permanent solution, but it is not permitted.

Sometimes, one needs to be reminded of that.

I won’t bother saying something so trite as “knitting gets me through.” But, when the outlook is very bleak, there is something to be said for bright green yarn on a gray day, tiny needles clicking through a sullen silence, soft when life is hard, warm when everything is cold.

You can even put it on your foot.

Sometimes, you don’t have to make it the rest of your life. The next row will do.

(Pattern: Cat Bordhi’s appropriately named Discovery Sock, from Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters. Yarn is Madelinetosh Tosh Sock, in Oak. Knitting socks on two circular needles thanks to Bordhi’s Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles. Let’s worship her.)

This weekend, I finished my birthday present. Happy birthday, me.

Pattern: Saroyan (from feministy).
Yarn: Lonesome Stone Alpaca Worsted
Color: Shades of Aspen Leaves

Other than the Giant Chuppah of 2008, I think this is the first lace pattern I’ve really buckled down and finished. It was really nicely designed — the lace panel was so teeny, with only one repeat, so’s I could actually carry the project around. I knitted this shawl on MUNI, on the couch watching Hoarders, in the car waiting for school pick-up, and while sitting around at a taping of Mythbusters (”WHAT YOU SAY,” you say? Top secret until the episode airs, sorry).

I used blocking wires for the first time with this little scarf, and I have to say I wish I had had them when I blocked the Ginormous Chuppah instead of millions of little straight pins. Hindsight, etc.

2. Draft Snake

After recently acquiring Lotta Jansdotter’s recent book on sewing simple and attractive projects, I really wanted to get around to sewing a draft snake. For the uninitiated, draft snakes are narrow tubes of stuffed fabric placed across the bottoms of doors or in window jambs to block drafts, making the home more energy-efficient.

They are also a cute way to use fabric scraps!!!1!

And they are impossibly easy to make. I have a big, drafty front window, so, last Saturday,  I measured and measured, cut my little pieces of fabric, and sewed the whole thing, in a total of about half an hour. Then I went to fill it with all the rice we had in the house.

It filled about six inches of the snake.

So eventually we acquired several more pounds of rice.

Still not enough.

(I live in San Francisco for its majestic views of the ocean.)

Here is the draft snake in its finished glory.

Ten pounds of rice. TEN. Every time I look at it I feel the pride of craftsmanship/profound guilt for filling a mildly functional decorative item with ACTUAL FOOD PEOPLE COULD EAT.

Pattern: Draft Snake from Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing
Fabric: Scraps — Alexander Henry 2-D Zoo, Kona Cotton, old cotton twill from MUNI driver costume

At least, if the End Times start, we will have a secret food source.

3. Mini Quilt

Pattern: Tiny Dishes by Virginia Cole
Fabrics: Amy Butler & other misc scraps from my Off-Kilter Pillow
Status: Not Done Yet And It’s Gonna Be A While

I like sewing big rectangles to other big rectangles. I do not like cutting out fussy little triangles and sewing them to other, equally fussy little triangles. I really don’t like cutting fabric at all, as it turns out. It’s always kinda wonky when I do it, as you can see.

I still have several rows of straight stitching — as well as binding — to do on this mini quilt. I am SO GLAD I did not jump into my first proper patchwork quilt. I can’t imagine having cut out two hundred triangles and then having to piece them together. The quilters of Gee’s Bend were already amazing to me, but now I think they are quilting superheroes.

4. Craft Space

My January house objective (this is a thing now) is supposed to be Extremely Making My Room Over. That hasn’t happened in its entirety, but at least there are no bicycles in my room, junk was sent away forever, and only the oldest unsorted papers are still lying around. It sucks much less.

I have this idea of gradually covering the wall next to my sewing machine with letterpress prints. I can’t do this all at once, but I did order some postcards from Etsy.

They’re reproductions of a gorgeous series (almost entirely sold out) of letterpress broadsheets about feminist heroes, by Anagram Press.

