An Exotic Holiday

Anastasia Socks

During the summer, Mr Handmade and I did something we've long talked about and never actually done: we rented a holiday cottage with some friends and did a proper grown-up holiday with some of our favourite people.

We chose a small town on the edge of the yorkshire dales, with the promise of a little walking, a little shopping and some days out to encourage us. We found a cottage and took it for a week in July, just before most of the schools went on summer holiday.

When the time came, we crammed four adults and all of the bags and baggages we thought we'd need or want for a week away into my tiny purple car, and set off. Driving a heavily laden car around some relatively steep inclines was... interesting, but we arrived, got fish and chips from the local chip shop, and settled in.

The holiday was lovely - very restorative - and included a little of all the things we enjoy. Mr Handmade and I sneaked off on our own and wandered around Acorn Bank, a national trust property with excellent gardens and a house in the early stages of renovation and setting up. We had lunch at a chocolate factory in Orton and bought fresh bread from the town bakery each day. We played most of the board games we took with us. And I took one of the friends and the car and we went to a yarn shop and visited Farfield Mill.

Farfield Mill was... interesting. It was mostly given over to shopping, with artists having individual little divided spaces and selling various things. I think my mother-out-law would love it, but I'm not sure that we are the target market yet. Downstairs, it has some great displays and a pretty good presentation on the 'Terrible Knitters of Dent', who knit in a sort of whole-torso rocking motion and were apparently very fast. I'm quite sad that their sort of knitting - known as swaving - has died out, but there are not very many accounts of it, and no video evidence that might enable us to recreate how they did it. I am aware that a certain blogger claims he has worked it out, but I have watched his videos and he is wrong. What he is doing is knitting, cottage style, with bent needles, not swaving.

We enjoyed Williams' Wools, a lovely shop where the owner was very happy to let us browse at length. I bought some West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in the Kingfisher colourway, which knit up very rapidly indeed into some socks which were claimed by my grandmother. Overall, the holiday was a distinct success, and one we plan to repeat in future. Holidaying with friends is very different to going with family or just as a couple, and we liked it a lot.

Women are not things: Mad Max's "Feminist Propaganda"

Last weekend Mr Handmade and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Roads.

I haven't seen the first three in the franchise. I don't know how I've missed them; I think my Dad even has them in a DVD box set in their living room, but I've never (to my knowledge) seen any of them. I'm aware of the general idea (cars in a wasteland, and Mel Gibson being a silly action hero). Fine.

So we went and watched the newest one. You can probably guess whose pick it was; moreso when I say that I went in with little knowledge and no expectations. Cars, wasteland, some actors whose names I recognised, and he wanted to watch it, so okay. We saw it in 2D (we both hate 3D movies).

It wasn't until after we came out that he told me that it had been making MRAs (Men's Rights Activists, aka whiny anti-feminist types) angry. Had he told me that before we decided, I would have been much more excited to see it.

The premise of the film is pretty simple (spoilers ahead):

Max is captured by a society of white-painted 'War boys', led by their scary-faced repulsive leader who keeps a throng of people in thrall to him by limiting their access to water. Then Imperator Furiosa, the driver of their largest, most impressive vehicle (a tanker with half a VW Beetle welded to the top of it) rescues their leader's "wives" to take them away to a semi-mythical 'green place' where she grew up before she was kidnapped by the war boys as a child. One hell of a car chase ensues.

This film was not unproblematic. One of the biggest issues was the way that the main antagonists were so deathly pale - falling into the Evil Albino stereotype. I found it slightly unclear whether we were expected to infer that the warboys had their complexion due to painting themselves white, or whether they were meant to be that pale naturally, but the fact that it didn't wear off through the film in the way that the body paint of other characters did suggests to me that we are to infer that their pallor is natural.

There were also certainly moments of male gaze - shots of supermodels wearing nothing but gauze bikinis. The wives in general weren't particularly well fleshed-out, although they were shown to be intelligent people with their own wants and needs. I'm not sure that the characterisation they got made up for the slightly gratuitous semi-nudity.

On the other hand, this film defied Hollywood convention in many ways that I enjoyed. There was no romance, for one thing. The main characters were just that - characters. There was no love interest. No woman reduced to a hero's sexual plaything. All of the women were there on their own merits.

In fact, the men who did use women sexually against their will were demonstrated clearly to be evil men, symbols and products of an evil society. The good men were those who appreciated and respected women under their own merits - which is painfully rare in current film, particularly film of this genre.

