Really awesome lace knitting. Howzawhat now?

 Rambly thought time! Reviews to come later, but this is something I've wanted to write for a LONG time now.

So a couple people pointed out that I said something really obscure the other day. Not the part about where fairy legends come from, but the other things I said come from Scotland--golf, great whiskey (...look. My spelling sucks, okay? Half the time I can't even keep numbers straight, and you expect me to remember that I-before-E shit?) and really awesome lace knitting.

My primary hobby, after art and writing, is lace knitting. Specifically, my undying quest to knit a wedding ring shawl. I do not talk about this much, because a fundamental part of knitting is how freaking boring it is to non-knitters. I also spin, which is even more boring to most people. And that's a crying shame, because the history of yarn is EVERYBODY'S history. If you want to truly understand a culture, don't start by studying its public face. Study how spinning tech developed. Study its yarn.

But if everybody spins, not everybody does lace. As far as I know, there are five places where lace is a part of the culture: the Faroes isles (...do not make me spell that right. Please.) the Ukraine, Estonia, Orenburg Russia and the Unst region of the Shetland isles. The latter two are the only ones with a history of making four-foot-by-four foot shawls (or bigger!) that you can pull through a wedding ring.

The history of Russian lace is incredible. You cannot read about it without also reading about the Soviet revolution. Lenin made the shawls a national treasure, but because the same men and women doing the knitting were frequently the kulaks, Stalin immediately began killing them. There is a story of a man who won awards for his work, who was killed because he "couldn't conform". The text of that story strongly implied the man was gay.

Shetland lace doesn't have the same dramatic history, but it does have many of the same patterns. This is incredibly weird to me, because Shetland is a little clump of rock sitting off the end of Scotland, and Orenburg is a city in the middle of the mountains between Russia and Afganistan. The only connection between the two locations during the era when this art-form was developing were the Vikings. And yet many of the patterns are nearly identical--the Orenburg "Strawberry" pattern and the Scottish "Cat's paw" is a good example. Another interesting thing is how the culture of the area "flavors" the knitting. Orenburg knitting has a very Arabic feel to it, whereas Shetland lace is Shetland lace.

FYI, this is shetland lace:

And this is Orenburg lace:

...it's a really shitty old picture and I gave this shawl away already

One final tidbit before I end this thread of ultra bordom: I also spin, because you can't find laceweight yarn fine enough for wedding ring shawls without epic-level google-fu and a credit card worth its weight in gold. And in order to produce yarn fast enough to get to knit this lifetime (...you learn on drop spindles. You can't produce on them) I had to buy a wheel. Wheels, however, are expensive and few of them are actually good for spinning lace weight yarn. Eventually, I settled on a charkha. Which I had to buy from India.

It is my favorite thing in the whole world. And in researching the history of this, I've come to be rather in awe of the tool that I get to own. I came across this site the other day, and if you read abosolutely nothing else today, READ THAT LINK. But just in case you decide not to, here are three quotes from somebody pretty surprising. And I'll save that surprise for the end:

“The message of the spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant. That larger message is naturally for all.”

"Art to be art must soothe.” He said further that the yarn we spin is “capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life.”

“A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognising the dignity of labour. I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption."

Mahatma Gandhi said that. And I know I probably have the wrong context here, and it's probably wrong as fuck for a white woman to quote Gandhi, but you know what? Fuck it. IMHO the west's biggest problem is that we have too much and we don't have to work. Knitting is that thing old ladies do, spindles are what knocked out Sleeping Beauty, and a spinning wheel is a metaphor for doing nothing. The key to a healthy life without the sickness of hubris is Worship and Work--both are a reminder that we are small, frail, faliable humans and none of us, not one of us, is better or worse than any other. Yes. We do need to change. If there's one thing we privelaged white folk need to re-learn, it's humility. And the old, devalued work--spinning, weaving, sewing--might just be the teacher we need.

I'm not saying the world would necessarily be better if everybody got around a big table and played with yarn for a few hours, but it would certainly be a lot softer. And I don't know about you, but there's a lot of broken warp and woof in my life that I definitely need to fix.

Block Party!

Okay, so yesterday I mentioned that I finished my shawl, and that I needed to block it. And I have, it's done, and all I can say is OMG pins. God save us all from PINS.

