Worth it.

Eleven a.m. Thursday in Whitewater the Wisconsin Women's Studies Consortium began it's meeting, which is the kick-off point for the annual co-conferences. The meeting itself is enough to turn one's brain to composting, but what follows is really a pressure cooker of ideas that do indeed need thinking about and acting upon. It's academia times ten, teeming with new ideas and a general push to reexamine everything under the sun. Imagine my delight when I found, on Friday morning, that I had a choice between seeing new art from one of our graduates (Danica Oudeans) or going to a presentation on the godmother of knitting in the round, Elizabeth Zimmermann. I decided to find Danica, see if I could look at the work, (which I did, and I did, and it was incredible) and then head off to the EZ presentation.

The presenters, Colleen McFarland and Kathryn Parks, were both from UW-Eau Claire and gee whiz I wish I worked with them; I'm pretty sure we'd be knitting and geeking out worse even than the knitting and geeking that goes on amongst my faculty/staff/spouse knitting group at UWGB. Elizabeth Zimmermann, it turns out, is really fascinating. The reason people in Wisconsin should know about her is that she lived and worked for many years in Shorewood (outside Milwaukee - her husband Arnold was a brewer for Schlitz) and then moved to a school house in Pittsfield, which I hear is near Wausau. She was worthy of presentation at a Women's Studies conference because a lot of what she did was amazing in terms of "her time." And also, with the upsurge of knitting going on these days, we owe her a lot of credit for keeping it from dying completely in those dark days back in the 70's and 80's (the Knit Your Own Creche days, which gave way to the Cosby Sweater decade.)

Here's a few things you should know about EZ: She hated sewing seams and engineered sweaters knit in the round - this was so rare that Vogue took her knit in the round fair isle pull over and rewrote it to be knit flat, causing the makers to sew some really crazy kinds of seams when, if knit as written, you'd be sewing 2 armholes, or something. They paid her at Vogue simply by giving her credit and noting that if you wanted the yarn for the sweater you could write away to her for it. She was a yarn dealer first, but her marketing is what we know her for best these days: the Opinionated Knitter newsletters; her television show on WPT, "Knitting Without Tears"; and her knitting camps. Knitting camp used to be held through UW-Extension, but the students who went to get college credit couldn't be graded by EZ, since she didn't have an advanced degree - they'd send in some professor who may know nothing about knitting to grade these projects. Eventually, when she moved to the schoolhouse, knitting camp became a week away at a hotel conference facility - but Parks and McFarland argued plausibly that this was a moment of feminist awakening. Many of the campers in the early years had never been away from their homes without their parents, husbands, or children. They'd literally never been by themselves! And so, they learned in that week, how to be independent, and how to think for themselves on issues big and small, while also improving their skills and knowledge of that harmless occupation of women everywhere, knitting. (Why yes, you CAN still go to knitting camp! )

I think people liked EZ on television because she had a folksy manner but was clearly a British woman of a certain age, and therefore, was never seen as a radical. I think of her as the knitting version (with different accent) of Julia Child. They had a similar approach with their subject matter, which was to demystify the process. My first encounter with EZ was at St. Vincent DePaul in Green Bay. I was in used books. I saw one called "The Knitters Almanac" and picked it up to leaf through - the author had two sets of instructions, the proper instructions and some others called The Pithy Instructions. I couldn't believe it - those pithy instructions were for me! Plus the items in the book had that great sort of vintage, but maybe not, feeling about them. I read a lot of the book before I knit a funny little dutch-girl hat to practice knitting on double-points and doing short-rows. She really liked wool, so I liked her. In the talk I saw on Thursday, the presenters made it clear that no one was knitting with wool when EZ was on the air at PBS, so she was marketing the yarn she imported from Iceland and Great Britain with everything she did - it was all wool, and she believed even babies deserved to wear soft lambs wool instead of nasty acrylic. The really sad moment of the presentation was when we found out no one knows what's happened to the footage of that television show. If you have access to dusty archives at your local PBS station, please look for it!

Anyway, I learned more about EZ when one of my students did a good research paper on her a couple years ago. The student, Tamarra, was troubled that the sources she was using were all written by EZ herself. So, I told her to call up School House Press and talk to them. She called, and wound up interviewing EZ's daughter Meg Swensen. The presenters had also taken that route, and are going to be publishing and article on EZ's life for Wisconsin History Magazine. (So watch for that!)

Meanwhile, if you're in my Thursday afternoon class, be on alert that this Thursday we're closing up early so I (and maybe you!) can run back down to Appleton to see Jerilea Zempel at Lawrence. Zempel is responsible for the first of the Tank Cozies (others have been made since). Take a look at this for a good intro. I was her fan even before the Colbert Report!

Who owns it?