However, what I loved most about this film was the character of Furiosa. A woman with a visible disability (left arm amputee) that's never used to denigrate her, who defies the will of her boss and takes control of a situation that nobody would want to be in. A butch woman whose femininity is not threatened. A woman who is brave, tough, strong, kind and loving. A woman shown to be capable of using many weapons, both physical (fists, elbows, knives, guns) and mental (logic, persuasion), and deciding according to the situation which is the best to use. A woman shown, in short, to be capable of many things. I think it's mostly Furiosa that has the MRAs decrying this film as feminist propaganda. As one parody puts it, she 'doesn't even show us her tits'. Furiosa is beautiful (played by Charlize Theron, of course she is) but not defined by it. Rather, she is defined by her formidable ability to survive in the harsh world in which they live.

After reading in many places that this self-consciously silly action film was being seen as 'feminist propaganda', I began to think about precisely which messages it was that these men had taken issue with. Propaganda is, by definition, misleading.

Was it the part of the film where a woman was shown to be able to throw a punch that knocked a man to the floor? The part where a woman could shoot as well as anyone else?

Was it the idea that a woman could be logical? Know how to fix or modify a car?

Or was it simply the message made explicit early in the film upon the women's escape from their captor? Perhaps the most chilling interpretation of these men's ire is that what may be the central message of the film is seen by these men as misleading, biased or in some other way 'wrong'. It's writ large across the film, painted onto walls and said by sympathetic characters many times: Women are not things.

A mishmash

Karina has written some interesting thoughts on knitting/crafting and lifestyle blogs and curation of personal 'brand' and image. She refers to it as 'Gooping', as in Paltrow. I think that a certain amount of curation is not only advisable, but necessary. We don't need to know gnarly inside details of everything and everyone's life. On the other hand, allowing some 'mess' to creep in is needed.

There can, I think, be a temptation to avoid admitting when things are hard, to keep things light and bright and sparkling. Those blogging about knitting and quilting rarely blog about their mental health issues or the homophobia they face in the street or being victims of any number of crimes and microaggressions daily. It seems almost compartmentalised away from that, as though creating a creative space requires no allowance of negativity.

For me, when I have brainweasels, it's hard for me to create. I can tell I'm depressed when I have no interest in knitting or sewing or spinning. I only really do these things when I'm happy - maybe that's linked to it. But I certainly identify with what Karie says about the mint/peach blob. The lives of most of these people don't really resemble mine in any meaningful way.

***

I'm looking for audiobook recommendations. I've recently listened to and enjoyed Tell the Wolves I'm Home and I've just read The Rabbit Back Literature Society which was quite good and Alif the Unseen which was wonderful. Heard anything great lately?

***

I listen to this poem sometimes just on repeat. I think it's one of my favourites.

Have a good Monday.

A Special Gift

In knitting circles, there is semi-regular discussion of 'knitworthiness'. Someone who is not knitworthy will accept your handmade gift and then set it immediately aside, sneer at it, refuse to ever wear it or fail to follow care instructions, so that when the knitter later asks (yes, yes, much safer never to ask after a gift...) the recipient says 'oh, I washed it on hot and it shrank so I gave it away/cut it up/gave it to the dog...'

The general consensus is that knitworthy people are to be cherished and protected at all costs. They are worthy of the hours of work, the silks and cashmeres and handpainted yarns. My nanna is knitworthy - she got a shawl that I made for her in Wollmeise. The supervisor for my undergraduate dissertation is the most knitworthy non-knitter I've ever met; I made her a fichu and a pair of fingerless gloves and gave her a shawl during the time she was teaching and supervising me, and each time she admired the item in detail, from the pattern to the colour to the texture, and each time I saw her using the item around campus. That's how you get more handknits from a knitter! I would knit for her again like a shot. I don't know if she knows knitters or if she's just naturally gracious and knitworthy, but she is the very model for gift receiving. 

Of course, even close family have to prove their knitworthiness. I've known more than one knitter who will knit cheerfully for friends and acquaintances but refuses to knit so much as a cotton washcloth for their sister/aunt/mother who has demonstrated their unworthiness of such an honour.

I haven't seen a similar idea in quilting circles, or maybe I'm just not a reader of enough quilting message boards. But there is certainly one person in my life who is very worthy as a recipient of handmades, and that's my fiance, Mr Handmade. 

His quilt has been on the go for a while now, but he has never nagged about it. When I finally got myself into gear and finished it off, he was thrilled. He snuggled under it immediately I gave it to him; he put it on the bed so it would be close and warm and useful straight away; he laid it out and told me which blocks were his favourites ("All of them! Especially this one... and this one... and this one...") and he told me over and over how soft and lovely it is, how much he loves it, how talented he thinks I am for making it.