And I am now going to give you the full story of CW's First Blocking Adventure.

The first thing you do when you block is decide that this is easy; you've done the hard part. You've knitted the garment. This, in book language, is like writing the first draft (aka "lace chart") editing it (knitting it) and then shipping it off to an agent according to all the submission guidelines. You think that the hard part is done. "All" that is left is the blocking.

I mean, Grandma used to do this. How hard can it be?

Serious lace knitters may want to break out the popcorn.

So first you gather your equiptment, which according to the internet are: Bedsheet, pins, sheet of plastic, pins, spray bottle, pins, wool wash or baby shampoo, pins, a place to do it, and while you're at it you might want to pick up another box of pins. You are (thank god) smart enough to know better than to do this in your little tiny trailer house because your bed is too small, you'll have to do this blocking thing on the  floor and whatever room you choose to do it in will be out of commission for the rest of the day. So when you go to Wal-mart to get items, you first stop at Maternal Unit's place of work and request the use of her king-sized bed for the day, because the king-sized bed should be more than enough room to block a shawl that is about four-and-a-half feet wide, unblocked.

If anyone reading this has ever blocked a piece of lace before, they are laughing at me.

Maternal unit gives Okay, so you go to walmart and buy one white cotton blanket, forgoing the pretty blue one only because you remember the words "color fast" in the internet instructions, one clear plastic shower curtain, one spritz bottle, one box of T-pins (40 count) and, instead of a second box of T-pins, about two hundred quilting pins. There is, of course, no way in hell you would EVER need that many pins, but hey, you might need to do this again and some of the pins might rust.

Pictured: shampoo, spritz bottle, small box of pins, large box of pins.

Not pictured: Sanity.

Like I said. Experianced lace knitters. Now laughing their ass off.

So you go home, strip bed of sheets, put down plastic sheet, put down cotton blanket, pin in place, and put lacy thing in sink for first washing.

And the learning begins.

Internet says to treat lace being washed very carefully. About five seconds after turning on the faucet I understood that "very carefully" means "treat as if any form of agitation will upset the capsule of radioactive nitro glycerine wrapped in the middle of the shawl". You might think this is an exaggeration. It is not. First, warm, wet wool + agitation=felt. Felt is not something you want to happen to your six-month project because this cannot be undone. Second, this six-month project is made out of relatively unstable handspun yarn that your mother usually refers to as "hair". And it has just absorbed about a gallon and a half of water that you cannot get back out. Because wringing? Agitation. Crumpling into ball and squeezing? Agitation. And the fiber? Gets very fragile when wet. So you now have a very fine lacy thing that is much more fragile now then when you put it in the sink, and is way, way, way heavier. 

So washing means fill sink with cold water. Submerge shawl. Spread baby shampoo over shawl and squeeze very, very gently (We're talking tomato-test squeeze) to get shampoo through everything. Drain sink, supporting shawl the entire time because you don't want fragile string getting sucked down the drain. Fill sink back up. Slosh shawl around carefully to get shampoo out. Drain sink. Realize there is still shampoo in shawl. Fill sink. Slosh. Drain. Realize there is still shampoo.  Repeat process until water is clean of suds, which is about three more fill-slosh-drain repeats than you want to preform.


Now you have to get heavy, wet, fragile shawl out of sink and to bed without breaking anything. You try pressing shawl against side of sink. You get about a cup full of water out. There is still a gallon or so in the shawl. Next best thing: lay towel out on floor, spread shawl on towel, roll it up and press on it. No wringing. We still cannot wring. Bodacious amounts of water will bleed through towel. Bring the whole thing, towel, shawl and all, to bed all rolled up like a wooly burrito. Lay on bed, unroll. breath sigh of releif because, hey, hard part's over, right?

Wet shawl about to be squished dry

Towel Burrito

Ha ha.

This shawl is a circle. And we want it to stay a circle, which means we have to pin it into a relatively round shape. Now, do any of you remember how hard it is to draw a perfectly round circle? Imagine having to draw that circle using six bazillion tiny dots. These dots being pins.

