Hand-Painted Yarns

I thought I'd like to share my two favourite knitting paintings with you. There are a lot of knitting paintings in existence, perhaps not surprisingly, because knitting was a necessary part of women's daily lives for centuries. Some of the paintings have captured some lovely moments in knitting.

I first saw the painting above at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2000. It is Les Sabots, painted in 1768 by the French painter François Boucher. The woman depicted here has a figure and colouring not dissimilar from mine (her hair looks more reddish in the original painting than it does in this reproduction), and has taken her knitting along on a picnic only to get a little... distracted, which is totally something I would do. I told the man I was seeing at the time that it was "our" painting, but although he agreed that the parallels were fun, he sniffed that he didn't like pastorals. So the painting became just my painting.

This is another painting that I saw at the AGO, and the original is actually quite large (60" x 40"). It's Gossip, painted in 1888 by a Canadian artist, George Agnew Reid. I love that the spinning wheel is at a standstill and that the knitting is lying idle, because these two women are so intent on their conversation. And we don't know what they're talking about, but it seems a sure bet that it's something really good.

If there's a knitting-themed painting you love, feel free to tell us about it and link to it in the comments.

How Men Who Don't Knit See Knitting

This Harry Bliss cartoon from The New Yorker sums up the non-knitting male perspective in a word, doesn't it? Poor insensible darlings.

A Hurtin', Knittin', Country Song

Did you ever hear that old joke about what happens when you play a country song in reverse? You get your spouse, pick-up truck, and dog back. Here's a country song called "Pardon Me (I Didn't Knit That for You)". If you played it in reverse, you'd have a ball of yarn and an intact relationship, but I think most knitters will like the song exactly as it is as they'd prefer to keep their work unravelled and to ditch the partner for whom the sweater wasn't intended.

Incidentally, the tasteful yarn ball arrangement on the mantlepiece behind the two vocalists is a nice touch.

Dorothy Parker and the Gateway to Domesticity

Dorothy Parker was a woman who avoided domestic tasks like the plague. She'd have starved rather than boil herself an egg, ate bacon raw claiming she didn't know how to cook it, and threw her soiled underwear back in her bureau drawer with her clean pairs, leaving the resulting mess for the maid to sort out, if there was one. She wrote in one of her poems that she hated women who made their own clothes and who were always hurrying home to make dinner. But she was an avid knitter. The photo above shows her carrying her knitting bag, and according to what I've read, she was seldom without it.

Knitting has a dynamic and a pace of its own. One can pick up knitting and knit for exactly as long as one wants to, or has time to, whether that be five minutes or several hours. One can put a knitting project down and leave it for hours, days, months, or years, and then pick it up again. Knitting is portable. Knitting is compatible with carrying on a social conversation, with being out in the world. None of these things can be said of cooking or cleaning or dressmaking. Dorothy Parker no doubt felt she could yield a point and enjoy her knitting without it becoming some sort of gateway domestic task, the first step on downhill course of action that would eventually deposit her in the kitchen, slaving to prepare meals for a family of six.

I've always been one to revel in domestic skills, perhaps because my mother was both a dedicated elementary school teacher and a woman who enjoyed baking bread, making jam, growing flowers and vegetables, and making clothing. Like her, I earn a living working in a professional capacity and also do most of the same household tasks, and have never felt that these activities were in conflict in any way. I tend to roll my eyes at some of the feminist critique of the so-called "New Domesticity", and get impatient with the moaning that women are setting back the clock by turning away from the feminist achievements of their mothers and grandmothers and embracing housewifely roles and tasks.

For one thing the whole idea of a "New Domesticity" is an appallingly classist construct. Relatively few women have been able to turn their backs on domestic tasks over the past fifty years. My mother and both my grandmothers certainly did all their own housework. Only a relatively small percentage of women could afford to not do their own housekeeping, and their household staff brought up the average by doing double duty: they did their employers' housework and then went home to do their own. There's nothing new about domesticity because women have been steadily tending to their housekeeping through all the waves of feminism.

In any case I see nothing at all wrong with women choosing to cook from scratch or make their own candles or spin. And I've had it with this relentless nitpicking over how women run their lives. Feminism was supposed to free women up from gender-based strictures, not add new ones.

Not that I don't get where some of the critics are coming from. As I've said before on this blog, leisure-time activities do need to be kept in their place. These domestic hobbies that can be so pleasant and rewarding shouldn't become a vortex that absorbs all our free time and keeps us from ever reading the newspaper, voting, volunteering, learning new skills, or otherwise attending to higher priority personal or professional tasks. But it's certainly possible to indulge in these elective domestic tasks without neglecting other more important things, and I would like to see these New Domesticity critics show some respect for women's ability to do so. No one assumes a man will contribute less to the world or fail to reach his potential because he's taken up woodworking. Dorothy Parker's knitting never took away from her writing — though her drinking and her hatred of the actual task of writing certainly did.

