To Hell with it All!

Once again I have realized that improvisation is not for knitting. I've been working on these mittens for myself with a cute green and pink watermelony stripe pattern. The pattern said to use size 6 dpn, but I only had size 8. I figured I'd improvise. Then, midway through my first mitten, I realized that I hadn't joined the rounds, and I was knitting like you would on regular needles.

So I could have just started out on size 6 regular needles, but noooo! Last night I completed my second mitten, put it on, and realized that the thumb is way higher than it should be. I could wear these mittens if I had webbed hands, but sadly I don't. Now I'm considering whether I should just totally start over, or if I should just work the fingertips more. Then I'd have long mittens, but I'd have them sooner. Oh well.

Other projects I'm working on are a scarf with a great pattern that makes it look reversible and a blanket for a Christmas present for Casey's parents. I definitely need to stop at the yarn shop before I go to Minnesota this weekend. I think I'll do that on Thursday! Yay!

I'm going to bring the mittens to MN, and hopefully I'll have the patience to fix them on the ride.

A Letter to George Bush

(Great article from Alternet—the website we should get all our stories from.)

Dear George Bush,

You are not my president. You have not been my president for the past four years, since in 2000 you were actually not elected. You are still not my president. I don’t know what happened yesterday, but your minions managed to instill enough fear, homophobia, and nationalism to win. Nevertheless, you are not my president.

I will never knit anything for you. Even if your big stupid white house burned down, I still wouldn’t knit you a warm, cozy afghan. You’ll have to warm those cold Texas nights on the ranch without my knitting, because you are not my president.

I will never knit anything for your poor dog, who cannot help being owned by a maniacal, insane, deranged, tyrannical warmonger.

Dick Cheney’s huge head will never be kept warm by a hat I make. Condoleeza will have to find a different way to make a fashion statement. Mr. Rumsfeld will have to cover Lady Liberty’s breast with someone else’s yarn. Laura’s powersuits will have to be complemented by something other than my knitting.

George Bush, you are not my president. You are an illiterate, dishonest, greedy asshole. I look forward to hating you for the next four years, as you spend trillions more dollars that this country doesn’t have, alienate any remaining unalienated countries in the world, divide this nation more deeply, and screw Americans for generations to come.

George Bush, you are not my president.

(It's) Real Simple

I just got the November issue of Real Simple. If you don't subscribe, you should--immediately. Page 110 has some great suggestions on "How to Care for Wool."

"One benefit of wool is that it doesn't need to be cleaned often. It doesn't generate much static electricity, so it doesn't attract dirt. And the coiled, springy crimp in wool fibers can keep dirt from penetrating the surface. Here are four easy ways to keep your garment in good condition.

• Avoid hanging knit wool shirts and sweaters; gravity can stretch their more delicate fibers. Instead, fold them. Woven fabrics, like gabardine pants and jackets, are fine to hang and will lose their wrinkles if hung in a steamy bathroom.
• Remove surface soil by brushing wool lengthwise with a lint brush or a sponge.
• To store items between seasons, have them cleaned first. (Moths are attracted to the oils your body leaves behind.) Always store wool garments in a cloth bag.
• For items with labels that say DRY-CLEAN ONLY, know that most manufacturers recommend dry-cleaning a wool item only twice a season. Doing to more often than that can leave wool with a shiny surface.