Logically, you'd think that the shawl, being a circle, would work kind of like a compass and you can use its natural diameter to trace the outline. This would be true, if washing it had not turned the shawl into elastic. You set the shawl on the bed, and because the first step is to pin the compass points, you grab one point of your pretty, pointy edging and pin it to the edge of the bed. You go to the other side, and start pulling. And keep pulling. And. Keep. Pulling. Until you find yourself holding about six inches of shawl that did not exist before you got it wet. Six inches that are much bigger than the king sized bed. Oh, well. Four more pins, and now you have the compass points pinned down, more or less where they ought to be.

Only you don't know about the "more or less" part. Yet.

Then you start pinning points in the middle. And then points in the middle of that. And then points in the middle of that, until you have touched the bottom of your forty-count T-pin pack and you are not nearly done pinning the points down. You realize that the pins, pins, pins internet list wasn't exaggerating at all, and your decision to buy a 200 pack instead of another 40 pack has probably just saved your bacon, if not your fingers.

 Not. exaggerating. At all.

And then you realize you've spent so much time pinning and are not even halfway done yet, the shawl is starting to dry out. So you spritz, and you keep pinning. You have one quarter all pinned up and you realize that the circle is looking more like well if you squint it kinda looks round. And that the line you're squinting at is made of about, oh, sixty pins (<---lowball estimate. Really low) that you now have to readjust. Spritz away, you've got another hundred and eighty pins to go.

 Mommy.

So to fast-forward through pins, pins, pins, bleeding, pins pins pins, you've decided that since you don't have to squint quite so hard to see the circle, you're done. You go sit in the living room because it will only take about an hour for the nice, light lacy thing to dry.

I mean, it's not like we've underestimated anything else, right?

Three hours later you realize that the "be careful about it drying out" and the guesstimates on drying times were made by people who live up north in the middle of the country. Not in Coastal South Texas, where the air has the same humidity and viscosity as a deep water sponge in an oceanic trench, and that all the panicked spritzing you did has probably extended drying time by a couple more hours. Which you will have to sit patiently through, because you promised you'd have it all cleaned up by the time your stepfather got home, and barring that, you'll need to stop him from throwing clothing on top of the pretty light lacy thing taking up most of his bed. And dear god in heaven, DON'T TOUCH THE PINS.

And then you go back and carefully, cautiously pull the first couple of pins out of the bed. Nothing explodes or unravels, you find no dropped stitches. You continue, growing more and more excited. When it's done you take it outside and take pictures of it, because you know what? All the work, all the sore hands and bleeding bits and the pins pins pins?

It is TOTALLY WORTH IT:

I rock. Just sayin'.

Joy!

Absolutely no one else will be impressed, but I've FINALLY completed my shawl.

This is a horrible picture, but I don't have a better option short of putting it down, and I don't want to put it down yet. It's off the needles. I made this. The only part of this I did not make is the actual wool fiber. I spun the yarn. I spun the yards and yards and yards of yarn this is made of. And then knitted it. And then made up the outer border when I decided the pattern was too small. And it's off the needles. It is no longer attached to the tiny pieces of plastic and bamboo (wooden circular needles FTW) that have sustained it through the last year or so. Off the needles. I need to mention this again. This moment is kind of how I imagine it would feel to have somebody tell you that they absolutely want to publish your book, because the damn thing is done. Well, done-ish. All the little sticky yarn bits are woven in and clipped off, and all that is left is blocking.

Ah. Blocking.

Have I mentioned lately that my house/trailer, while new and wonderful and not in the middle of a horribly big city, is really, really small?

Okay, lemme back up a bit. You know how when you wash a sweater, you need to lay it out on a towel so that when it dries, it still looks like a sweater? This is called "blocking". You set the shape and sometimes, size of a knitted piece of fabric by washing it carefully (DO. NOT. SCRUB. KNITTED. FIBER.) (EVER) (you get felt. Especially if it's a natural hair fiber like wool.) and then laying it out to dry. With a sweater the laying-out-to-dry part is not particularly difficult because the sweater washed is roughly the size you want the sweater to be dry.

Knitted lace has an added problem: it doesn't look like lace. Or rather, it looks like lace that has spent six months crumpled on the bottom of your closet. So when you block lace, you also have to stretch it. Also, you can make a large piece of lace even larger. You have to soak it in water, spread it out on a piece of absorbant pinable fabric that will stay in place, pin the knitting into place, and leave it alone to dry for several hours.

