Political Correctness in the Bag

In Toronto, where I live, plastic shopping bags have been something of a political sore spot recently. A three-year-old by-law mandating a 5 cent charge for plastic bags was revoked effective July 1, 2012, and in the following November a decision by Toronto city council to ban single use plastic bags entirely by 2013 was reversed when it met with strenuous opposition from the Ontario Convenience Stores Association. While the latter political move really was probably too draconian and impractical, at least for the present, I agreed with the mandatory 5 cent charge bylaw and thought it worked well as an incentive to get people to use cloth shopping bags. When the by-law was originally enacted, plastic bags became a much less common sight overnight, and I especially liked that I, who had been already avoiding the used of plastic bags for years, no longer had to tell cashiers "No bag... no bag... no bag... I don't need that bag," before they heard me, because giving out plastic bags was so routine that it was an autopilot task for them. And it reduced Toronto's landfill and waste disposal costs. But our illustrious mayor, Rob Ford, didn't seem to think fiscal and environmental responsibility was a good reason to continue to impose a slight inconvenience on his voters. No, I didn't vote for him, thanks for asking.

Regardless of what the plastic bag status is in your locale, if you want to avoid the use of the plastic shopping bags but are discouraged by the ugliness of the environmentally friendly cloth bags out there, you can always knit your own. There are loads of patterns on the net for such bags, many of them free. I like the one above, from the blog Homebaked Online, which is partly based on a Knitty pattern.





This one from Worsted Knitt is a good basic pattern. These bags will be useful for other things besides grocery shopping, such as heading to the beach. These bags can also be made in your favourite colour, or in a set of different colours to coordinate with your outfits — I know I need more than one bag to bring home a week's groceries.

And if you don't like those I've featured here, check out the selection of string bags on Ravelry.

Knitting Jubilee

How do you make a large-scale yarn bomb or knitted art installation without having to do all the work yourself? By asking the public to help you out, of course. One weekend in June 2010, sculptor Dan Preston, jewellery designer Holly Packer, and some Superblue Design Ltd. employees took 7000 metres of rope, a giant circular knitting loom, and some large plastic balls to Jubilee Park at Canary Wharf, London, and enticed over 100 park visitors into knitting a 72 metre tube.

I'm wondering if I could try something similar the next time I'm behind schedule on knitting Christmas presents.

How Daniela Edburg Sees Knitters

In 2010, photographer Daniela Edburg staged and took a series of photos about characters who deal with restlessness, obsessions, and the passage of time by, well, knitting. You can view them on Edburg's site, and see a few more pictures in a gallery posted by The Morning News.

Of course the photo you see above is from Edburg's set. My best guess is that it's Dickens' Miss Havisham, slightly recast as a knitter. And you know it's a surreal depiction of her, because if Miss Havisham had taken to her knitting instead of merely watching her adopted daughter Estella knit, she wouldn't have spent decades in that wedding gown. She would have preferred to wear her nice new sweaters, shawls, and other items.

Knitting Needles That Jingle, Jangle, Bangle

If you want to signal your fetish for love of knitting to the world in some other way than actually knitting, and don't think you want to go as far as getting a knitting tattoo, you might try making yourself a knitting needle bracelet. Time for Tea offers an excellent tutorial on how it's done. And I must admit that if you've got a suitably interesting mateless plastic or metal knitting needle sitting around that you never use because you care about having your 4mm needles match each other visually, turning it into a rather fun and funky bracelet isn't a bad way to make use of it.

That's my rational reaction. My visceral reaction is something similar to that engendered when I see crafts made from "extra" books. There's no such thing as extra knitting needles or books. What's next, eating our young?!

Twist Collective Spring 2013: A Review

Let's have a look at Twist Collective's Spring 2013 issue.





I very much like the Viridis jacket which has a beautiful lace front panel and good overall proportions and modern lines, but it's one that will have to be worn closed, because when worn open the front pieces are going to sag and the waist tie will trail. If you want to make this cardigan be prepared for that, and also be aware of the bulk it will add to the front of you as double-breasted styles inevitably do.





Twist Collective has offered the beautiful lace Castanea shawl in both a rectangular and a circular shape so that you have the choice of the shape you like best. That's a terrific perk for their customers and one I would like to see offered more often.





