String Revolution

Last month, the Oyster and I made pots! (Mine’s the one on the left.)

We were on holiday on the Dingle Peninsula (Co. Kerry), where we often stay, and I finally did something I’ve been sighing over for years: paid a visit to the Louis Mulcahy workshop in Ballyferriter. I took the Oyster with me, leaving Niall and the Feaster to amuse themselves on the beach.

I love Louis Mulcahy’s work – the forms and colours are so beautiful, the pieces so tactile. Not having read the website in advance, I kind of hoped we might see a potter at work, but I wasn’t expecting to get a chance to try it myself.
Continue reading Visit to the Louis Mulcahy Shop (or, What I Did on My Holidays)

I find it amusing that the last post I wrote, about how scared I am of marketing, was followed by nearly three weeks of dead silence.

I didn’t mean to run away, but that’s sort of how it turned out. First of all, I went on holiday to Darkest Kerry, where wireless service ranged from patchy to mythical. If I had been in the whole of my health, I might have braved the elements (there was precipitation, oh yes, there was), found an Internet cafe, and made contact. But as it was, I didn’t.

Because, second of all, I haven’t been in the whole of my health, nor anywhere close, for several months. I’ve been suffering from a range of nasty symptoms which – now that I’ve done the sensible thing and had my blood tested – appear to be the result of a vitamin B12 deficiency. So I’m having injections, and after one or two more my customary oomph is forecast to return.
Continue reading Guest Artists

Pay no attention to the crocuses. They are a delaying tactic.

Right. OK. Here’s the thing. I want a business.

[The Demons of Stuckification: Shame! Shame! Resign!]

I want a business in the arena of textile arts/crafts.

Until recently, I knew nothing – nothing – about business. Family-wise, it’s basically academics all the way down (well, OK, there were also doctors, writers, and revolutionaries, but even some of those were academics on the side). Not a whiff of the entreprenenurial spirit anywhere in my background, and plenty of studied incomprehension of That Whole World. A year ago, if you’d told me I’d be trying to reinvent myself as a small business owner, I’d have laughed. Derisively, I suspect.

And yet, here I am.
Continue reading How I Feel About Marketing

You remember my hopeful little boatman?

Last time I wrote about this project, I was feeling pretty confident that I’d finish it in a few days. And I might have, too. But then I took a wrong turning.
Continue reading Boatman Becalmed

Ah, knitting. Such a tricksy mistress. There have been highs, recently, and there have also, sad to relate, been lows. Time for … Good Thing, Bad Thing.

Good Thing: Hat! Hat hat hat hat hat haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat! My first hat, no less. I love it.
Continue reading Knitting: The Good Thing, Bad Thing Edition

A hat! I haz a hat! Don’t scoff, you who knock out Finished Objects every couple of hours, Monday to Sunday (you know who you are). I normally take aeons to finish anything, so the fact that I made this in approximately two weeks, including the swatch, is actually pretty remarkable.

It is one of the Three Tams by Angela Sixian Wu, from Knitty. (Tam C, since you ask.) It’s my first stranded colourwork hat, it’s my first tam, and as the title of this post implies, I believe it’s actually the very first hat I’ve ever knit for myself. Crazy.

Also, I really like it. Here’s how it went:
Continue reading My First Hat

As a keen-eyed, sharp-witted String Revolution reader, you may just have spotted that I’m a feminist. Gender politics is one of the things that really makes my little heart go pit-a-pat, and so I post here from time to time about how it relates to crafts – Women’s Work (aka “that book I’m not obsessed with”), textile work and coercion, slogans on kids’ clothes, and so on.

Today, on International Women’s Day 2010, I want to do something different: I’m going to share links to some of my favourite gender-related articles.

These links don’t seem to have much to do with needlecrafts. But as I’ve said before, we live in a political soup. Our actions and decisions are informed and constrained by the social paradigms in which we operate. In other words, it’s all connected, man. (Or rather, woman.)
Continue reading Happy International Women’s Day!

Observe! Here is the Feaster in his beautiful T-shirt from my Zazzle shop. It’s unfortunately already pretty tight – I should have got it much bigger. But isn’t it great? I give you this picture by way of loin-girding, because I’m going to talk about gender normativity and kids’ clothes again, and we need a little something to get us through.

I was in Mothercare a couple of weeks ago, and as usual, I was on the lookout for egregious slogans. (In case you’re mystified, this post from last November explains why I do this.)

There weren’t as many clothes with slogans that day as there often are. (I wonder if that was coincidence, or if there’s some kind of shift happening?) But I did see two contrasting pairs of T-shirts, in the toddler sections, that pushed all the buttons you could wish for.
Continue reading Further Dispatches from the Gender Ghetto

I have been swatching.

This winter just past, I have been afflicted with that whole “cobbler’s children” thing (adapted to refer to knitters). Except that my children seem to have plenty of hats and gloves – I’m the one who doesn’t.

So I’m going to make myself a hat.
Continue reading Hat Swatch

Ha. When I posted about my late-night sock triumph last week, I said I’d write more about them “tomorrow, or possibly the next day”. Well. I should know better than to make rash promises, is all.

Pattern: Spring Forward socks, by Linda Welch, from Knitty (summer 2008).

Yarn: Sock yarn from the Natural Dye Studio, which may or may not be Dazzle (it was bought a few years ago, so they may have changed their product since then).

Needles: 2.5mm dpns.

Ravelled: Here.
Continue reading Those Spring Forward Socks in Full