Journal Four

November 1, 2004

Anne Macdonald’s piece, “Knitting Now and Whitherknit?” led me to a conclusion about which I have often thought. I think that knitting and other handcrafts have always been popular on college campuses because it is a way of calming and coping. Students entering into college are coping with leaving home for the first time, making new friends, and finding an identity in a brand new environment. I think that knitting offers soothing relief for college students, in addition to providing community with fellow knitters. I learned to knit on December 29, 2001, the day after my 19th birthday and my first birthday as a college student. In retrospect, now I see that I used knitting throughout the rest of my freshman year to bring my thoughts and myself together. My dog has a plush toy that is his pacifier—now I see that knitting needles are my figurative pacifier.
After reading Lisa Myers’ piece, I think I am ready to taking my obsession with knitting a step further. I am composing a blog for a project at work, and this has made me want to personally enter the blogging world. The biggest problem for me is that I am a very personal and private person, and I could never imagine posting my life electronically. I do not even keep a written journal! In class last Monday, you made a great suggestion about keeping a knitting notebook, and I immediately knew that I wanted to keep one. This is coupled with a letter from my grandma in Minnesota, thanking me for visiting her recently. She asked me to take photos of the knitting I worked on during my visit, so that she can see the finished products and show them to her sister. When I was reading Myers’ suggestion to electronically inventory supplies, everything came together for me. I have decided to keep a knitting notebook online, probably through Blogspot.com. I plan to blog on my individual projects, and to keep notes just as one would keep notes in a knitting notebook. I can borrow my boyfriend’s digital camera so that I can post photos.
Getting all this down in my last journal is incredibly helpful for me. It is so fitting that I had this knitting revelation during my last journal, as it is a accumulation of all the wonderful, new things I learned in this class. But it is also a springboard for me, as I (grudgingly) leave this class and begin the rest of my life. My knitting blog will also give me an opportunity I have wanted for so long—to journal on the people I am knitting for and the reasons I am creating something for them. My desire to blog has finally met its match! My blog has a focus point—my knitting and the people I knit for. At the same time, I feel like I am blogging about something very personal, but at the same time, not very private.
I know this journal is a bit short, but visit http://mariaknits.blogspot.com. You won’t be disappointed.

Journal Three

The readings that really stood out for me were from Bridget Murphy’s Zen and the Art of Knitting. I think I might even buy the book! All of the readings that we have done so far have been about women knitting for the benefit of other people. I have learned a lot about knitting in the social context, and this is the first we have read about knitting in the personal context. I actually had to laugh at myself this weekend, because I do not own a warm scarf. Everything that I knit I give to other people! Although I enjoy giving away my pieces, the best part of knitting is, like Murphy said, the process.
All my life I have been a very spiritual person. I find it very calming to pray, especially in tense and difficult situations. I have also learned that yoga exercises breathing exercises are useful. But when I need to chill out, the easiest way for me to do this is with my fingers. Yoga is too similar to the E word for me, exercise. Praying is often unsuccessful because my mind is racing too fast. As I have mentioned in previous journals, I started taking piano classes in April. Sometimes when I need to calm down, I play my keyboard. But knitting is really my trusty sidekick in these situations, because it comes so much more easily than piano does. I have pulled more than my fair share of all-nighters in knitting. Friends have laughed at me for knitting the night away instead of finishing a paper due the next day. I think the classic experience came last June, when I had a 70-page project due the day before a big fundraiser at work. With many loose ends to tie up for both of these things, I stayed up until 3:00am finishing a blanket for a friend I was going to see after the fundraiser.
Bridget Murphy really spoke to what I have been feeling for a long time. Knitting is very meditative. Repetition is important in meditation, and it is a fundamental in knitting. Knitting has the ability to slow my heart rate to a normal pace. It really does inspire my creative juices to flow, which is why I often step back from a big project—at work or at school—to knit for a while. My heart and my brain are rested and refreshed from knitting. I have found that nothing, not piano, prayer, or yoga, is as effective as knitting for me.
When I create something with a specific person in mind, I often partake in a form of meditation about that person. I recently knitted a little scarf for a five-year old girl I know. Her 7-month old sister is terminally ill, and I thought a present in the mail would at least take her away from that reality for a few moments. As I knitted, I thought really hard about my hopes for the recipient. I thought about how I want her to be a healthy child who can love and learn from her sister, but who can also have the childhood that she deserves. When I knitted the burial gown that I will donate, I was constantly thinking about how the aforementioned baby has had a huge effect on my perspective in life. Bridget Murphy validated my love for knitting more than it probably should have. Reading her pieces made me feel like there truly is a deep, substantive place in my heart for knitting. My ability to create and to share my pieces are always simultaneously soothing and exciting for me. Unlike praying, I knit when I am in need and when I am not. I often find myself praying only when I need something to happen (or not to happen!). But I knit at every opportunity I have, and that often gives me the opportunity to slow my life down and to meditate. Before reading Murphy, I never thought about the spiritual connection I have to knitting. Self-awareness is a very important tenet of meditation and prayer. Murphy brought me closer to my personal self-awareness by teaching me that I can—and do—attain spirituality through my fingers.