Dorothy Parker's flight from domesticity made sense given the era in which she lived. Relatively few women of her time managed to bypass the kind of domestic, housebound life women were then expected to lead in order to live a professional, artistic or political life outside the home. Parker's hostility towards the domestic role was one of the means she used to avoid it. She reminds me of the narrator in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying (published in 1973), who refused to learn to type so that she could ensure that she didn't wind up working as a secretary. She didn't become a secretary, but she handicapped herself as a grad student and professional writer. Surely things have changed since Parker's day, or even since the seventies. Surely we don't need to share Parker's contempt for domestic accomplishments, and to shoot ourselves in the foot by refusing to learn needed life skills, because we need no longer fear their thralldom as she did.

Can't we now admire domestic accomplishments rather than dismissing them as "women's work" as though they were lesser achievements and past-times than those traditionally perfomed by men? Can't women bake bread or crochet a tablecloth without anyone telling them they've betrayed feminism? I hope we can. Because it's only when we can do so that we will have made real progress towards respecting the work women do and their right to make their own choices.

A Tall Muskox Yarn

One day in the summer of 2004, my parents, who were on a road trip to Alaska and the Yukon, called me from their car so that my dad could ask me if I wanted any muskox yarn. I said, uh, sure, and he asked me what I wanted to make with it, adding the caveat, "Not an afghan. It's pretty expensive." I told him to surprise me. My father is very much a process-oriented person and was very excited by the whole concept of my making something out of such an unusual and exotic yarn. My mother, a relentlessly practical woman, interjected things like, "It's too expensive to be worth it!" and "She'll have to hand wash it!"

Dad came back from their Alaskan road trip with a hat kit for me, and I knitted a little brown cap for myself. Mum told me how much it cost and said I was not allowed to ever throw it out, that if I got tired of it I had to give it back to her so that she could shadow box it or something.

I'm not sure I ever would have thought yarn could be made from muskox hair. It doesn't look like a feasible project. But I am increasingly realizing that yarn can be made out of virtually anything. The muskox has a two-layered coat, and the yarn, called by the Inuit word "qiviut", is made from the soft underwool. The muskox sheds this layer every spring. The muskox aren't sheared as sheep are. The wool the yarn is made from is gathered from the pelts of hunted muskox, gathered from the wild during the molting season, or obtained from farmed muskox. Qiviut is stronger and eight times warmer than sheep's wool, and is softer than cashmere.

You'll be glad to hear you don't have to have parents who travel to Alaska to get muskox yarn of your own. In Alaska, the Musk Ox Producers' Cooperative, which is owned and operated by native Alaskans, sells hand-knitted qiviut items. Because the muskox yarn and knitting industry was developed to give the indigenous population of Alaska gainful employment, the co-operative doesn't sell much yarn, but they do sell the cap kit my father bought for me.

Alternatively, the Quebec company Cottage Craft Angora has, besides some hand-knitted items, 100% qiviut yarn for sale in not only its natural brown but in a range of attractive dyed colours, and in both 2- or 3-ply. At $39 a skein, it's probably not a purchase you'll make lightly, but keep in mind you are getting an unusual and high-quality product and helping to support a grass roots industry in an economically challenged region.

If you really feel like splurging, Cottage Craft Angora also has hand-painted qiviut/silk blend yarn for $150 a skein. Much more attainable is their superwash blend, which is 10% qiviut, 10% cashmere, 10% bamboo and 70% superwash merino, or their qiviut/angora blend yarn. They offer other yarns as well.

And keep in mind... even if you don't ever own any qivuit yarn, you have learned a great new word that will allow you to triumph over your next Scrabble opponent.

Yarn of the Dog

They say pets and pet owners tend to resemble each other. This may or may not be true, but while you may not look like your pet, or want to, you can dress like your pet. Knitting with Dog Hair by Kendall Crolius apparently tells you how in comprehensive detail and includes bonus info about how to do the same thing with cat hair. It's out of print, but there are some copies of Knitting With Dog Hair available on Amazon. Among the mostly positive Amazon reader reviews, there's one which raves,

I found this to be an excellent book. So far I have made a pair of otter skin gloves, mousefur socks and a Gerbil Thong. I plan on making a bearskin bra for for my wife and a chipmunk purse. Without this book I would never have discovered the joys of Animal fur knitting!!!

I don't think the Amazon reader reviews' far-reaching potential as a means of subversion is generally realized.

Some people have actually acted on the advice in the book and had sweaters made from their dogs' hair. You can see a gallery of pets and pet-hair-wearing owners here, and I must admit some of the sweaters aren't totally unattractive.

But one word of advice.... if you decide to make a sweater with your dog's hair, be sure not get caught in the rain while wearing it. You'll smell, perhaps unsurprisingly, like a wet dog.

Knit n' Style April 2013: A Review

It's January and Knit n' Style, which published their February 2013 issue in November 2012, has just come out with their April 2013 issue. Don't ask me. Maybe the whole issue post-dating thing is supposed to convince us that Knit n' Style is remarkably fashion forward.

But let's look at the patterns from the Knit n' Style April 2013 issue.

This is... okay. It's wearable but also leans a bit towards the shapeless, frumpy side. Putting more effort into shaping it would have upgraded it by making it more flattering and giving it some style.

Here we have the same sweater as above, only done in crochet. The same comments apply.

