needled

A quick post from a flying visit. My sister came to Edinburgh this afternoon, and I took a couple of hours off to walk with her up Arthur’s Seat. Here she is enjoying some hilltop knitting.

…check her out twisting cables in the wind and everything! Go Hells!

Among my sister’s many talents are the softies of all shapes and sizes that she designs and makes for her kids. She brought some of them along for the walk. Here is one enjoying the view:

It seemed a little perturbed by the height of the hill…

A couple of weeks ago I was wandering aimlessly toward the craft department in Newcastle’s Fenwicks when my eye was caught by a potato peeler in the shape of a monkey. A monkey potato peeler! So appealling! So well-made! Our potato peeler was conveniently blunt and clearly needed replacing. What we were in obvious need of was . . . a peeler in the shape of a monkey!

The monkey was reasonably priced. I purchased the monkey. I felt remarkably pleased — both with myself and my monkey. I took the monkey home.

Then it was time to use the monkey. Its first task was to peel some carrots. The blades of the peeler were covered with some protective packaging which I attempted to remove. Bad idea. Before the monkey even got a chance to attack the carrots, it had hacked off the top of my thumb. Blood actually spurted from the wound. I became foolishly faint and had to sit down.

My scientist companion calmly bandaged my thumb and berated me for my carelessness. I protested that it was not I, but the monkey who was at fault. I looked at the monkey. The object that had appeared so cute in the shop now revealed its true malevolence. Its hollow eyes glinted. It held its blades aloft in an attitude both savage and determined. It was clearly out to get me.

The monkey wound is still healing. It has affected several everyday activities: knitting, writing, putting in of contact lenses, general waving about of hands. It will probably leave a small scar. I don’t want to admit it, but I must, I do, I fear the monkey. It seems possessed of an evil animus and I am evidently its target. This realisation is all the more galling because I misread its character so profoundly in the shop. How could I ever have thought it benign?

A short while ago I passed it in the kitchen and this is what I saw. I ask you to dispute my sense of its iniquity. Is it not an evil monkey?

Theres probably a moral about The Commodity in there somewhere….

For several months now, I’ve been going into the bathroom and discovering sights like this:

And strange things like this have been appearing in the kitchen:

These objects are signs that our flat has now fully realised its second function as a brewery. At first this transformation caused me some concern. For example, when Mr B said he was bringing home a mash tun, I envisaged an enormous vat in which I would be forced to spend evenings of unbearable heat and grueling physical toil, relentlessly treading malt grain. Then he turned up with an innocuous vessel that resembled a picnic basket and all was well.

In any case, I am completely reconciled to the year-round supplies of (very) tasty beer and my drone-like role in the process. For my lowly task is to apply the bottle caps. Here are the fruits of yesterday’s labours:

A delicious red ale using Irish yeast.

As well as the beer in its nice brown bottles I have another brown thing to show. A while ago now, I started making Mr B a vest for the cross country season. He runs for a club whose ethos embraces the idiosyncratic and handmade. Their colour is brown and in my vest he fits right in. I finally finished off the neck and armhole edging yesterday, and am very pleased with the results. Here he is obligingly modelling said vest this morning, together with the number of a race he ran a couple of weeks ago:

And here is the vest from the back. (Yes, I have become completely obsessed with duotone)

I think it has a hokey, yet dashing Chariots of Fire air about it. But only a knitter would appreciate the ludicrous contradictions of this vest — being, as it is, a utility garment fashioned from a rather luxe yarn. For it is made of Rowan Calmer and has a satisfying spring and cashmere-like softness. I knitted it in the round to the armholes, then divided for front and back, and kind of made up the racer style armholes as I went along. The curve could have been a bit less severe across the back but I quite like the airy effect the edging has produced. He’s off trying it out this morning at Jedburgh.

We went walking yesterday. It was a day of textures.