Journal Two

October 4, 2004

When I was a sophomore, I took a class with Barb Willard called “Rhetoric of the Women’s Movement.” That class gave me a thorough understanding of the experiences in the lives of the women who were integral to the first wave of the women’s movement. In this class, I also learned about how many men—and sadly, women—were afraid of women who spoke in public, organized themselves around the cause of suffrage, and performed other outrageous acts of independence. Throughout the years in history that we studied, I always noticed a pattern: as women in the movement gained bigger audiences and more momentum, a backlash also grew against them. I think that backlash, and the negative reactions that women in subsequent movements have received, is grounded in fear.
The reading for this class has reminded me of what I read in Barb’s class two years ago. I find it humorous that knitting became a threat to men’s power in society. Women were not learning how to use nuclear weapons—they were performing a utilitarian chore that had been demanded of them for centuries. When women formed knitting circles, naturally issues about the war and domestic issues appeared in their conversation. This scared some of their husbands, who were uncomfortable with their wives’ use of intellect outside the house. The economic power and potential in knitting has especially stood out for me in our readings. During their wartime knitting efforts, women discovered the liberation they could achieve by forming knitting circles and contributing handmade pieces to the soldiers. This eventually translated into women selling their handmade pieces.
I think it is ridiculous that men would feel threatened by the financial contributions their wives made to the households from selling their knit pieces. I would expect that, especially during a world war, men would be thankful for their wives’ abilities to earn money from their knitting. And the women could work from home! Women who sold their knit pieces knitted at home, so it isn’t like women were abandoning their families to earn money from knitting! Throughout history, and even still today, women have been disenfranchised economically. As knitsters discovered their economic power, many men felt threatened by their abilities to transform a household chore into profit. Thankfully, this seems to be largely a thing of the past, and I hope never to encounter that personally.
This class has given me a small understanding of the communal feeling women have from knitting circles. I have often considered joining a stick n’ bitch or some other knitting circle, but my excuse has always been that I am too busy to have a scheduled time to knit. I usually enjoy knitting at the end of a long day, so that all the tension I have in my body is released through my hands. But coming to class twice a week has also shown me the healing powers of knitting in a circle. I always come straight to class from work. I work in a fast-paced environment, so I am happy to unwind while I knit in class. After class is over, I always feel 100% refreshed and ready to utilize the rest of my afternoon effectively.
I have also enjoyed watching other students learn to knit. Almost three years ago, my friend gave me my first set of needles and my first skein of yarn. Her birthday present to me was teaching me how to knit. This is possibly the best present anyone has ever given me. I remember the exhilaration and the frustration of learning to knit like it was yesterday. I remember flipping through pattern books and convincing myself that I would one day know how to knit every single thing in there. These are feelings that academic classes have never given me. Learning to knit, and then learning to play the piano, which I took up in April, are the only two things that have ever given me this feeling. Since I learned to knit, I have taught at least a dozen other people how to knit. Teaching them and also coming to this class reignites those excited feelings I had when I first learned to knit. And so, even though knitting in this class works wonders for me after a hard day at work, the best part about it has been watching other women learn to knit and reliving those feelings with them.

Academic Knitting

This past quarter, I have been taking a knitting class through the Women's and Gender Studies program. We have read a lot about the social history of knitting in America, as well as some more contemporary pieces on knitting.

Soon I'll have to write a big paper on a knitting blog that I could choose to follow for the whole quarter. It's really informative, also about a Chicago knitter. Her blog is called Knit and Pearl.

Another of the assignments for this class was to write four journals on our reading. I've posted the journals for your viewing. Although they mention some of the reading that will be unfamiliar to you, they offer a glimpse into the life of academic knitting. I couldn't find the first journal, so you only get three...big loss, I know.

And this is a photo of Bob, my family's other Boston Terrier. Bob passed away on October 24, 2004. Born on October 19th, Bob was 13 when he passed away. He was a great little buddy, and he was especially loyal to my mom and my sister. Bob's doing the bulldog dance in Heaven with Charlie, Molly, and Maggie.

More on human beings later.

I'm having a hell of a time getting photos up on this bad boy. You'll notice that the photo in my Profile is teeny weeny. So even though my picture isn't perfect, I couldn't possibly imagine working on a blog without first posting a photo of Ed, my Boston Terrier. He's the best four-legged friend I have ever had.

For more photos and a blast from my past, visit www.geocities.com/munkria. This is sort of my own website--I created it with specifications for an autobiography class. So the parts that seem choppy are that way because they had to be. Oh yeah--I should add that my boyfriend, Casey, did about 96% of the site.