Crafty Julie January 17, 2005 ~ 9:40 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closed
My Christmas present from the Youngest - a handmade ceramic baby hippo.
I know I’ve been talking a lot about knitting lately, and that’s probably boring as hell to some of you. So now I’m going to try to explain my fixation with it. Bear with me.
I think my middle school was one of the last bastions of sexism in public education. Really, I do. All through 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, the girls went to home ec for seven weeks and the boys went to shop. Then we would switch for two weeks. Two weeks. Not a lot can be done in two weeks. While the boys had made baseball card lamps in shop, we girls were taught how to make a picture frame. To frame the cross-stitch we had made during our seven weeks of home ec. Tell me that’s not sexist. Like “Little girl, the only reason you’re allowed in the wood shop is to reinforce that a woman’s place is in the home. Now get a husband so he can make you a lamp.”
I generally viewed home ec as a waste of time. In the cooking portion of the class, we leaned how to make little vienna sausages with american cheese wrapped in Pillsbury rolls. Yeah, that was gonna come in handy. And then every year we had a sewing portion of the class. One year we made little stuffed footballs in the school colors. Another year we made an outfit. I blame my black stretchy shorts and zebra print shirt (long since lost, thank Goddess) on the fact that it was 1989.
But one year, the year of the infamous picture frame, our home ec teacher taught us cross stitch, as I mentioned above. Useless needlepoint, I guess, and as such the most sexist thing we learned, but I liked it. I loved designing something and watching the picture come out on the aida cloth. After we got out of class, I begged my mom to buy me kits, embroidery floss, and more aida cloth, and I cross stitched my brains out. It was a hobby that stayed with me, through college when I was stressing over a senior thesis, through grad school when I learned that an undergrad thesis teaches us nothing about stress, to now, when a half-finished design is sitting on my dining room table, waiting for me to pick it up again. It’s relaxing for me. It’s beautiful. It’s so great to look at a completed project and think, holy shit, I made all these neat little rows. I did this. For someone who doesn’t have a lot of skill at drawing, it’s as close as I can come to actually producing art.
It’s also a connection to the past. I was intrigued with colonial America when I was a kid, and majored in colonial American history as an undergrad. Cross stitch was something I had in common with the women of that era. They made samplers, I made samplers. It was a link across hundreds of years, a craft that hadn’t been lost, in part because of me - I was still practicing it, keeping it alive.
Unfortunately, cross stitch is a bitch to do on the subway. Dim lighting, small holes, the rocking of the car, and the person sitting next to you, glaring at you because you’re wielding a needle near them - all of that makes cross stitch into something best suited for home. Until a month ago, I was limited to gameboy playing and reading during my commute. Then I found the Klutz guide to knitting, and suddenly was introduced to something else I love. Except it’s better than cross stitch! Instead of following a little color coded pattern that tells me where to stitch, I have a lot more control over how something will turn out. I can design the pattern and the colors, like I did with Rick’s scarf. I determine how big the stitches are going to be, how tight or loose the knit is going to turn out. It just feels like I’m so much more involved in the finished product. And it’s relaxing. As the Oldest said last night, after knitting for a few hours, “I feel like I just took a really long nap - my brain is so relaxed!” And I still have that connection to the women who came before me - centuries and centuries of them - as well as to the large number of women I’ve seen knitting or crocheting on the subway with me, and to Rick’s kids, since I taught them how to knit. I love that unending cycle. Finally, there’s the miracle of all miracles, that with my own two hands I can turn a piece of string into something to wear, or anything really. How freaking cool is that? Hey, maybe home ec wasn’t as lame as I figured - I got an appreciation for all these handicrafts out of it.
So expect more pictures and stories of the knitting. Because it’s damn cool. At least I think so. And now I think I’m gonna go make some vienna sausages with american cheese wrapped in a Pillsbury roll.
Dude, this episode sucks! January 17, 2005 ~ 1:21 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closed
Rick and I, pulling a Dooce by taking our picture in front of a mirror. And wearing The Scarf.
I’m watching X-Files on my day off, and it’s the damn cockroach episode. If you’ve ever seen this episode, where cockroaches burrow under people’s skin, you’ll understand why I’ve screamed twice in the last 5 minutes. The last time, I screamed “Dude, this episode sucks!”, thus the title. I don’t think I will ever be able to look at a cockroach again without screaming. This is not good for a New York City dweller. I’m going to be scratching for the rest of the day. And yet, I can’t change the channel. Fucking X-Files.
I can’t concentrate on a blog post right now. Too many cockroach thoughts.
Oh, but Jesse got out earlier. I went looking around the apartment for him and just figured he was hiding when my upstairs neighbors knocked on my door. “You missing a cat?” I guess I am. Little fucker was on the stairs to the second floor apartment. Stoopid cat.
Now back to the cucarachas. Rick - sorry, honey, that I couldn’t come up with a better post for this picture.