Of denuded fields:

. . . of seasonal abundance:

. . . and decay:

. . . and textural contrasts.
I particularly enjoyed these sheep beneath the A1 fly-over:

and these jolly curtains against a sandstone wall:

We had a wander round Hailes Castle, whose ruins were alive with textural inspiration:

People have been carving their initials into the walls of the castle for over 100 years:

To my mind, this century of scrawlings only adds to the loveliness of Hailes. I mean, I’m not encouraging the wholescale desecration of ancient monuments or anything, but I did find the graffitti quite suggestive of the creative appropriation of the landscape, and a public use of space. This is one of the things I find so interesting about the Graffitti Project at Kelburn Castle. In this giant, collaborative artwork, four emphatically urban Brazillian graffitti artists decorated the walls of a historic Scottish building in a rural setting:

Personally I think that the spectacular chutzpah of the art only adds positively to that of the castle:

When I worked in York, I had an office in a building which had an array of different uses over the past six hundred years. During the early 1800s it had served as a girls school. On the windows of the pleasant room in which we held our conferences was the graffitti of nineteenth-century schoolgirls. As well as their initials, the girls had scratched out rumours and gossip and celebrated their romantic exploits on the panes of the glass. Their quiet teenage rebellion added enormously to the appeal of this room for me.

So today I am swatching up a sweater in celebration of the autumnal textures of East Lothian - a Hailes and East Linton sweater.

the colours are rather East Lothian too.

And thanks so much, everyone, for your comments on my review. It has been so interesting to hear everyone’s perspective on the issues Brocket’s book raises - particularly, I think, the class issue - and see the debate unfold.

needled reviews:
Nigella Express, BBC2, Mondays, 8.30pm
Jane Brocket, The Gentle Art of Domesticity (Hodder & Stoughton, 2007)

Despite my best efforts to avoid it, last night I encountered Nigella Express. It was much more diverting than I’d assumed. Indeed, Mr B and I spent the programme in a state of near hysteria. How we roared as Nigella, taking the pornography of the edible right back in to the bedroom, oozed from her sheets resplendent in an oil-black nightie, apparently suffering a nuit blanche of donut withdrawal. In fact, the only un-funny thing in this truly ludicrous half hour was the orgy of irresponsible consumption it depicted. Nigella popped open and discarded a small planet’s worth of plastic while purring vacuously about ‘convenience.’

I was utterly transfixed by the spectacular Ms Lawson. Like a bizarre fusion of Russell Brand and Ab Fab’s Eddie she emoted and threw shapes about the kitchen. There was something reminiscent of the Spitting Image puppet of Margaret Thatcher about her too: all ruthless, insane, and glinting. Most intriguing of all, it wasn’t just Nigella’s self-consciously excessive presence that was so powerfully suggestive of transvestism, but the gorgeous interiors of her home as well. From the sensuous sanctuary of her pantry (usefully marked “pantry”) to the consolations of her tea-pot; from the tearful, cookie-munching friend on her sofa to the privately-educated child obligingly performing its homework, this was an absurd parody of privileged domesticity: This was the domestic in drag.

I was also struck by the strange allure of the drag-domestic while reading Jane Brocket’s Gentle Art of Domesticity. Now, as an enthusiastic practitioner of the ‘arts’ Brocket celebrates, and someone who has occasionally looked at Yarnstorm, I felt compelled to be sympathetic to, and even to defend, her book. The bizarrely rabid attacks in The Daily Telegraph or on last week’s Woman’s Hour have, it seems to me, largely been voiced by individuals who just don’t get how sewing, knitting, quilting, or cooking could possibly provide a stimulating form of expression for any contemporary woman. Kate Saunders and Liz Hunt seem to regard such activities as somehow antithetical to one of feminism’s key goals, viz, women’s equal participation in the modern public sphere—a perspective which is not only short sighted but, given the sheer numbers of women who have over the past decade discovered a renewed sense of themselves in the creative energy of all sorts of crafts, weirdly old fashioned. And for any crafter there are certainly things to like and admire about Brocket’s book: her passionate appreciation of buttons, her visceral and individual sense of colour and, most particularly for me, her thoughtful and moving account of the embroidered table cloths she loves and collects. After discussing five distinctive and very different examples of the same popular 1930s transfer design Brocket writes of how she finds “comfort in handling these textiles knowing that I am appreciating something that was of great value to its maker.” For me, it was worth reading the book simply for her fond account of these objects, the “art” of which is so often overlooked, or dismissed.