Oh, my lovely, knitworthy, quiltworthy love. I will make him all the quilts he asks for. He's proved he's worthy of them.

Resolutions after all

I don't blog much about anything, but I particularly don't blog much about my life, I think. I try to keep stuff craft focused. This is in part because of my job (I work with nosy kids who will ferret out any information they can about the adults in their lives, up to and including searching tirelessly for them on social media), and partly because I'm uncomfortably aware that my life is very much in the vein of barely-stopped-being-a-student. I mean, I have a 'proper, grown-up job' but I just six months ago got done being a full time university student, which I had been for six years. So in many ways I still feel like/live like a student.

Anyway, for much of the latter half of this year, I had no central heating in my house. This was fine in September when the weather was still pretty warm, but by the end of November was really cramping my style, and by the time it was fixed at the beginning of December was definitely necessary. This was due to an issue with the gas, so I also had no oven or stove cooking facilities at the time. The people around me were horrified that this was how my life was, but (student mindset!) I just got on with stuff.

Anyway, I realised that there are a couple of other things leading me to still live like a student and honestly, I'm done with it. Two things in particular: I have no light in my living room or bathroom.

The bathroom I'm pretty certain just needs a new lightbulb. Unfortunately the ceilings are pretty high for a house I'm pretty sure was built in the 20th century, and it's going to be a stepladder job, and I'm 5'2 first thing in the morning if I've slept particularly well. Also there'll be screwdrivers involved to take the light fitting apart. What I'm saying is that there are reasons that I haven't got around to sorting this yet, but it needs doing because showering in the dark is not the funnest thing ever and while I can pee with the door open (I live alone) it slightly prohibits having guests around outside of daylight hours.

The living room is not a lightbulb issue. It's had new lightbulbs and still doesn't work. I don't know what's wrong with it. I'll have to have a handyman round to sort it out, which means phoning my landlord and making a fuss. But in the interests of not living like a student any more, I should just do that. I don't have a good excuse for not having done that already (plenty of excuses, mind, just none that hold water). So that's the other resolution. Get the living room light sorted out.

Is there a word for that sort of thing? Where you sort of say, 'oh, the light doesn't work. Okay, I'll put a lamp in here/pee with the door open/absent mindedly sort things out so that it's still sub-optimal but not as bad as it could be'. Is it the missing stair that you get used to jumping over? You put a bit of carpet over it and tell the guests, 'by the way, that step's missing, so don't stand there.' It gets ridiculous, but you're used to jumping over that stair, so you fail to notice how silly it is. Just get the repairmen in. Fix the damn stair.

Random saturday

1. The worst part about finishing book 1 of a series in early December is that I don't dare buy book 2 in case someone's already got it for me. I'd hate to ruin someone's carefully planned gift idea. The book in question is The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. It's pretty standard anti-hero-ish slightly gritty epic fantasy - the main character's a special genius, but at least he doesn't have a special destiny. There's a mysterious woman who he desperately admires. He's the best in his field at whatever he chooses to do. It's pretty well written, though, and has some interesting adaptations of standard fantasy tropes. I'm planning to read the second book.

2. I've done very little knitting of late. I finished an adapted Tilting Tardis cowl in DK Blue-faced Leicester in Something Herbal from Old Maiden Aunt. I've made one Snapdragon Mitten but haven't yet cast on for the other one, in the same yarn.

3. I've pulled three quilt blocks out of my scrappy quilt and have used one so far for a cushion cover. It looks pretty good on my sofa for now, but it has a different home in mind in a few weeks' time.

4. I'm hopelessly behind on my reading goals for the year. I've read 37 books so far, but I'd rather be averaging somewhere around a book each week. I'm reading MaddAddam at the moment, though, which is wonderful and I'll probably finish this afternoon.

5. I've finally got central heating and cooking facilities back in my house. It feels so good to be able to take a hot shower again - living without heat is no way to be in the autumn/winter.

6. I'm taking full advantage of having cooking facilities back to cook a big batch of spaghetti bolognese this afternoon. It's a little sad how excited I am to cook real food in my own house again.

Unidentified Flying Objects

It's an inevitability of being a crafter, I think, that we end up with UFOs surrounding us. Of course I mean Un-Finished Objects. A project can take our fancy, fire us up big time, and then... fizzle. Or sometimes they get set aside so that we can do other things - other projects, other crafts, other work. Sometimes projects are tidied away so that space can be used in other ways. And sometimes we fall out of love with projects in a big way.