I really hope they don’t sell out of the Harriet Tubman and Marie Curie ones before I get around to buying them, ’cause AMAZING.

It is hard to describe how good I am at graphic design (no martyr).

This year, I’ve decided that one resolution is going to get rid of that sad failure-feeling: No Martyrs.

I’m going to resolve to do a bunch of things I like this year, and maybe the things I don’t like will sort of fall into line. Maybe not. I don’t care. I’m not going to be a martyr, sitting around waiting for someone to give me permission to have a fulfilling life. I’m turning [redacted] years old tomorrow, and I plan on having a lot more fun starting immediately.

This will also make a lot of other people’s lives a lot happier, since a martyred mama is a bitterly sarcastic mama, and if mama is bitterly sarcastic everybody is bitterly sarcastic. Nothing is sadder than a four-year-old making biting comments under his breath.

No Martyrs: New Year’s Resolutions

1. Self-imposed moratorium on gift knitting

I love knitting for others, but, as a result, I rarely knit things I want to knit because I don’t think other people would like them. Also when you are knitting an already late gift, every stitch is infused with profound guilt and resentment. Everyone loves gifts like that.

So I am knitting myself a birthday present, and it is already almost late, and I do not care.

Pattern: Saroyan by Liz Abinante

It’s really fun, with mindless bits coupled with fun bits, i.e. perfect for my lifestyle. It is, implausibly, my first lacy scarf knit for myself.

Yarn: Lonesome Stone Alpaca Worsted in Shades of Aspen Leaves

Buttery soft yarn that I bought on vacation in Grand Lake, Colorado, which was thus Too Nice To Do Anything With. Not anymore! The color is gorgeous and periodically there are little bits of vegetable matter, signifying that the animals who produced the fiber hung out under the sky and thus have happy lives.

2. Finally Sign Up for a Graphic Design Class With Cathy Z.

I have been a closet scrapbooker ever since I discovered my first issue of Simple Scrapbooks, a now-defunct magazine that, instead of just relentlessly pushing product, tried to teach fundamentals of graphic design in a friendly and entertaining way. Central to this process was Cathy Z., my first graphic design crush (yes, it’s a thing! shut up) whose devastatingly simple layouts taught me that scrapbooking could be an art form. I bought both her books, I relentlessly lurk on her blog, and I just signed up for a twelve week online class with The Master. I AM NO LONGER A CLOSET SCRAPBOOKER. I WANT TO MARRY PATTERNED PAPER. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ME.

P.S. In the interests of no more martyrdom, I will probably be subjecting you to scans of my layouts. No Martyrs!

3. Just Buy Some Pants, Already. On Clearance.

Finding out your favorite jeans don’t fit is like throwing on your coat, going down to the garage, and discovering you can no longer squeeze into the front seat of your car. It is horrifying and Not Tenable. Jeans are the car of clothes (?). I am not a martyr, needing pants does not make me a more devoted mother or get me to the gym, I bought three pair of pants at Banana Republic yesterday.

On clearance. 30% off clearance prices, actually. Loving clearance racks is not part of my martyrdom.

4. Join a Gym

I really did like the Wii Fit for a while there, but I have always loved belonging to a gym. I love the anonymous healthy-minded people around me; I love the unlimited weights and machines; I love the lack of rain; and I was coming up with all these reasons why we couldn’t afford it.

We joined the Y. They have childcare, which I have used several times, and SHOWERS where there are no CHILDREN. And exercise equipment and what have you. Training for a 5K is suddenly 100% less impossible, not to mention all the physical therapy I have been not doing. Also running at 12 mph while listening to Jay-Z and watching Gordon Ramsay scream obscenities at a hapless restaurant owner — subtitled — is amazing.