But however much I want to like Brocket there are things I found profoundly troubling about her book. The first thing to note is that this is not a book about crafts or domesticity in any sort of broad sense, this is a book about Jane Brocket’s version of those things. So at first I thought my wary reaction to her domesticity might well be just a matter of personal taste: I am not quite so fond of pink or pineapples; of the sentimental art of the late Victorians or (shudder) of Jane Austen adaptations as Ms Brocket. And, after a while, the relentlessly saccharine palate and sing-song tone of the book started to induce in me vauge feelings of nausea. Then I started to realise that, in a sense, this was entirely the point: the whole purpose of the book is to absorb you in the all-encompassing syrupy aesthetic that is Brocket-world: A world where there is always a clean, fresh shirt on the line and a cake on the table; where each member of the family will be perpetually wrapped cosily in its favourite quilt and the colours of your comfy shoes will always match those of your current knitting project. Like the performing home and family depicted in Nigella Express, the world of Jane Brocket is one of luscious surfaces, sensory overload and visual excess….with something (for me at least) hollow and questionable at its core. The book celebrates a sort of hyper-real—or indeed drag—early twenty-first century version of a 1950s domestic ideal. Reading The Gentle Art of Domesticity was like being in a film by Douglas Sirk (or perhaps Todd Haynes’ intelligent homage to that master of the ‘woman’s film’) but, terrifyingly, without any of the irony or critique.

(Far From Heaven’s incisive critique of the domestic-in-drag)

It is not that Brocket is incapable of thinking critically about the conventions and meanings of the domesticity she espouses. On the contrary, she reminds us several times of her graduate qualifications and, in the rather odd readings of several late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century depictions of domesticity, showcases a certain discursive intelligence. She also writes that the domestic was for her an active choice—one apparently belittled by an ‘academic’ schooling haunted by the ghosts of the Pankhursts. But then she holds up for our unquestioning admiration domestic icons and female role models so conservative it really is like feminism never happened. Can any woman seriously champion Doris Day in Young at Heart as a positive image of domesticity? I’m sure even DD herself could maintain an ironic distance from that one. The same goes for The Philadelphia Story, which Brocket regards as a Lovely Escapist Story with no sense at all of how that most patriarchal of narratives makes Kate Hepburn’s frigidity a symptom of her terribly unreasonable failure to accept Dad’s harmless philandering. And its not just these obvious and conventional images of middle-class female repression that Brocket draws into the weird idyll that is Brocket-world. How can she talk about Cary Grant and his clothes without even acknowledging an idea of camp? Is she for real?

All pink hearts and pinafores, Jane Brocket is incredibly camp too but, unlike Archibald Leach performing Cary Grant, without any of the considered self-awareness. And this is what is really so disturbing and ultimately shocking about her book. For her “gentle arts” are not gentle at all but are built on the twin pillars of privilege and inequality. This book is a shameless defence of luxury and leisure, of a world in which women are not only financially supported by wealthy men but are incredibly happy to be so; a world in which women are there not to work, not to be public or political or economically productive beings, but merely to consume vast quantities of lovely raw commodities; make lovely handmade items from those commodities; and then celebrate the virtues of those lovely handmade things as somehow ends in themselves. (Oh, and they can enjoy chocolate too. How naughty!) Brocket is so relentlessly bourgeois, so utterly self-satisfied that she is completely incapable of stepping back from her own entrenched class position and thinking critically about her own conservative version of domesticity, and its relation to her own economic advantage. Anyone who can write, as she does on page 206, about the cheering spectacle of happy servants might do well to have a chat with one intelligent knitter I know, who also supports herself and her family on her cleaner’s wage. Sorry, Jane, but I think you should have considered the realities (or indeed history) of domestic labour at greater length before you assumed to write about domesticity, and thought a little bit more carefully about the implications of “domestic art” before you elevated the materials and objects of your gaudy, expensive, and incredibly fortunate life to that status.

heres the completed indoor…

…and outdoor outfit:

I made a skirt this afternoon to match yesterday’s scarf out of that lovely dark grey wool suiting. The best thing about it is without doubt it’s pockets:

…and wot tasty pocketses they are.