For me, it's mostly the time factor that gets in the way of me finishing projects. Well, that and the B word... boredom. Take this project, for example:

I began this project with yarn that a dear friend bought me for christmas... christmas in 2011. Yes, this granny square blanket has been on the go for almost three years. It's over half done, and has stalled and been picked up again many times. I'd love to finish it so I can snuggle under it!

Then there's the quilt that has all of the blocks made, mostly from Leila's skill builder sew-along. I was merrily working on that this summer, but then hit a snag with the length of the fleece. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather do a shorter quilt than piece or change the back, so now I need to re-figure the layout, decide which blocks to take out, and sew it together. This one's annoying because it's mostly done, just needs probably a day of sewing to get it finished.

So I need to pick 3 blocks here to take out. I'm tempted to take out my 3 favourites and use them for something else - cushion covers, maybe?












Mr Handmade and I love to give each other hand made gifts. He's had several pairs of fingerless mitts and scarves and hats. He's had pyjama trousers and home made birthday cakes and stuff like that. He's never had a quilt from me. Except, his Christmas present from last christmas is a quilt - which is still not finished. (It's ok, I'm also waiting for him to finish my last christmas present, too). I have the fabric picked out and some of the blocks made, just need to get on with it. Hopefully by this christmas.

Then there are all of the knitting projects that are inhabiting my project bags. I should really go through them and do a major frog-or-finish. These are currently strewn across my house. I'd love to just get this stuff finished or reskeined and absorbed back into stash. Currently I'm doing nothing, and a huge part of that is because my job is really, really time consuming, and part of it is because I still need to buy a table for my craft room, but in part it's because there's so much going on that I should be doing that I just don't know where to start or what to do. I'd love to get everything cleared and organised so that I can just have a lovely clean slate to my crafting.

Literally the worst thing ever

You know what is literally the worst thing ever? Moving house.

Packing up all of your belongings, trying to cushion the breakables and wrap the spill-happy or spiky things adequately, filling your car or hiring a van or hiring someone to drive the van and driving for however long it takes to get from there to here and then the undignity of unloading, carrying, cursing, sweating, arranging and rearranging. Not knowing where anything is for the first however long, everything being in a permanent state of just grubby and disorganised and horrible. It's the worst.

You know what's worse than moving house?

Moving house four times within one year.

Yes, that's right. I moved at the end of last August, the middle of last September, the middle of June and the beginning of this August. Four moves, less than twelve months.

As a result, I've had the sewing machine and my stash packed up pretty thoroughly, and it's going to be a while before I can get my craft room set up to the point where I can just go and work on things. So, instead, I've been knitting.

I took a trip to London to visit my elder sibling and a dear friend, and the very best train knitting is, of course, socks. Why of course? Because they're small and portable, tend to have easily memorable pattern repeats, and, most important, nobody wants to sit beside someone with a handful of frightening looking spiky metal needles!

My big project at the moment is a cardigan, in dark purple. The yarn and pattern were bought for me by my godmother (I was named for her, so for my whole life she's been known as 'Big Lilly') and I really like it so far. Of course, I'm congenitally incapable of following a damn pattern as I'm told, so I've eliminated the side seams, patterned the back (it was plain, with lace fronts in the original), and charted out the lace repeat on squared paper. I know that written out instructions work for some people, but charting just makes so much more sense to me. The cardigan is a delicious deep aubergine-y colour.


I'm a bit further along than this picture, but not much. Doing the back and fronts at the same time means it seems to grow slowly, but it isn't really growing slowly. It's just a lovely thing, and I can't wait to finish it so I can wear it everywhere.

My big sewing project du jour is the scrappy quilt for the back of the sofa. Yes, still. I've got the backing for it, and chosen a layout for the blocks, and all that remains really is sewing the stuff together. But I've hit a snag, because my supposedly 60" wide backing fabric turns out to be closer to 57", and with a 60" top, I'm coming up short. I still need to decide what I'm doing with that. It's fleece, so I can't just piece something from the scraps of the top. I'll have to either get different fleece or add a stripe of some other fleece, or shorten the top. I need to get this done, though, so I can snuggle under it on the sofa. My new house is lovely, but a tad on the chilly side.

On Holiday

As I said in my last post, I'm on holiday at the moment. I spent a week visiting my lovely friend and her family, and now I'm in another city with Mr Handmade, relaxing and enjoying ourselves. There's a great little bakery about a block and a half from our hotel, so we've had some great breakfasts from there. We also took a pretty long uphill walk to a local grocer's and bought things like bread and lactose-free cheese and cereal bars so that we could lunch in the hotel room if we wanted to. This morning we breakfasted in the hotel room because there's an event on in the shopping centre nearby which is causing all sorts of clogged up shops and bakeries and stuff.