I have never blocked a piece of lace. My first shawl developed a hole in it before I had the room and bravery to risk getting it wet. This will be my first try. And according to research, my options for a large shawl are bed, floor, and floor with carpeting.

I have a small bed. And a cat who really likes the floor. Any attempts at blocking will take the room the blocking happens in out of comission until blocking is over. And I have NO IDEA Where this will happen.

But it will happen tomorrow! And I will report on it here! Because I have nowhere better to go.

(Yes. I totally finished it fifteen minutes ago. And I am tired. And my fingers hUUUUUUUUUrt. And I should be in bed. And I don't care.)

(also-also finished first draft of second novel, but that isn't all that important. nobody is ever going to read that.)

Ugh.

You know, it's been a while since I bought yarn from a store.

If I have to disembowel a center-pull skein of yarn three times to find the yarn end, you have pretty much defeated the purpose of winding yarn like this. Also, when I finally found the end, it was wrapped in such a way as to prove that the manufacturer had NO intention of anyone ever getting the damn thing out of the ball. 

That said, this is the only manufacturer of laceweight yarn I can find at the store. So when you buy it, I highly suggest picking up one of these:

No. This is not a Harry Potter Wand.

It's called a nostepinne. It's a manual ball winder that creates sane center-pull balls. I did not think of adding this to your shopping list because silly me, I thought a yarn maker would make a skein you didn't have to freaking gut to get to the start-end. Here is a youtube video on how to use one:

It can be a dowel or a stick or your fingers or a paper tube, but anything is better than having to work off of this:

Also, while we're on the subject of youtube ball-winding related videos?

Best. Winder. Ever.

Spinning Lesson 0.5: Jury rigging supplies

I'm hesitant to start with this. Working with good tools when you're just learning is vital. If you use poor quality goods, you may run into problems that are not you. When you have experiance as a spinner, you'll be able to tell good quality fiber from bad, good tools from poor ones, and thus be able to figure out if the reason the frickin' thing won't do what you want it to is because it's not possible, or if it's because you bought bad fiber or a bad spindle.

However, the downside to spinning as a hobby is, unless you live within driving distance of a specialty shop, you won't be able to find good supplies quickly. Ordering online is good, but it can take time, and sometimes these things are expensive. So, we're going to do a quick rundown on how to make a spindle, and how to salvage fiber from things like yarn and cotton balls.

First up, the spindle. In order to know how to make one, you first have to understand how it works. And it is really, really easy. A spindle is a stick that you twirl to put twist into string. A quick excercise is to go get something with a pointy end, like a pencil or a knitting needle, and about a yard and a half of string. Yarn will work too. Tie the string into a loop and then to the eraser end of the pencil (or knitting needle). Hold the free end of the string in your left hand and roll the pencil down your thigh. The string should wrap itself around the pencil shaft and then start coming off the tip. You should notice the two strands of your loop twisting together as well. If you repeat this motion a few times (rolling the pencil down your thigh in the same direction each time) you should build up a good deal of twist in your string.

You can actually spin this way. It's just irksome and it will take a very long time to produce even a few yards of yarn. Also, it's a pencil attached to string. It doesn't look very cool.

You speed up the spinning process by making the shaft spin faster. This puts more twist into your yarn, which will speed the other aspects of the process up nicely. So remember this in the future: the faster and longer your spindle spins, the more yarn you can produce.

One way to speed up a spindle is to add weight to it. This gives the spinning motion momentum, causes the spin to last longer, and when you have it parked, makes it reluctant to spin in the opposite direction. You want it to spin a little like a gyroscope or a top, so whatever weight you add needs to be evenly balanced. The simplest way to accomplish this is to use something round.

I use toy car wheels. They sell them at craft stores, they're light enough for me to do lacewieght or lighter yarns, and yet they have enough weight to get a fast, sustained spin. You can also use:

-Jar lids
-CDs
-Nuts
-Plumbing parts
-circles cut out of cardboard
-Apples
-Circles cut out of anything, really
-Oranges

If it has a hole, can be made to have a hole, and is relatively even all the way around, you can probably turn it into a weight for a spindle. 