5. Make My Room Nice

Our bedroom is the worst room in the house. It is where we keep things that need to be thrown away or donated, along with whatever laundry we have not gotten to in a month, and also all my non-knitting craft stuff from American Crafts Thickers to my cheapo Singer, and two adult-sized bicycles! It is not a nice place for sewing, or scrapbooking, or, really, sleeping. It sucks.

Step one of the redecorate is to complete an Amy Butler August Fields Duvet Cover (pdf link to pattern). This is the closest thing to martyrdom on my list because of all the stupid cutting I am having to do before I can even plug in the Singer. However, the martyrdom is mitigated by the fact that I bought incredibly pretty (on clearance!) fabrics to make the cover.

When it’s done, there will be a ray of coral sunshine in my bedroom, trust.

6. Write the Fun Stuff

If something isn’t entertaining, exciting, or something I am happy to see on a page, I’m not going to be writing a lot of it in 2010. Are you listening, Failed, Unnamed Contemporary Romance? You’re out. 2010 is the year of the Historical with Paranormal Elements around here.

7. Miscellaneous

Eat and drink things I like to eat and drink, without feeling bad later.

Watch offensive and exploitative television for pure entertainment value.

Read more trash.

Volunteer for school tasks that sound interesting or hilarious.

Hire a singing coach.

Clean less.

Learn to swim, but only if I feel like it.

Use all the nice stuff that is for company only.

Limit children’s extracurriculars.

Rock out daily.

8. Go to the dentist

Well, I’m on my way there now, so I figured I might as well put something on the list that was about to get done anyway.

Happy New Martyr-Free Year!

The view from my window. The white powder represents cold.

…is that it is too cold to go outside if the white powder is on the ground. So I won’t. At least not yet.

We’re in Tahoe this weekend. We finally arrived last night after an interminable car ride, during which I knit exactly two inches of Malabrigo Gruesa (color: Olive). I planned to bring my sewing machine, but stopped being crazy right before we left, which was lucky for everyone.

We also stopped at the Vacaville Outlets, ostensibly to grab lunch. My brilliant plan was for the children and their father to go have lunch while I picked up a few things. Of course, my husband would discover that Oakland’s legendary Fenton Creamery has opened an outpost in Vacaville, and eat there, and have ice cream, while I had nothing. Nothing!

Given that, despite being a clearance shopping fanatic, I have never once enjoyed a trip to the Vacaville Outlets, I don’t know why I expected this one to be different. The lowest point involved me standing, in a thunderstorm, outside the Vacaville Popeye’s Chicken carrying two shopping bags that contained nothing for me personally and a small paper bag that contained a mild chicken thigh and a biscuit that I devoured like a scavenging beast once I was finally picked up. Also, as always, I failed to see how these prices were cheaper than the clearance sections of the original stores, where nothing has an Irregular tag. (The chicken was not Irregular.) (Or was it?)

Current Ski Report: 50% of us went skiing this morning. 75% of us ultimately plan to ski. The remaining 25%  is sitting in our apartment, nursing a cold and knitting. The snow is so pretty to look at! From inside.

The yarn will become a present by magic.

I am working on several Hanukkah gifts at once, which is why it is so convenient to have the unbroken stretch of knitting time. (I think I am also supposed to work on a novel?) Unfortunately, because they are gifts, I cannot say much more, other than to point you towards Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac, in particular the December section. For the other gifts, crochet hooks are involved. I think I can say the word “amigurumi” without giving anything away, given the fact that amigurumi designs range from aardvarks to zebras.

Anyhow, Happy belated Thanksgiving, The Internet! I hope you had plenty of iStuffing and eGravy, which are obviously the best parts of the mealdotcom.

P.S. If you still have Pilgrims on the brain, read Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates. If you do not have Pilgrims on the brain but you want a unique perspective on their history, read it anyway.

P.P.S. If you want the This American Life experience, the audiobook is basically a seven-hour long episode of TAL where this week’s theme is Puritans and the reader is your favorite TAL contributor, Ms. Vowell herself. AKA it is exactly what you want.

