Have a Ball!

Knitted Christmas tree baubles seem like such a great idea. They're a good way to recycle scratched glass Christmas tree baubles, or alternatively, if you wanted to just stuff them, they'd be child-safe. They'd be a good way to use whatever odds and ends of yarn you have lying around. They could be knitted up so quickly and they should be quite durable. And there's so much scope in their design. You can make them in any colour or style you like, and add beads, lacework, Aran cables, argyle or fair isle patterns, Christmas symbols or phrases or whatever you please. Here are some examples, with links to patterns when available. It would be pretty easy to take the basic pattern and adapt it to achieve whatever look you wanted.

The photo above is of the 7 Colorwork Christmas Ornaments, designed by Meg Hollar. The pattern is available for $5(USD).

This is the Luxury Christmas Ball, designed by Daniela Johannsenova. The pattern is available for free.

These designs are the Julekuler patterns, by Arne & Carlos, and are published in their book 55 Christmas Balls to Knit: Colorful Festive Ornaments.

This is the Deck the Balls design, by Sonia Ruyts. It's a free pattern.

This Sheep Balls pattern, by Dona Carruth, is simply too cute. It's a free pattern.

The Deck the Balls with Aran, by Kelly Jensen makes each ball look like it's wearing its own little sweater. This pattern is available for $6(USD).

The Knitted Lace Ball, by Judy Gibson, is delicately beautiful and doesn't even require an inner bauble. It's a free pattern.

The Fuzzy Christmas Baubles design, by Fran Welch, give us a good way to use up some leftover kid mohair. This is a free pattern.

For Those Who Can't Define Steampunk, But Know It When They See It

Are you into steampunk? Which, in case you've never heard of it, is a movement involving the creation of clothes, art, fiction, furnishings and other items in a way that blends Victorian, science fictional, and fantastical elements. Steampunk creates a sort of alternate history, or looked at another way, is the future as the Victorians might have imagined it. I'm not into steampunk, although I find steampunk theme outfits and items a lot of fun to look at. But those who are into steampunk must nearly all be into crafting as well, as they'd have to be in order to acquire such elaborate, fitted, unusual costumes at a reasonable cost. And I'm sure making stuff is a big part of the subculture's attraction. Yes, a lot of steampunk enthusiasts just glue some gears on a doily and call it a day, but some aficionados bring an incredible level of skill, effort, ingenuity, and artistry to their work.

When I got the idea to google steampunk knitting, I found that a lot of the boot toppers, fingerless gloves, elaborate collars and other accessories that I see so many patterns for and that tend to look somewhat absurd and pointless when worn with contemporary clothing suddenly make perfect sense when worn with a steampunk costume. Perhaps it is due to steampunk's influence that we're seeing so many Victorian-inspired accessories in mainstream knitting magazines right now. Mainstream designers have a long history of drawing inspiration from subcultures, but there's an authenticity and specificity to the subculture's use of an idea that does tend to get lost in translation when the concept goes mainstream.

Here's a small selection of well-designed steampunk knitting projects I've come across. Some are very wearable by contemporary standards, and I've included links to patterns or to the website where the pattern could be bought whenever there was something along those lines to be linked to.

The designer of the cardigan above, called the Ruby pattern, says that when she wears her Ruby sweater people stop her in the street to ask her about it. I believe it.

Truly lovely capelet.

This hooded cowl is one of the items that could conceivably be worn in daily life, if you have the neck length to carry if off. I'd think many steampunkers choose projects with an eye to what will do double duty.

This ruffled collar is one of those items that bemuse me when offered in a mainstream knitting mag, but that I suddenly get very enthusiastic about when I think of it as a part of a steampunk outfit.

I'm really impressed with the quality of this top hat. The "handmade look" is one thing, the "homemade look" quite another. Nothing about this hat says homemade.

A trio of fingerless glove designs. The first two are pretty wearable for everyday use, the "Tudor Rose" gloves probably aren't, unless you have a very whimsical, playful personal style and everyone in your life has just learned to roll with it, but they are so fanciful and well-designed and pretty that they're a pleasure just to look at.

Spats seem to be a popular knitting project among steampunkers. I suppose they hide the fact that one's shoes aren't exactly steampunk canon.

This picture obviously isn't styled in a steampunk manner, yet these lace stockings are quite suitable for a steampunk costume. And it works the other way too. Many of the more overtly steampunk projects on Ravelry aren't getting knitted in a steampunk style by the Ravelry members who've been knitting their own versions.

Perhaps inevitably, there's a book of steampunk knitting patterns, and it's so beautiful I'm rather lusting after it myself. I mean, just look at that cover. Needles and Artifice is available from Cooperative Press in both digital and print form. And the remaining five patterns are all from the book.