The Eliza sweater is a smart little lace-patterned number. If you don't like to emphasize your waist, you might want to decrease the height of the cabled waist section, or just make another sweater, since the waist section is what gives this design its visual interest.





Love the Sprocket baby blanket. It's original, striking, cute and it's backed with fleece which makes it reversible and all the cosier. And if you want your baby to grow up to be a robotics engineer, you can't start programming too early.;-)





The Alvinda design is a nice little fitted lace cardigan. As with the Eliza pattern, you'll want to decrease the height of the waist ribbing if you don't want your waist to be a focal point.





The Lilium cardigan is a sharp little number that will serve its wearer well for years to come. I like that the back looks as sharp as the front. I think designers tend to focus on the front view of their designs, forgetting that in real life one is always seen in a multi-dimensional and dynamic way. Those around you will view you from the side and the back just as often as they do from the front, and it's well to make each aspect give a little something to the eye.





The Romanesco shawl is attractive and seems to drape well, but all I can think when I look at it is that those holes at the pointed edges around the hem look like accidental holes that shouldn't be there.





The Alenia cardigan is quite pretty and will be wearable and flattering for most women. The narrow belt tie won't work on everyone, but it's easily omitted. I would do something a little different with the neckline edging though, such as adding a bit of crocheted edging, because it looks unfinished the way it is.





I love "the twenties middy gone modern" look of the Charleston cardigan. The top-buttoned cardigan style isn't for everyone's figure or taste but you could easily add as many buttons as you like.





The Trifle shrug is one of those very feminine little confections that will look really piquant and pretty on the right person and with the right outfit. It will probably suit the girly type the best, and it's a daywear look. Knitting it in one colour would upgrade it to possible evening wear.





The Tendrils shawl isn't going to be warm or practical, but it is exquisitely delicate. And like the Castanea shawl above, it's rendered in both the rectangular stole and crescent shawl shapes so you can make the one you like best.





Love the Pont Neuf cardigan with its lace panel and side buttons and vintage vibe. Of course, you will want to wear something under this and you will need to wear it closed.





The Cays socks are my kind of sock pattern. Though I might admire intricately colour-patterned socks on someone else, I don't really like the idea of making my feet a focal point. Textured socks with professional-calibre shaping does it for me.





The Galleria tam is a lovely piece of work. Of course I suspect I like it just as much for the colour of its yarn as for its design, though I have no fault to find with the latter. Mmmm, that lovely sea glass blue.





The Wavelettes shawl has a beautiful and interesting texture and drapes well.





The Peking top has a beautiful lace front panel, but unfortunately the rest of the sweater doesn't live up to it. The shaping is sloppy and isn't going to flatter anyone (it's not doing this model any favours whatsoever) and with a neckline that open and a shape that loose, the wearer will be giving every interested and uninterested onlooker regular viewings down the front of her top, which is overkill given that much is visible through the front lace panel already.





The Rosewood design is another beautifully textured and well-shaped pair of socks.





The Cayley cardigan is another pretty and useful cardigan with interesting back detail.





The Haussmann cardigan is a romantic little piece for the girly type. You'll have to wear it closed, but it's so light and lacy and open it's not like you run the risk of getting too overheated in it. I would want to make that tie considerably shorter because it's going to be getting caught on or falling into everything. Such as the toilet.





The Merise top is a pretty and totally wearable little top. It will look good on almost any woman and show some skin without showing her undergarments. Well, okay, I can see some white bra straps there, but you have to look closely to see them and a skin-tone bra would be even less visible.





The Lyssia cardigan is a lovely piece of which I have just one nitpick to make: that the neckline looks a little unfinished and rough. But I really admire the technique used for the butterflies, and I was taken aback to realize how simple it was: the whole sweater is done in the same shade of yarn with the butterflies knitted in stockinette stitch against a reverse stockinette stitch background. So easy and subtle, and yet so innovative and striking.





I want to praise the Fine Kettle shawl because I admire the technical proficiency that went into its creation, and yet I can't. I find this piece really unattractive visually. It looks for all the world like a section cut from a late sixties-era bedskirt. Doing it in another colourway might help.