Funny how you can forget about something you made right up until the moment you suspect it's been stolen. We get so weird about "our stuff" even though we're taught constantly (in the liberal arts environment anyway) that there are no original ideas.

On Saturday I was just pulling up to a baby shower with majority art/craft attendees when I got a pix message on my phone from one of my former students, the talented Chicago designer Cory Allen (Linsmeyer.) He was at Urban Outfitters and saw a particular scarf that reminded him, and me, of something I'd "invented" a few years ago, that he himself modeled for the post. You can see it on knitty, I sold the pattern. Last time I looked on Ravelry 128 people had used the pattern to make their own, with some unbelievably cool/funny innovations. I love the idea of people using the pattern to make their own. What I didn't love was the idea that Urban Outfitters was selling versions made in the third world that look a lot like mine.

And this was the second time I'd felt UO was ripping one of my ideas off. The first, in the early 2000's they started selling a cross-stitch kit with a particular word on it - a word that, when I stitched it on a heart-shaped doily, prompted a more gentle citizen to demand that my work be immediately removed from a Seattle Art Museum exhibit, on grounds that it was insulting to embroiderers, and obscene besides. I made the thing in 1998, it was at SAM in 2001. I bear no ill will towards the person who is selling these kits to UO, because at least, it's a person and she gets credit! Plus she's also developed the idea far past the point I did. (Swordsmith /artist Phillip Baldwin owns my original work, we traded for a cast-iron sink.)

Back to me in my car getting this pix message: I immediately begin venting as soon as I get into the baby shower. It was the perfect setting for commiseration. And for gathering information. Jenna, talented designer and Etsy seller informed me that there was a seller called Yokoo who made chain scarves that looked like mine too. (On closer inspection, Yokoo's are crochet, and FABULOUS. Buy from him if you need a readymade item, because they're vastly superior to anything you'll find a UO.)

But here's the thing: if you go to knitty and look at my pattern, you'll see that it's been up since 2005, and that I openly credit two other designers, Teva Durham and Marc Jacobs for inspiring me. Then, if we were to open my email in-box you'd find a lot of email from people who have made the scarves, and innovated on my original idea. What makes mine different is that it's felted after it's knitted. The Urban Outfitters chain looks a lot more like Teva Durham's from Loop d Loop. Who's ripping off whom, here? And what's the time limit on a knitted chain going into public domain?

But just beware all you young hipsters: they're stealing your cool and selling it back to you. Even cool that might have at one time been generated by an old academic thread-head such as myself. No one seems safe!

I'm reminded of an unpleasant experience one of my other talented former students, Michael Cepress, had the week he was due to start graduate school at the University of Washington (that MFA program in Textiles is now defunct, sadly.) He and his brother were at Bulldog News, near the campus in Seattle, and he chanced to see the cover of FiberArts magazine...with "his work" on it. Meanwhile, back in Green Bay, I got my copy in the mail and felt deep nausea myself; it was a pair of nearly transparent silk organza jeans, which appeared identical to the pair Mike had stitched up for his senior show for undergraduate school. But these were by someone else, a woman, who wasn't talking about the same issues as Mike was at all, and they were made far away, and nearly simultaneously. There was no real issue of one copying the other, but, there was in that brief moment the horror of knowing for sure that your "original" idea could at any moment turn out to be the same as someone else's.

So, there lies the rub: you can't always be sure if you've been ripped off, or if you're just one of many who felt the universe pulse in a particular direction at a particular time. Best advice: just keep your own work authentic to who you are, be careful where you spend your money, and make rather than shop.

Handmade Nation revisited!

One of my first blog posts was about a visit we got from Faythe Levine, one of the film makers responsible for the documentary Handmade Nation. I got a copy of the book, which she signed, at the opening of the show she'd curated, Craftivism, for the Lawton Gallery on our campus. The film had not yet been released, so I spent over a year watching premier announcements pass me by, reviews get posted in other places, and so forth, without actually seeing the film. I talked about it a lot though. And I looked through the book (at the pictures, anyway.) Yesterday I finally saw the film, on a bootleg DVD given to me by artist Christopher Cannon. (My guess is Chris applied the DIY philosophy with making copies of movies - he's a printmaker, after all and thinks in terms of 'editions.' I do plan on getting the library to buy a real copy for our permanent collection!) Okay, so anyway I was procrastinating on writing some new quizzes for 2D and found the copy in my book bag, so I plugged it in and watched it. Then I got out my book and read the essays, finally. And now I really want to talk about it like never before.