Delicious fabrics, why you take so long to cut? Why you hate me?

(Untitled Fantasy Novel is winning, though it’s a close thing. The dirty dishes are the real loser here.)

I’m at 22,241 words of a novel I never thought I could write. I am behind the NanoWriMo curve (I should probably be around 26,600 words by now) but I’m assuming it will all work itself out. All these characters I used to hang out with when my ninja princess was a wee baby are dropping by. I’m enjoying getting to know them.

I’m also discovering that sewing is apparently faster than knitting.

In my extremely limited experience, the slow part of sewing is the setup — washing fabric, cutting pieces, re-cutting pieces, re-cutting the GD pieces again, going out for a well-deserved margarita, etc.

As long as straight sewing is in your future — and straight sewing will be in my future for a long time — once that is done, it’s just you and the satisfying whir of your cheap Singer, making new fabric from old.

With knitting, the conscientious knitter has a lot of swatching and swatch blocking and stuff, but I am not a conscientious knitter, so I can usually get down to the nitty gritty (okay, I hate puns, but Knitty Gritty) pretty quickly. That’s part of the reason I tend to knit with the same couple of yarns: no swatching.

Knitting is better than sewing for many things, at least for me, at least for now. Going out to buy fabric for a scarf or hat seems silly when I could make one of those in a day or two with yarn I already have (too much of.) I am more likely to knit a sweater than I am to sew clothes for myself, for now, since I know how to knit a sweater and the idea of placing all those little pattern pieces makes me queasy.

Also sewing socks is theoretically possible but looks like something you do on your lunch break when you work at a bananas factory (what does that MEAN?).

But for large, flat bedcoverings, it seems sewing is winning.

I have been obsessed with the idea of learning to quilt. It all started, of course, with Mason Dixon Knitting (go read their blog right now, I dare you not to giggle), and their quilt-inspired blankets. I’ve been knitting their Log Cabin Quilt, off and on, for months. It is slow going, but it is my comfort knitting, and when it’s done it will be a (70th?) birthday present for myself.

From there, I got into the Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and I remembered another elderly woman from the south, my grandfather’s Aunt Alberta, who sewed me a quilt when I was ten, just because I wrote her a letter in pink ink saying I missed her. I wanted to join that tradition.

So I bought some books and fabric and got started on a project for my daughter’s birthday (it’s in three weeks, y’all).

It is faster than knitting. Observe.

Exhibit A: My Log Cabin Quilt

I began this quilt in Colorado the first week of August. That was three months ago. It is around 26″ square right now, unstretched. Almost baby-blanket sized.

Exhibit B: My First Quilt

I do not know why he is obsessed with rulers. Apparently they make great trains. If only he had three train sets.

I did this yesterday. Yesterday. In less than an hour. I did spend Saturday night cussing and cutting pieces, but the pieces are all cut now, and it’s already 32″ square. I should actually have the quilt top done by this weekend, and then I will have time to either dither over whether or not to turn it into a duvet cover since I have never quilted anything, or get a quarter of the way through the quilting process before her birthday and then burst into tears.

In the meantime, I can’t use the sewing machine in the car (while parked! while parked! also at red lights) or on my lap while watching reruns of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (apparently 85% of pregnant women have their babies on the toilet or in deserted campgrounds). So there’s that.

My daughter saw the brushed amigurumi panda, and she wanted it for her own. Who was I to deny her? I loved that she demanded something that is not available at Target and does not have Hannah Montana’s face on it. And did I mention that I can (technically) crochet? I would do this, I said. I am a good mother, this implied. I would crochet a panda.

This is what the original looks like:

You can see the appeal. It’s precious, pink, fluffy, and begging to be hugged. It beats real pandas all hollow.  It is the next evolutionary step in panda.

This is what my painstakingly crafted version looks like:

Zombie panda always be eatin BRAAAINS

You can see the appeal. The nose is misshapen at best, the eyes are at different heights, it is more matted than fluffy, and it is begging to taste your delicious brains.