The Trigere top is a simple little thing with some great side detailing to give it the polish and distinction it needs. This will go to work with a skirt and take a woman through the weekend when paired with jeans. You may want to watch that doesn't wind up being too big through the waist and hips or tight through the chest, but it'll be easy to control the fit by adjusting those side gores.





The Spoletto stole isn't terribly striking but it's attractive and wearable enough. The pattern description says it has some beading on it but I'm not sure I see any in the pictures.




The Lindis sleeveless top is another great little simple yet detailed summer top that'll go anywhere and always look polished and smart.





This Floriston cardigan lies beautifully smooth on the model and has that terrific cabled lace around the neckline and front edges, and then in the back it has that fantastic back detailing. I don't know how they got the pleat to keep those sharp creases, but if it actually stays that way through a day of real life wear, it's quite a technical accomplishment. This piece is my idea of the ultimate design: it's an almost universally flattering item, it's simple and wearable enough that it'll be a go-to wardrobe piece for years, and yet it's so distinctive and technically accomplished that it'll never fail to impress those who really look at it.





Not at all enthusiastic about the Winona cardigan. I don't think the extra width around the hips is going to flatter anyone. It's not doing anything for even this tall, slim model.





The Morisot tank looks simple to the first glance but actually owes its fit and flattering to some very able shaping in front and back. You'll want to make this one in a variegated yarn as the sample knitter did, because it'll help hide the shaping.

Stretching: Bad for Stockinette Stitch; Good for a Knitter's Hands

Years ago in an issue of Vogue Knitting, I began to read an article on knitting repetitive stress injuries that opened by reporting the story of a woman who was making a complicated sweater for her husband's Christmas present. Knitting long hours to meet a tight deadline made her hands hurt, but she really wanted to get finished on time, so she persisted until it was done. Thereby doing such damage to her hands that she had to take disability leave from work (and from her knitting and her housework and pretty much anything else she usually did, such as turning a doorknob to open a door) for something like four months. I couldn't bring myself to read the rest of the article, even though I knew I should, but soothed my terror as well as my hands by resolving in future not to work through knitting pain. If your hands hurt from knitting, it's time to take a break.

Once you've put the knitting aside, there are massage techniques to help ease the pain. Liat Gat of Knit Freedom has worked with her sister, a certified massage therapist, to produce an excellent post on self-massage techniques and stretches for knitters, complete with illustrative photos. They're easy to do and they feel terrific.

Coming up: Look for my review of the Twist Collective Spring 2013 issue tomorrow morning!

Fox Pokes the Bear with Knitting Needles

The picture above is a screen capture from the Fox 2002/2003 show Firefly, depicting the character Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) in a hat made for him by his mother. The hat has become known as the Jayne hat and is a popular piece of memorabilia among Firefly fans. But in replicating the Jayne hat, some Firefly devotees have run into the legal limitations entailed in using someone else's designs and patterns. To wit: that while you can knit anything you like for personal use, selling reproductions of other people's work is another matter. Fox, which is protecting their copyright by preventing unlicensed sales of the hat by Etsy vendors, is on its part experiencing the consequences of getting into a David and Goliath-style legal rumble, those being that Goliath always gets the bad press. No one ever takes Goliath's side no matter how objectively right he may have been, because there's such a power imbalance that the fight automatically seems unfair and because David is the more appealing opponent with the better back story.

While Fox is absolutely legally entitled to stop Etsy vendors from selling handmade Jayne hats in order to reserve the profits of Jayne hat sales for itself, doing so is going to make them look like bullies and alienate the Firefly fan base, which will probably now generally refuse to buy the licensed Jayne hats out of pique. Fox would have been better advised to stick to stamping out any sales of mass-manufactured hats (if any) and to leave the hand-knitting producers alone, knowing their scale of production and market share is guaranteed to be too small to make it worth even the legal costs of sending out cease and desist letters, let alone the risk of offending Firefly followers. I mean, is it really a good idea to mess with a community so fanatical that they're buying and wearing silly hats to reference a show that was only on the air for a few months over ten years ago? Talk about poking the bear.

As any knitter could have told Fox, when considering legal action that old crafting axiom applies: the realization that you can make a certain item (such as, say, granny square pajamas), should not necessarily be followed by the resolution that you should.