I've been enjoying a lot of frozen yoghurt and some great sushi and mexican food, both of which are a little scarce in my hometown. I've taken advantage of better prices over here to buy fabric for myself and I've bought some yarn. Pictures will come after the holiday is over.

Swistle's post about travelling with Elizabeth made me think about what I pack in hand luggage for long flights - it's about a 16 hour journey from my hometown to here, so there's plenty of long time spent in airports and on planes. I pack my handluggage with two aims in mind - first, that I can amuse myself easily on the flight, and second, that if my luggage doesn't arrive with me, I'll be okay for at least two or three days. For this trip, my handluggage contained:

*Two forms of photo ID (passport and driver's licence) with paperwork for travelling.
*Clean underwear (3 pairs) and 2 summer dresses, rolled up tightly to take up little space
*Pyjamas
*Toothbrush
*Shower gel, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner in small, travel sized bottles
*Hairbrush
*All medication needed for the duration of the holiday
*Empty bottle to be filled with water once through security
*Book of sudoku and pencil to fill them out (wasn't used on the flight over)
*2 books (Dust, by Hugh Howey, which I finished, and The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, which I read half of on the plane)
*Kindle, loaded with three new books (Americanah, The Snow Child, The Golden Notebook) and pre-switched to airplane mode
*Headphones (yes, airlines provide them, but my ears are unusually small and my own are more comfortable)
*Ipod, fully charged
*Mobile phone, fully charged and pre-switched to airplane mode
*Charger cables for all of the above electronic items

On one of the flights, I also took a simple knitting project with enough yarn to finish it. I worked on this during the wait at the airport, but not on the plane itself.

How does this differ from what you would tend to pack in your hand luggage?

Only Connect

This morning, on the train, I made accidental eye contact with a stranger. He was a young man, probably a student, wearing a faded band tee shirt with a tartan flannel shirt over it. His eyes protruded and he had a long face with curly hair that stood tall on top of his head. He glanced at me at the same moment that I glanced at him and our eyes met. I smiled at him, and, after a moment of hesitation, he smiled back. A minute or so later, our eyes met again and we shared another smile. When he left the train, he smiled at me again. It was a rare but lovely moment of connection with a stranger. There were no demands, just a moment of shared humanity in the freezing train.

I asked a particularly flirtatious friend of mine, LadyV, does she flirt with everyone? She considered for a moment, then said, no, not everyone. A lot of people, though. It's not about sex, though, she said. It's about human connection. It's about forging links with people.

In about my third year of undergrad, I read a series of novels for classes about human connection. The one that sticks in my mind is Howards End. I think sometimes about Forster, about how his novels explore the barriers between people that lead us to miss each other. A Passage to India is about people connecting despite these barriers. He was not, I think, a happy man, but he was a great writer.

Waiting in the rain for the tram on Thursday, I moved to make room for a young woman to shelter at the tram stop. I caught her eye and smiled, glancing up at the sky to let her know why I had moved. She thanked me, asked my name, offered hers in return. She was from Albania, she told me, and asked had I heard of it. Mediterranean, I guessed, and she nodded. Good food, I told her, and she admitted that she's a terrible cook, though she enjoys needlework. She tried to guess my accent, declaring that I was Italian and then American before she gave up. I have no explanation for my higgledy-piggledy accent, but told her that I'm English, born to English parents. She said that she can't get used to the way that people here don't strike up conversations with people on the street the way they do in Albania. I asked what she does, and she told me she works for her church, showed me a badge declaring her a member of the LDS church. She asked what I do and I told her I teach literature. The tram arrived, and she smiled at me. 'God bless you,' I told her, and she said, 'the same to you.'

I'm recently returned from a visit to my partner, who lives in Scotland. We're lucky in that we have nightly phone calls and regular video chatting to sustain us, and we try to spend a weekend together each month. I can't imagine trying to keep up our connection through weekly letters and nothing else. We sometimes spend all evening skyping, carrying our laptops into our respective kitchens to cook together and eating together at our respective tables. It's almost like living together, except that the physical affection on which we both thrive is missing. When we're together in the flesh, we're almost always connected physically, holding hands or tucked in to each other's shoulders. Waiting at a red light, he briefly rests his hand over mine on the gear lever. These moments of connection are important.

The internet has made the world so much smaller. We can connect with people over vast distances and strike up friendships that are rendered no less real for the screen names and distance between us. These networks of friends make us more human, I think. I have friends on every continent except Antarctica. I think that's pretty cool. I have blog readers all over the world.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a lovely day. I hope you have some human connections in it. I hope the same sun shines on you as is shining on me just now.