This picture looks like it might have been taken for Vogue Knitting. This cap is wearable for every day, and the collar could be carried off by the right person.

I would totally wear this.

I must admit, writing this post made me want to play dress up so I could put on an outfit like this one.

Doesn't look too comfortable, but I can see some steampunk enthusiasts becoming even more so upon seeing this.

This a pattern for when you want to be steampunk from the inside out, and/or if you want to seduce your steampunk boyfriend right out of his waistcoat and spats. The top is totally wearable as a little summer top. The bloomers you probably couldn't carry off as street wear without looking odd, but then if you're making these bloomers for yourself, you probably don't mind looking a little odd even in everyday dress.

The Y Bomb

Yarn bombing, the practice of decorating or covering large objects in public spaces with knitted or crocheted items, seems to have begun in 2005 and has grown into a worldwide movement. With the growth in yarn bombing's popularity has come some criticism, the most common being that it's a waste of time and yarn. Yarn bombers are quick to point out that no one says an artist who is painting a park bench is wasting time and materials. True, although since the artist is probably using paint chemically engineered to withstand the elements, the bench art will last much longer than a tree trunk cozy. Then too, the bench artist has probably been commissioned by public officials to paint the bench, while the yarn bomber often hasn't, and could technically be considered a vandal, albeit one who does no lasting harm.

I'm a little bit conflicted as to how I feel about yarn bombing. I'm a very practical person, and everything I make has to meet something I call the "utility quotient", by which I mean that if I'm going to spend X number of hours making something, it has be an item that will last and be used for at least X number of hours, and preferably more. I've never been able to get into making Halloween costumes because I can only wear them once a year. I've never really liked cooking much because a meal takes the same 20 minutes to eat regardless of how much or how little time the cook spent preparing it. So I do not want to do any yarn bombing myself. But while I also don't want to condemn yarn bombing, I do think that like any hobby, it's best practiced with some restraint and self-awareness.

This topic hits something of a nerve with me because of the thinking I've been doing for the last year or so about leisure-type activities. The lengths to which North Americans go to pursue their hobbies alternately awes and appalls me. I used to volunteer with a woman who was into quilting, and she told me about a weekend road trip she was planning with a friend, which trip involved them driving from Toronto, Ontario, to somewhere in West Virginia for the sole purpose of looking at a quilt. A former co-worker of mine once drove over an hour to get to, and spent all one Sunday afternoon attending, a basset hound owners' picnic with her basset hound puppy. My father, who is a very talented woodworker, flew to Norway with my mother in the summer of 2011 to go on a woodworkers' cruise. There are video gamers who spend forty hours a week gaming, and this is on top of holding down a full-time job. And of course there are mountain climbers and deep sea divers who travel the world for the sake of finding new heights to climb and new depths to dive to.

I'm not about to condemn any hobby as an outright waste of time. Practically any endeavour can become worthwhile if one brings a sufficient level of effort, intelligence and creativity to it. And lots of hobbies, though they may not be what you could call productive in themselves, yield benefits. They might be good physical exercise, be educational, keep the brain challenged and active, or give one the opportunity to make like-minded friends and become part of a community. Sometimes they can be developed into a money-making business, at which point they can be said to have stopped being a hobby. Or they can just be purely for fun, and that's just fine. Simple enjoyment is a worthwhile end in itself; one cannot and should not work all the time.

But I do get appalled when I see leisure time activities pursued to harmful excess. Though I won't condemn any particular activity, it's also fair to say that not all leisure activities are equally worthwhile. Some are flabby pleasures, activities that demand almost nothing from us and that will degrade us physically and mentally if we spend too much time on them. Spending the entire evening watching TV and loafing on the couch with a bag of chips is fine once in a while, but if you do it every night of your life, or even every other night, you won't like the long-term results. And on average, North Americans are doing almost exactly that; it's been estimated that the average Canadian spends 21 hours a week, or a quarter of their lives, watching TV.

Even the most worthwhile of hobbies can be problematic when indulged in to excess, if they are carried to the point that we neglect other, more important things, such as physical care of ourselves, relationships or livelihoods or other responsibilities, or life goals. Leisure time activities can become a black hole in which we can lose our way in life, our ambitions, our obligations, ourselves. I think often of a guy I knew in my early twenties who owed his ex-girlfriend $2000. She was on social assistance because she couldn't get work after an inter-provincial move, and he never sent her a penny, but somehow during the same time frame he had $1200 to spend on Laser Quest — he told me so himself. His playing Laser Quest in this context was both selfish and the means to suppress any awareness that he was being selfish; it was the snake eating its own tail. A few years later I met someone else who spent seven or eight hundred dollars a month and almost all her free time on ballroom dancing and clothes shopping, and then expected everyone she knew to listen to her feel sorry for herself because she didn't have a house or retirement savings, or the time to take courses to qualify herself for a better job than the one she had and hated, or even to clean her one-bedrooom apartment.