First of all, I will indeed be showing this in my Women in the Visual Arts course and in the Women, Art and Image course I just created (to be taught when? We aren't sure.) I know that my colleague Jennifer Mokren showed it in her Freshman seminar course on craft, and I'm pretty sure Sarah Detweiler has shown it in her Modern American Culture course, but the feminist aspects need to be teased out in context of a Women's Studies course. Even if I only show Whitney Lee vacuuming, this will bring all that dusty art history into some sharp focus! Well, as sharp a focus as a shag rug can offer, anyway. I think it's also important to show the entrepreneurial spirit of these women, and men. (I love the guys from BuyOlympia.com who say, artists should be making, and we will sell on their behalf - cashing in on the impulse so many have to make things, without making anything themselves, but still using their own unique skill-set to support something they thought was cool.) But the story time and again is of a crafty girl, working in a cubicle, who needed some outlet for those old creative impulses, and now makes unique things by hand for a living. The alternate story is of the girl, frustrated and bored by the boundaries placed upon her by art school, who strikes out and commits crimes of cuteness and winds up wildly successful by making mittens, not art. Who doesn't want to be that girl? It's so alternatively intellectual.

The other great thing that comes up time and again, making the film also worth showing to my Textiles students, is that the things these women and men are doing are actually kind of easy to learn but difficult to master - Jenny Hart talking about how she thought embroidery would be tedious and awful and now she feels it's better than drugs, for instance. Or Nikki McClure reflecting on her first cut-paper piece and how crude it seems now, given all she's learned by doing so many since then. I can say to my students that practice makes perfect, but it's such an easy thing to dismiss. Better to show examples, especially examples of people who's work one can admire in the contemporary context.

I think Handmade Nation will become sort of a period piece, and probably soon. We don't know what's on the horizon. Even before the credits roll at the end of the film, it self-consciously asks the question, "How many bunnies and deer and birds and owls and mushrooms can the world support?" Fear of co-optation is also expressed (see any Urban Outfitters store to find cheap mass-produced home goods sporting bunnies, deer, birds, owls, and mushrooms as well as cross-stitch, latch-hook, and applique.) I'm reminded of my old drapes-shop manager (Sheli, an original punk rock veteran) telling her teenage daughter, "They're stealing your cool and selling it back to you!" Since I'm old, I also recall Madonna and Cyndi Lauper wearing vintage "merry widows" and crinolines, and that being very original, but then about a year later, being able to pick up similar brand new versions at the Everett Mall back in the '80's. Now they sell Halloween costumes with all the 80's girl standard bits, $24.99. I wonder if they'll have Indie Craft Girl costume eventually?

Finally, I have to say that for me personally, this film made me lament being born in 1964. Twenty years earlier, I could have been the ultimate Girl Scout who grew up, found feminism and embroidered for Judy Chicago's Dinner Party. Twenty years later, I could have been one of this generation of shameless stitchers. As it was, I was actually in the right place at the wrong time. I have a clear memory of covertly knitting while sitting in my rental in Ballard, the Norwegian neighborhood in Seattle, in 1986. I was working on a sweater that was beige with dusty rose and country blue flowers - very Laura Ashley. I knew lots of musicians, artists, budding software developers, and the like - all destined to become successful once the "scene" hit Seattle. I wouldn't have been caught dead knitting in front of any of them, nor did I ever have the will to finish that sweater. I sewed a few of my own clothes because my roommate Roberta made all her own, and we had a sewing machine set up in our dining room, but after I no longer lived with Roberta, my sewing machine only came out once in a while and never in front of anyone. It makes me sad now to think of it. I thought I was behind the times, and totally uncool, and a loser for having no money and no creative ambition. Here, it turns out I may have been ahead of the trend - but you know, it's tough to sell pastels to punks until they're really really ready for them.

New Year, new work.

Last night was the end of 2009, and because we're old, and everyone was grumpy, I headed down to the studio for a little while to see if I could shake my funk. I am working on a round-ish blue basket, and last night was also a Blue Moon. Once in a blue moon, you get a funny idea with which to entertain yourself. So I worked on this basket, and might have finished it, but the whole time I was stitching away tediously I was trying to decide whether I wanted it to be my last work of 2009 or my first work of 2010. In the end I left two small seams on the very bottom unsewn, and I plan to finish them today, a little later. Officially, the Blue Moon Basket will be dated 2010. It's a very plain form, a little Modernist, even - and I'm hoping that will draw the viewer's attention to the intricacies of the materials (more vintage millinery stuff). The first piece to be shown in 2010 will actually be Cream Puff, as it goes off to Pittsburgh in February. I'll post photos of both baskets soon.

(What is it with me and Pittsburgh? Two of my most influential undergrad mentors grew up there, and now, I can't seem to get rejected from a show there. I guess I should start considering a visit. It seems to be a spiritual home of some sort.)

December? What?