As for your shaft, you want it to be long. A foot long shaft with a good weight on the end will make a pretty decent spindle. The longer your shaft is, the more room you'll have to wrap yarn on it. (and OMG I just realized how many dirty jokes I could make about this. For your sake, I shall restrain myself) (but really. Shaft. LOL) and the more yarn you can fit on the spindle, the better. Another consideration is if you can get a hook on one end or not. Hooks are not necessary, but they secure your yarn and keep it from unwinding when you're spinning. Wooden dowels, at least the kind sold in craft stores, tend to split in half when you try to screw a hook in to one end. Another solution would be using a thick piece of wire, like from a hanger, and bending one end into a hook, but this could be a little difficult to use.

I use crochet hooks, the long kind for afghan making. These usually come with some kind of stopper on one end, which can be useful for keeping the weight on, and of course, they already have a hook. No drilling, screwing, gluing, bending or taping required.

The third thing one must keep in mind is whatever you use as a weight needs to stay put. And I don't mean fall off. The biggest problem I have with the toy car wheels is that they will spin in the opposite direction when I get the thing moving. This shortens the spinning motion and it doesn't feel very good. So glue and tape may be required after all.

This is my shopping list for making your own spindle:

-1 pack of toy car wheels with a 1/4th inch diameter hole
-1 afghan crochet hook with a stopper on one end and a shaft as close to 1/4th an inch thick as possible.
-a piece of paper. You don't need much.
-(optional) electrical tape.

The directions are pretty simple. Put the crochet hook through the toy car wheel. It will probably be a loose fit. If the wheel moves on the shaft, take it back off. Take a small strip of paper, fold it up and slip it into the wheel well, then jam the shaft back in. If it won't fit, use less paper. You want a really tight fit. You don't want this moving AT ALL.

The tricky part is going to be this: You want the wheel secured at the top, about a quarter of an inch from the hook. Why?

Well, that's the next part of spindle mechanics: Where you put the weight.

The weight, BTW, is called a "whorl". What we are making is called a "drop" spindle, and the name is very appropriate while you're learning because that's what you're going to do more often than not. Drop spindles have two major categories: Top whorl and bottom whorl.


My personal preference is for bottom whorl, but this is because bottom whorl is easiest to turn into a support spindle. When you're learning you want a spindle that doesn't wobble much, and all other virtues aside, even a well made bottom whorl spindle will wobble because of the way it's weighted. Top whorl has a more stable, centralized spin, and will be much easier for you to learn on. However, it's going to be a bitch to get the wheel to stay a quarter of an inch down, not go sliding up and not go sliding off.

Get out the electrical tape. I would suggest cutting several small pieces to wrap around the top of the shaft above the whorl. You can go nuts below the whorl, as long as you have no sticky bits hanging out (these will catch your fiber and make a bit of a mess out of it). You can also use glue, but it may only work if you've acquired a wooden crochet hook.

When you have everything assembled, the glue is dry, the tape is securely taped and the wheel won't budge, get out that loop of string and tie it to the shaft just below the whorl. Run one end up above the whorl and wrap it around the hook a few times. Hold it up, and then give the shaft a good hard twist to the right. If it spins without a significant wobble and the spin lasts a decent amount of time, congrats. You've just made yourself a functional spindle.

Now for fiber.

Lemme tell you this right now. You get really into spinning, you will consider polyester to be the spawn of Satan, but that's the easiest-to-salvage fiber I can think of, other than cotton balls (which you do not want to start with because the quality is really crap)

When you go to the craft store, first check for felting supplies. Sometimes they will have okay-ish wool roving in packs of about four ounces. If not, look for a skein of bulky yarn made of three strands: A thick colored strand, which is what we're salvaging, a thin inner core, and an even thinner strand of nylon binding the whole thing together. You can pull all three apart in pretty short order.

This is how to do it: cut a strand about a couple yards long. Untwist one end until you can grab the nylon strand, and then start pulling it out. The yarn may snarl a bit, so be kind of gentle, and if it does snarl, go down to the clump and kind of ease it on down. When it's off, throw it away. You won't need it again. Repeat the process with the inner core. What you should be left with is a loose, light, fluffy bundle of fiber to play with.

Again, these are not the best supplies to use, especially not for learning, but if you cannot get hold of anything else, or you're in a hurry to get started, these will do in a pinch.