Though I say so meself, the skirt has the best overall finish of anything I’ve made for myself so far. I put a pattern together following the basic A line instructions in this book and added my own details and pockety embellishments. Perhaps because I’d designed it, and felt in control of the process, making it was miraculously trouble-free, even the zip and facings. I’m very pleased with the result - particularly the fit, and the way it hangs. Anyway, when theres some light tomorrow perhaps I’ll post a pic of the whole outfit…

check out my new scarf:

inspired by Ashley, Nora, and, of course, the Schmidt.

I love it! I do think that next time I try it, however, I should be a little braver in my colour choices. I began with a much larger palate of patterns in different reds and oranges - all of which looked great against the dark grey wool….but when I started laying the strips out it kept sort of resolving itself into quite a stark red and grey vibe. I think I also need to be braver in cutting slightly narrower strips. Still, the different textures and patterns are pleasing.

and, frankly, since so much of my winter wardrobe consists of red, grey, and black, it will get optimum use.

The wool is some great suiting from Mandors. You’ll note that I capitulated to the allure of Amy Butler with one of the accent patterns, but the others came from my mum’s lovely birthday fabric bundle. Actually, I think I may have subconsciously had my mum’s old school scarf in mind — one of those satisfying things in really good quality plain-weave wool — that I often used to enjoy wearing as a teenager. There is something about the drape, the weight and the vertical stripes of this finished scarf that’s quite reminiscent of it.

It is perhaps hard to make the case for place mats and oven mits as exciting projects, but I experienced their mild excitement this weekend. Having acquired Denyse Schmidt Quilts largely on the grounds of Ashley’s gorgeous scarves I decided it was time to attempt something small-scale involving piecing and binding. First I made a couple of these:

I refer to the mat, not the delicious plumb cake (which I did not make but helped consume). Check out the mitred corners! Cue mild excitement! I have to say that Schmidt’s instructions for binding in this way were very clear, and, indeed, better than Amy Karol’s….but this is because, frankly, part of my brain appears to be missing when reading sewing instructions. Karol did not point out that one cuts the threads and removes the thing from the machine before turning, folding and continuing to sew. Yes, I *know* I should have realised. Snicker not, o ye experienced sempstress.

Here are a couple of mats, one waiting for its binding to be finished, plus the oven mit:

Not even mildly exciting, are they? Nonetheless, they are pleasing and functional and taught me to machine quilt, albeit in a very basic fashion, as well as apply binding in two different ways.

I am certainly a fan of the Schmidt aesthetic, though perhaps rather less so of Schmidt herself. I listened to her CraftSanity interview and was somewhat perturbed by her attitude to the Amish women whose labour - and, indeed cultural reputation as crafters of exceptional skill - enable her to produce and market her “couture” quilts. Schmidt has never met these women, nor (at Jennifer Ackerman Haywood’s prompting) seemed remotely curious to do so. She was not interested in whether the women liked or respected her designs. She expressed mild irritation that she could not “save some money” by commissioning their work without an agent. For doing so involved communicating by the clearly arcane (in Schmidt’s world) medium of pen and paper: “the Amish don’t do email.” She also remarked amusedly on the added complication of “them all having the same name.”

Now, as a woman whose business is quilts Schmidt is of course going to be primarily concerned with quality of product and income generated. But I found it rather shocking to hear someone whose distinctive designs are so closely bound up with a particular medium and its history (and indeed is intelligently aware of that fact) express so little respect for the women who continue to practice that craft, and keep the skills of their foremothers alive in traditional ways….to say nothing of the added value that “the Amish ladies” (to quote Schmidt’s website) lend to her high-end products and their sales.

Please understand that I do not subscribe to some rabidly utilitarian view of quilting. Nor do I object to anyone applying contemporary business models to traditional crafts. I am simply rather surprised when people who profess to be interested in the work of women’s hands can dismiss the identities of those who labour for them in a way that is all the more troubling for being, as Schmidt appeared in the interview, entirely unselfconscious.

Rant over.

I also began a new knitting project this weekend. It is designed by yours truly, and involves the lovely new cocoon wool from Rowan, and some giant cables:

more from this soon….