Well, here it is coming on Christmas. I have had the feeling I should be knitting to cope with a lot of family stress, but I can't actually get myself to pick up the needles. I don't have a project I'm interested in starting. It's empty-page syndrome, only in knitting terms. At the beginning of November I had the opportunity to talk at a local coffee shop about activist knitting. They put a big article about it in the paper, and the sponsoring shop, Iris, was very good about publicizing. So we went from what was planned as a talk for 20 to a talk for 120. All women, mostly over the age of about 40 or so; not my usual crowd! I don't know if they appreciated the part where I talk about how useful knitted boobs are (TitBits prosthesis for breast cancer survivors, but also there's a group in the UK who knits them to teach breast-feeding to new moms.) Anyway, I think it went okay, but they were a practical bunch, and it was difficult to tell if I was delivering vital and inspiring information, or if they were just happy they got free snacks since my talk was "not their thing." People in Wisconsin are so polite, often to a fault. It's eerie.

Anyway, after the talk you'd think I'd be doing some charity knitting, but I'm not, and I think it's because I've felt (selfishly) that this year I needed some charity myself. Thanksgiving was pretty dreadful... followed by day after day in which we got good news for 2010! And buoying me up as always were my terrific students, and successful alumni. (What would I do without my kids? They actually react when I talk, unlike those audience members from my public talk. I'll take an open and honest scowl over a politely raised eyebrow any day.)

I am vowing then, to start my charity knitting blitz in 2010. If Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan, I'm going to send more stuff there too, through afghans for Afghans.

Now if only the Boy wears the hat I barely managed to knit him for Christmas, I can say 2009 ended on an up-note.

The power of rejection...

It's been a while since I posted. I got a little distracted when school started, as usual. To update, my knitted swimsuits as comment on global warming didn't get into the show in Minneapolis. But I'm okay with it, because I knew even as I was sending it off that I needed to regroup and develop my presentation methods. These are really conceptual works of art, though they use history and craft as the media for the message. Yesterday in critique one of my intro students had a highly conceptual project and we spent a bit of time talking out how her presentation could inform the viewers. Even by the time she put her name on them, she'd begun to develop a label to provide a few clues for the viewer as to context, content, and material relationships. Pretty sophisticated, given that her theme was "Winter."

So, here are some images, and you can tell me what you think you're looking at. I am pretty sure I've missed the mark as far as communicating a darn thing with these, though, my craftsmanship is strong, I did my homework, and with some gentle nudges, I think the meaning will be clear. As I develop the project, hopefully you'll see how this unfolds. John thinks I need to render them as drawings, I'm considering maps, almanac information, and other didactic devices. We'll see. In the meantime, I have to finish that music stand they'll be auctioning off at the Green Bay Civic Symphony performance in November. An artist's work is never done...

A long time ago now, one of my readers said to put more in my blog about Man and I cooking. We've had a great weekend of meals, a good combo of farmer's market, garden, excellent grocery deals (which we both delight in) and the newfound freedom we are experiencing since one of our eaters is now off to college (that would be Boy. We still have dog, but as a kibbleterian, he rarely comes to the table.) One of the reasons I guess I don't write too often about cooking as a use for the sharp and pointed objects is that our knives, while pointed, seem to have become the opposite of sharp.

Last night though, we did use skewers, and they obviously qualify. We made kabobs. This wasn't Man's idea - too much standing at the grill turning for his tastes. And although he says he can't learn to cook without a recipe, he did look at the things I was putting out for marinade and indicate I needed "an acid." I knew this...but the vinegar gets put on high shelves, and I need either chair or Man to help out. Because of Boy's aversion to mustard in all forms, I put in a generous dollop of Grey Poupon, apple cider vinegar, garlic, Worchestershire, fresh oregano and rosemary from the porch, and olive oil. We were marinating beef tenderloin chunks. Stupidly, we'd had a discussion at the grocery about whether or not we should buy a $14.00 piece of beef tenderloin. I was against it, ultimately proving myself pennywise and pound foolish, because later we spent a good deal more for the two "steaks" of same kind of meat in a tiny package, and actually we both agreed we'd be satisfied with about half the beef per kabob - since the things also had small eggplant, small zucchini, oyster mushrooms, red peppers and green peppers (veg just got oil, salt, pepper and garlic to coat). After dinner Man pointed out that we could eat those kabobs a minimum of 5 more times before the end of farmer's market/garden season and consume the whole big tenderloin for very little money per meal. Sharp and pointed, and quite the little home economist is Man.

Anyway, since most of my adult life I've been a financial vegetarian, I'm biding my time before I spring the Bathing Rama on him. I think once he finds out how cheap tofu is, and how you don't even need a very sharp knife to cut it, he might quit this nonsense about huge chunks of beef. I mean, given where we live, those are our neighbors he's talking about.