I will, um, not be adding this photo to the CRAFT Crochet-Along Flickr pool.

How did I go wrong?

1. In every way.

Yeah I said I wanted BRAAAINS. What? Did I STUTTER?

2. By combining my hatred of finishing techniques with my bare minimum of crocheting skills (step 3: Profit!).

3. By trying to crochet during I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant followed by Toddlers & Tiaras. (Who could concentrate on proper panda eye placement while college freshmen are giving birth in dorm bathroom stalls and two-year-olds are being spray-tanned by beauty queens manquées with delusions of grandeur?)

4. By not watching any of the extremely helpful step-by-step crocheting and assembling videos provided by the designer, because I am so good at crochet and have made so many amazing crochet pandas that this would of course have been a waste of time.

5. In short, I should have seen this coming from very far away.

This was not the pattern’s fault. It is a great, clearly-written pattern, and you should try it. This was a pure me failure. Luckily, my daughter — who is home sick — loves it, as soft-hearted people will always love ugly things.

The Zombie Panda has found a friend and calmed his hunger for BRAAAINS. Or has he??

In other news, I am trying to head off my inevitable failure at Nonpareil by actually doing what I am supposed to.

Are you seated?

Gaze upon my mighty swatch!

I washed and blocked this swatch (in Knit Picks City Tweed HW Tabby, if you are curious). That is how serious I am about knitting this sweater right.

This time it will be BRAAAINS

It’s a brilliant idea. This year’s round is organized around the traditional colors associated with the four cardinal directions. I missed North, East, and South, but, when I saw West, I realized I could jump right in:

WEST (September/October)
Color: Blue
Material: Glass
Season: Autumn
Element: Water

On the right is one of my WIPs, my second Moss Grid-inspired Hand Towel in Euroflax. The color, appropriately, is Neptune, a watery blue, which sent me on an ocean kick. Especially when I realized that the stitch pattern I chose, chevron seed stitch, is evocative of stylized waves. Water again! Further fitting into the theme, we’re just into autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, and I live on the western edge of the United States, facing the Pacific (usually inside a cloud bank).

I decided to take the theme a step further and go knit my Ocean-Inspired Chevron Seed Stitch Hand Towel at the beach.

It was, um, pretty nice, yeah.

Sutro Baths

The spot I chose for my knitting field trip is one of my favorite beachy spots in SF. Don’t let the gorgeous, 72-degrees-and-not-even-windy day I photographed deceive you: usually, Ocean Beach is not a place for lingering, let alone dipping a single toe into the frigid deep. It is windy, cloudy, and wild, and could probably house the ice floes that are melting in the Arctic.

So the beach spots I like best have nothing to do with swimming and everything to do with views:

The Sutro Baths are about the closest thing to a Roman ruin we have around here. Not that they’re that old: they were completed in 1898, financed by former mayor Sutro, who was, in the best tradition of San Franciscans, kind of a nut, at the then-staggering cost of $1 million.

At the time, the view from my knitting perch would have looked more like this:

SFPL Historical Photographs Collection

San Franciscans rode their choice of three railway lines to get to the Baths, where they could bathe in seven seawater pools heated to various temperatures, or instead see a mummy if they were into it. The interior was like something out of Metropolis:

SFPL Historical Photographs Collection

Like, how “modern” is that? Gorgeous. Anyhow, the Sutros never could make the Baths a financial success; they housed an ice skating rink in the 1930s, were part of Playland in the 1950s, and caught fire during their demolition in the late 1960s, leaving the flooded, burnt-out shell I saw yesterday.

It’s silly, but, to my mind, the old Sutro Baths have a haunted quality, even though the “ruins” aren’t even that old and no one died there. They make me think of thousands of now-dead San Franciscans at play, splashing and enjoying the Baths. If a ghost did want to haunt someplace at Ocean Beach, the Baths would be a good choice.