New Subject: Spinning and Knitting lessons.

So a friend of mine has asked me to teach her how to knit lace and spin. The sad part is, she lives several hours away from me, and my work hours make communication with all you daylight people virtually impossible.

But there is good news! I can communicate with her via this blog, and leave the lessons up for her education, and for everyone else's as well! Joy and rapture, my friends. Joy and rapture.

The first thing we're going to have to do, of course, is acquire the supplies with which we shall learn.

So to follow each subject, this is what I propose you acquire over the next several days (or weeks):

Knitting:
Two sets of needles, one large (8-10 or 11 US. An 8US knitting needle is about 5.0mm) and one small (2-3)
Two skeins of yarn, one thick (I suggest Red Heart, because it's everywhere) and one laceweight.

The laceweight yarn will be difficult to find. Hobby Lobby (our local craft store) only just began carrying it, and what they have is acrylic. A specialty yarn store will be more likely to have it, if you have a specialty yarn store within decent driving distance. However, I assume if you want to know how to knit lace, you want to do the fine stuff. You don't want anything thicker than sport. I will cover yarn weights at a later date. If you can't find decent laceweight, you can use crochet cotton for now, and order the good stuff when you feel a bit more confident.

Spinning:

-A top-whorl drop spindle (I will explain WTF this means later).
-Fiber. 2-4oz of wool. The magic words to look for are "roving" or "top". These will give you a pre-processed fiber that should be relatively easy to work with.

OR

A "learn how to spin" kit that contains a spindle and several ounces of DECENT fiber.

You can rig a usable spindle for about ten bucks, counting the gas to get to the craft store and back. I will cover this in detail tomorrow. Fiber will be harder to fudge. There's a couple of tricks I've learned out of desperation (did you know you can spin admittedly crappy yarn out of cotton balls?) but I do not recommend these for beginners.

As for the kit route ... most of the kit spindles are decent, but I have yet to see a kit come with decent fiber.
My suggestion, if you want to learn on good stuff, is to buy the spindle and the fiber as seperate products, and not to buy a kit. I'll be ordering this stuff and probably a couple of spindles (it's my birthday. Also, if I'm going to play at teaching I want a spindle that isn't made out of a toy car wheel) I will let you know both when I put the order in, and when I get it. The other fiber I can recommend is Shetland Top, though it's pretty fine and a little more expensive.

Do not order the merino for your first lesson. It is very, very lovely, but it is also expensive and a little tricky to work with. Once we get the basics of spinning down, we can start going into the fibers themselves. And trust me, 8oz of fiber does not sound like a lot, but it is.

Also ... my ability to get these lessons out is completely dependent on my ability to not die while I'm working.  So if I have a particularly hard series of days you may not see many lessons out of me. Do not shoot me, if and when this happens.

Fiber porn

Just got a full pound of merino top from the Woolery:

This stuff is heavenly soft, and I thought the Shetland top I've had the last year was fantastic. It's brillo pads compared to this merino.

I could do this all day.

Unfortunately I need to finish up the current project, that full pound of Shetland top I ordered three years ago, and the alpaca/merino blend I got two years ago, before I can start playing with the merino (OMG HEAVEN LET ME DO THIS AGAIN)

 

More fiber porn? You shouldn't have asked! (Actually you didn't, but I can imagine, can't I?)

This is my absolutely stellar spindle, made from a crochet hook and a toy car wheel (you can't see the wheel, unfortunately) and my even more stellar andean plying tool, made from cardboard and a dowel. You're actually supposed to use your hands for andean plying, but setting up the single will hurt after a while, and if you've got a lot of single, you can break your finger getting the central loop off (for those of you currently WTF-ing, andean plying is a method of folding a single strand of yarn, so that when you unwind it you effectively double it in half. It reduces waste). Fortunately a plying tool is really easy to improv.

This is the Shetland shawl. I'm almost halfway through the last pattern band. Up until this project I was used to knitting lace on a garter stitch (all rows knitted, rather than alternating knit and pearl rows) but the pi-shawl pattern means you knit in the round. Most of the elements here have pattern stitches in every row. I have no idea how this will work out when I block it, so I'm getting kind of nervy on this.

Knitting and feminism? A hypothesis.