I actually quite like this scarf. It's one of those beginner projects that look designed and polished, probably because it used high quality yarn and a sophisticated colour combination.

This shawl is beautifully intricate.

This is shapeless, bulky and unflattering; the fastenings don't do anything for it; the open neckline won't work worn over any other top except those with a lower neckline and you wouldn't want to wear this jacket without a layer underneath, and the collar just looks chintzy. I'd love to see a fur-collared knitted jacket done right, but this one went wrong in just about every way it could. It's Murphy's jacket.

This looks like something you'd buy for $10 from that little shop at the subway because you convinced yourself it was fun and cute and it only cost $10. Then you got it home and tried it on and realized you had absolutely nothing to wear it with and that it looked like the tacky Christmas tree skirt that your mother had, and even she got rid of it a few years back. The shop doesn't take returns so you couldn't take it back, and there was nothing to do with it but give it to the Knit n' Style editors. Then they inexplicably put it on the cover of their next issue.

I like this one. It's simple yet sharp and a woman who had it would get a lot of wear out of it.

Another pretty lace shawl.

I actually don't mind this shrug, though I would have styled it in a completely different way, by putting it over a strapless or strappy little summer dress. Putting it over a woman's already fully clothed arms and shoulders looks a bit silly.

This one is another styling mishap. Strappy tanks don't look right over long-sleeve t-shirts and I don't care at all for the yarn. Horizontal stripes don't tend to look good on anyone and these mottled horizontal stripes are even more unattractive than usual.

I can't help liking this. It's not at all a style or colour I would ever wear, but it works in its own way. The prism effect is kept subtle and balanced by the gray, and the shape is graceful and dramatic but not overly so. A woman with a very modern style could carry this off.

This shawl isn't nearly as successful as the previous two — the design and the shape are not nearly so well done — but I suppose it's adequate if nothing special.

Rule number one of shawl-making: the end result should not look like you took an ugly old afghan off your couch and wrapped it around your shoulders. And no, adding buttons to the ugly old afghan will not turn it into a shawl, much less a nice shawl.

Nice little cotton pullover. I'd have gone with either full-length or short sleeves, though. This length lines up with the bottom hem, which just makes it look kind of awkward.

Another afghan masquerading as a shawl.

This time we have an afghan masquerading as a cardigan. I don't know why some designers keep trying to incorporate the granny square into clothing design. It never, ever, works.

I actually like this one. It looks like the perfect thing to wear on a day when you've got a touch of the flu and the furnace is acting up and you need comfort clothes to snuggle into. The yarn, Kollage Yarns' Whimsy, which is a mohair/wool blend with a little nylon thrown in, looks to be a very decent quality, the colour is subtle and appealing and the detail on the cowl and hem add just the right amount of interest and polish to a simple design. However, I would fix the dropped shoulders, make the sleeves full-length, and make the sweater just one size too large with some waist-shaping, as it is a little on the sloppy side as worn here.

This one will have everyone wondering why you stapled your scarf to the edges of your cardigan. It couldn't be in order to make the cardigan the right size, they will think, because it still isn't meeting in the front, and they'll end up concluding that it would be kindest not to ask.

Here we have another cardigan with a scarf sewed bizarrely to the front of it. I know how much you love working with novelty yarns, Knit n' Style, but novelty yarns are not an easy way to jazz things up. They are actually a challenge to work with because they tend to cheapen whatever items they're used in.

This item is described as a stole and worn rather awkwardly around the shoulders. I'd have described it as a scarf and worn it around the neck.

A classic Aran cardigan from Gayle Bunn, whom as you may remember did one of the better designs in the last issue of Knit n' Style. I suppose that for a good designer one of the advantages of slumming it in Knit n' Style is that your work looks even better than it is because of the contrast with some of the other offerings.

This one's inoffensive. The sleeve length looks a little awkward, but it would be easy to lengthen or shorten as you wish. One minor nitpick... the description calls it a shawl-collared sweater, and although I may be wrong about this because the model's hair hides the collar, that doesn't look like a shawl collar to me, but just a V-neck with a wide, flat neckband. Shawl collars fold back over themselves.

This is one of those "good with caveats" designs. The caveats being that I would not recommend that you make this top in a pastel as it makes it look a little too underwear-like, that you only make it if you are small or flat-breasted as it will make a large-breasted woman look dumpy, and that you only make it if you don't mind people being able to see your stomach through the top — notice how the model's white jeans show through very plainly?

Classic gansey.

Not a bad cowl. It lies gracefully, it looks nice in an understated way, and it'll keep your neck warm. Make this in a beautiful yarn and it will serve you well.

This "shawlette" looks rather pointless from a practical perspective but it's not unappealing aesthetically. It might not be a bad project if you just want to add a little colour to an outfit and need to quickly whip up something for the purpose.

Not a bad bag, but I don't know why it's been styled this way. It looks like a beach bag and the model has sleek hair and is wearing a suit. Perhaps she got invited to a business picnic at the waterfront and felt at a loss as to what one would wear for such an occasion. This isn't a bag you can wear with a suit, even if it were in a more classic colour.