In this world, 35,000 children die of starvation of every day, and over a million people make their living from picking garbage dumps. Even in first world countries there are so many problems that need to be solved, and so many people who need a helping hand. And yet many of those who are comfortably circumstanced, who spend hundreds of dollars and a hundred hours or more a month on frivolous pursuits, claim they have "no time" to volunteer and "no money" to donate to charity, nor even the time to inform themselves on current events and to vote. It's no wonder the rest of the world resents North Americans the way they do.

After writing and considering all the above, it seems to me any hobby is fine if pursued with a certain mindfulness and sense of proportion. Things like TV-watching, internet surfing, crafting, sports, artistic pursuits, video games, recreational shopping, and reading trashy books are all very well (I wouldn't want to live in a world without them), but they do need to be kept in their place.

I see no reason why yarn bombing can't be just as worthwhile as many other more common leisure activities, or why it should get any less respect than, say, golf. Yarn bombing can be made to serve a larger purpose. As you can see from the photos of yarn bombing I've included in this post, yarn bombing can be a way of making a political statement, a way of getting people talking and thinking about an issue. Yarn bombing is an undeniable attention grabber. If you were to walk down the street and pass a bus covered in crochet, you would notice the decorated bus because would be impossible not to notice it. And then given all the people who will see the bus, at least a few will be bound to take a picture of it and put it on the net. It will get covered in the local news, and possibly be picked up by larger media outlets. In a noisy, busy world like this one, attention-getting stunts like yarn bombing can be very useful in terms of promoting events or raising awareness for causes. Yarn bombers who harness that power can hardly be said to be wasting their time and materials, especially when yarn bombing is only one, fun part of what they're doing with their lives.

(All photos taken from Time magazine's photo essay on yarn bombing, which can be viewed here.)

Knitting Behind Bars

I'm so upset tonight by what I've been reading about today's shooting at a public school in Newtown, Connecticut, by the horror of all those deaths, by my own dully resigned sense that even something horrific as this will not get the States to change the way it treats the mentally ill, regulates gun ownership, or reports on and addresses problems in the media, that I decided I wanted to do a "good news" post about how violence can be addressed. And since this is a knitting blog, of course this meant I had to find material on how knitting could be used to decrease violence. You may be surprised to read that I didn't have to look far. I googled "knitting violence", and the topic for this post popped right up.

Two retired women, Lyn Zwerling and Sheila Rovelstad, have initiated and implemented a program called Knitting Behind Bars at a prison in Maryland. They approached every prison in the area with their idea for a knitting class, and all the prisons refused except the last one, where the prison authorities skeptically agreed to let them try it.

And the program has been a success. As the Baltimore Sun wrote in a November 2011 article,

Men literally beg to get in. There's a waiting list.... They want it so much, in fact, that they're willing to be good in order to do it. [Prison warden Margaret] Chippendale has noticed lower rates of violence among the men who knit. "It's a privilege to be in that program," Chippendale says. "It's something that matters and they don't want to do anything to be removed from it."

One prisoner, who was serving time for stabbing someone and who was busily knitting a hat, told a reporter, "My mind is on something soft and gentle. My mind is nowhere near inside these walls."

Zwerling talks about why she thinks knitting classes are beneficial in an NPR interview described here. She believes that knitting teaches patience, discipline, anger management, and goal orientation, all important life skills that many criminals may be lacking. And some lessons in basic social skills can be shoehorned in at the same time. Zwerling and Rovelstad insist on good behaviour from the men in their knitting classes: no swearing or rough housing, and given names are to be used rather than prison nicknames.

The men in these knitting classes have made little dolls that first responders in Maryland now carry to give to children at scenes of accidents, fires and other tragedies. They've made hats and scarves for their own children, for their mothers or grandmothers, for themselves. And at least some of them have said they are continuing to knit upon their release from prison, or intend to.




Are knitting classes some magical solution for violence in prisons and the heartbreakingly high recidivism rates among released prisoners? Of course not. Real change, especially change at the extent and scale of change that is needed in the prison system and among convicted criminals, is gradual and requires a holistic approach. It will take more than Thursday-night knitting classes to rehabilitate those who have been unable or unwilling to earn a living without resorting to crime, or to help those who can't relate to others without violence. But it's an idea that has been tried and is showing a demonstrable level of success. These knitting classes have given some of the criminals in one prison useful skills, some peace of mind and innocent enjoyment, a sense of pride and competence, and a way to give to others.