I had a thought that probably has nothing to do with anything and is probably total bullshit, but I want to write it down so I can remember it later, and I'd like to open it for discussion.


One of the reasons lace knitting was such a strong industry where it appeared was that it gave women an additional source of income. A woman who could knit well would have been a very valuable person because she could contribute something of great importance to her household. The same would go for all of the "women's work" things in European culture--knitting, spinning, weaving, sewing, embroidery. All these things weren't just keeping houses pretty for husbands. They were things they could take to market and sell, like the veggies and the other things their husbands did.

Because the finer stuff (ie wedding ring weight shawls, brussles lace, anything involving silk) was more valuable than the rougher stuff, the women had to avoid rough work. You CANNOT work with fine fibers if you have rough hands (as proven by the amount of hand lotion I go through when I'm spinning lace wool, an option women in the 'teens wouldn't have had). So the husbands would have had to do the heavy lifting and the digging and the other things considered "men's work" while the wives stayed home to do the jobs that wouldn't ruin their hands, and to knit, or sew, or embroider. Both members of the household were doing something that would earn money. It was (in theory) an equal division of labor with both members of the household contributing.


Then you had the industrial revolution, where thread, cloth and clothing production were shifted out of the home and into factories. There was no longer any value in handcraft skills, and the women who had them lost their value. Lacemaking, knitting, spinning and such were the industry of the poor. When the skill was made obsolete by factory production, the women who had them became, well, useless ornaments. The division of labor had been set in culture--because in a culture where spinning and knitting HAD value, a woman who had to work outside the home was a woman without valuable skills, and could be looked down upon by her neighbors--so the devalued woman had very few options available. They couldn't regain a valuable skillset without first changing the culture to allow it.

If the above is true, then one could argue that feminism and sufferage was an outgrowth of a (relatively) sudden devaluation and not a long-term cultural disregard for women. The girls stayed home because the work they could do at home earned more money than they work they could do outside the home. When handcrafts lost their value, however, a women who could only knit and embroider and who couldn't do something more valuable in the NEW skillset became an ornament for her husband, a way for him to say, "look, I can support someone who is worthless", the way footbinding worked in China. Feminism did not alter gender roles. Rather, it fixed them.



I think I shall study both and find out if this argument could be made reasonably, and if it might have historical support. Should be interesting if nothing else.

Stuff in the New Year

First of all, this made me snort my breakfast up my nose:

http://www.jimchines.com/2009/09/20-neil-gaiman-facts/

In other ... stuff I've been knitting a lot lately. I like it, I've missed it, and this project became a challenge about the time I ran out of pattern charts before I got the size I wanted (this is why checking your gage is a GOOD THING)

One of the things I've discovered in my desperate hunt for easy-access patterns (the internet is devoid of proper shetland or orenburg knitting motifs) is just how ... odd fine openwork traditions are. Apparently it "lives" in six places: Iceland, the Faeroes, Shetland (all of which are islands) Orenburg (isolated in the middle of mountains) the Ukraine and Estonia. And while these are all noticeably different traditions, they are also very, very alike. Kind of like looking at Latin-derivative languages and recognizing the source of certain words. The connective thread (ha ha) appears to be the Vikings. I'm gonna have to go get a map and color the areas this stuff comes from. The weirdest thing is the most complex and similar traditions are in Shetland, Estonia and Orenburg. Admittedly Estonia and Orenburg knitters communicated somewhat, but the Shetland isles are (according to Wikipedia) little piles of rock out in the Atlantic and if you did lace knitting during its heyday you were also poor. Too poor to make trips to Europe (or to want to).

So this is really cool. You know, to me. I remember reading a book about a mermaid when I was a kid which never identified the geographic location of the family. I knew the book took place on a coast, probably on an island, that the people in the book were Irish/Scottish, and that was all. Well, there's a couple of paragraphs halfway through it where the grandfather of the family (who has sailed away because the mermaid wants to kill him. It was one of those not-for-kids kids books) has sent his wife a lace shawl because both these foreign knitters and his wife can knit lace that passes the wedding ring test. Now I know where this island is.

So I have decided that one of my projects this year is to study the living crap out of this old-fashioned, unpopular hobby and see where it gets me. I know most people don't find knitting to be interesting, but damn it, I do.