Knitting Behind Bars has its own blog where you can read about the program and, since Zwerling and Rovelstad supply all the yarn, needles, and other tools and supplies needed for their classes, you can make a monetary donation to their program if you wish. Unfortunately, because of lack of storage and other logistical issues, Zwerling and Rovelstad are unable to accept donations of yarn, so if you were hoping to unload your stash, you'll have to find another charity to ship it to.

Knit Simple Winter 2012: A Review

Knit Simple has posted their Winter 2012 Issue preview. Let's have a look at some of their offerings, shall we?

So... pom-poms. This sweater did really need an interesting collar to set off the very nice but generic rest of itself. I'm just not sure pom-poms were the way to go.

Very pretty rib and cable sweater.

I like this one, but I'll warn you, if you make this sweater just as the pattern directs, you're going to need a very long neck to be able to carry it off. Even the model isn't quite working it, and she has a longer than average neck.

Nice, but putting your hands in that pocket is going to look and feel awkward. If you know you're the hands-in-double-pocket type, make the sweater shorter.

As I've said a number of times on this blog, I am not a fan of the double-breasted style. It's not becoming on women who aren't tall, slender and small-breasted (i.e., not models), and it never looks good worn open. Occasionally there are exceptions, but this isn't one of them. Even the model looks frumpy in this one.

I don't care for this one, but it's a matter of personal preference rather than anything being objectively wrong with the pattern. The colour is analogous and it's working, but I find it kind of garish. Peruvian hats are very appealing in their own way, but they are bohemian in style (unless, of course, you actually are Peruvian), and the Boho style is really only for young women. Older women who try to adopt the Boho look usually end up looking like bag ladies.

Cute little cap. The button's actually doing quite a bit for it, and setting it slightly apart from all the millions of cute little knitted caps out there.

Classic hat and mittens set.

This hat would make me feel, and no doubt look, exactly like the Chicken Lady.

Very pretty scarf, but I'd put a fringe or some kind of finishing touch on the ends, which just look too blunt and unfinished the way they are.

Very pretty couple of afghans. Make either of these in a yarn and a colour you love, and you'll enjoy them for many years to come.

I'd have put about five buttons on this hooded vest, rather than only two. Those two buttons look too random, and unless there's some interior fastening that doesn't show here, the front of this sweater will pull open at the bustline every time the woman wearing it uses her arms.

This would be nice as costuming for some romantic movie, but it's wildly impractical for real life. It would get into everything, and you'd be constantly rearranging it.

This is not a bad capelet. It drapes well and the toggles aren't a bad touch. This is something you can just throw on for running errands.

This capelet and the next four designs are from a toggle-themed section in which Knit Simple demonstrates that their designers don't really know how to use toggles in design. The question you have to ask yourself when deciding whether to put toggles on something you've made is, "Would buttons look better on this item?", and if the answer is "Yes," you should go with the buttons.

This isn't a bad sweater, but the toggles don't work at all with its colour scheme (the editors have compensated for that by putting a turtleneck underneath that did go with the toggles, but do you really want to be limited to having to choose a shirt that goes with the toggles on your cardigan?) and the two fronts of the cardigan don't meet in the front, which is probably supposed to be a design element but just makes a sweater look like it's too small.

Not a bad jacket, and the toggles are... neither adding nor detracting. Just beware that it's going to bulk you up when you wear it.

I think the designer of this thing was locked in a room with a sketchpad and a handful of these toggles and told she wouldn't be let out until she came up with a design that used them. Even the model looks frumpy and dumpy in the resulting disaster. Those tan-coloured lines at the raglan seams, the wrist, the waist and the sides of this sweater are probably meant to go with the toggles, but just end up looking senseless and ugly. It would have been a far better idea to replace the lines of tan with a line of cabling or some other intricate stitchwork, and to add some waist-shaping. Oh, and to replace the bloody toggles with buttons.

I keep an eye out for good uses of self-striping yarn, because so many designers don't seem to know what to do with it. This sweater really made me sit up and pay attention. The concept is really good: shaped striped front panels that flatter the figure and draw the eye upward, with the rest of the sweater kept fitted and clean and simple. The collar really works, and it's not even a kind of collar I'd normally care for. But I'm not sold on the toggles. They do work well with the colour scheme, but they compete somewhat with the design without really adding to it. Some other kind of fastener would have given this cardigan a better finishing touch, and I doubt this cardigan will look all that good when worn open.

I have to admit, the snowman hat and mittens made me smile. The other two patterns look a little over the top and a little less successful, perhaps partly because there are three items involved instead of two. If I were making these for a kid, I would just make the hat and mittens, or the hat and the scarf, not all three. And I would clear the project with the kid in advance. These are the kind of designs you have to knit when a child is very young, preferably before they've heard anything at all about the whole concept of being "cool".