NatureWool, may in fact be my new favorite yarn for the following reasons: it has great yardage, it’s moderately priced, for a “plain old” wool (read: not merino, or other specialty fiber). The dying is superb. The color selection is pretty good. It felts nice, and wears well. Just so you know.

I have a couple of sweaters still in progress. I have some seaming to do on my Starmore Faeroe sweater, but I did some blocking with a steam iron, and it looks better now, which is really cool. It snowed here for the first time, and I think that I want to wear this sweater a lot this week because it’s damn amazing and it’s warm and the wool is really nice to the touch (shame it pills so much). The steaming helped with the pilling though, it looks like. I was talking to my favorite not-so-local-yarn store owner, and she said, that for the best results, one should really wind cone yarn in to skeins, and wash the yarn to set the twist, because makers don’t do that for cone yarn. Something to keep under advisement.

I also have sleeves to finish on my Norge Fantasia sweater, which is nice but I can tell now that there’s no way it’s going to end up like I was hoping, so I think I’m just going to make the sleeves simple and plain because I’m not enjoying the knitting, and I don’t want it to drag on more than it has to, because I’ll enjoy other projects more.

In the mean time, I got sucked into the Hat Vortex. I made 2 berets using that pattern that I posted (sorry for the roughness of the pattern. Felting cures all imperfections, so it doesn’t really matter, but I’ll clean it up at some point.) I also made a stocking cap that’s 1x1 ribbed throughout, and I really like the effect, and it’s certainly something I plan on doing again, because it turned out so well. It also gave me the opportunity to do the decreases freestyle, which turned out pretty well, and made the decreases almost decretive, if you know what to look for.

I have a fairly busy week this week, until wednesday. After that it’s easy as pie. I really want to make progress on the Norge Fantasia sleeves, (I’ve also decided that I need to redo the cast off on the collar, but thats quick and can probably be done during Lost or Veronica Mars on Wednesday.) During the aforeeluded trip to the not-so-local-yarn store, I got yarn for a couple of projects (woot thanksgiving day sales, and amazingly awesome yarn store owners and good friends who enable fiber compulsions.) Anyway… I’ll post more about what’s coming down the pike as I think about it.

Also, in TA: Knitting News, I think we’re going have some pretty intense changes before the end of the year. TA:K might splinter off, or we might get new contributor(s), or we might become a more distinctly separate site (but remain functionally where we are). Stay Tuned.

Cheers, Sam

Ok folks. You want to make a beret? Like to knit. Well I have a pattern worked out that is perhaps the simplest pattern on the face of the earth, that’s very very flexible. It’s so flexible that I don’t even need to give you a number to cast on, and you’ll still get a good hat in the end. I promise.

Cast On an even number of stitches, the precise number of your choosing, onto your smaller circular needle (I cast on using the large needle and then switch to the smaller, but whatever you prefer.) This needs to fit around your head. 90 is a good default, or starting point but alter depending on your needle size, head size, and yarn size.

Knit in K1 P1 ribbing for 5 rounds.

In the next round K4, M1 around.

Knit 4.5-6 inches in st st.

In the next round, K3 K2tog around. Knit 5 rounds even in st st.

In the next round, K2 K2tog around. Knit 5 rounds even in st st.

In the next round, K1 K2tog around. Knit 2 rounds even in st st.

In the next round, K2tog around. Knit 1 rounds even in st st.

In the next round, k2tog around, and draw yarn through remaining stitches.

Block/Felt/Full the hat as you see fit. For me this generally involves rubbing it vigorously in hot soppy water in the kitchen sink for about fifteen minuets, but I have experience with flat felting so it might take people without that experience a bit longer. I don’t generally trust the washing machine for small things like this. Whatever method you use, when it has felted down enough stretch the hat over an appropriately sized dish. Let it dry about half way, then take it off the dish and shape the brim so that the entire hat is round and lays flat. At this point you need to pay attention to the size of the head hole. Don’t use a measuring tape, but the dish tends to malform the shape a little and this needs to be corrected. With a steam iron, steam the hat in this shape, and let it dry the rest of the way.

And there you have it. A beret.

Read on for notes about the needle size I generally do the ribbing one or two needle sizes smaller than the main body of the hat. I’ve had good results using size 3s for the ribbing, and size 5s for the body. I’ve also had success with size 5s for the ribbing and size 8s for the body.

I have got to come up with more interesting meta-post post titles.

Sorry for the design yo-yo-ing. I think there needs to be an editorial design summit for the TealArt editorial board. We’re currently looking for corporate sponsors, and accepting t-shirt designs. In the mean time, hope the current status works out for everyone. I suspect our annual winter break redesign festival will happen once again this year.

Representing Identity has already started to start swinging in to gear, I’ve been working on eating through a huge bag of books. I hope everyone is aware that everything posted to that category that category, is work that is in progress and is meant mostly as a record for ourselves first and foremost. Secondly, it’ll be an experiment in academic blogging: you get to see our thought processes, and we get to record them. No final work will be posted, and frankly I doubt most people will find it inthralling. That’s just fine. This is also a good way of keeping records for ourselves. We may be keeping entries private (which you would have no way of knowing,) and there might be password-protected entries, which you will see, but won’t be able to access the content of. While TealArt.com will have all posts as per normal representing identity will only have RepingID posts.

Just so you know.

I feel bad about not updating the Knitting portion of TealArt. I feel lame. I think it’s because I haven’t been knitting much. I have a few projects in progress this semester, but most of my knitting work has been finishing projects I started at the end of the summer. I made hat over fall break and another last week, and I started a sweater over fall break, which I’m making measured progress on, but I haven’t been producing anywhere near the level that I’ve produced at in the past. I also don’t have the same sort of compulsion to “get things done” that I’ve had in recent memory. On the one hand this is good, because compulsive knitting isn’t the most useful expenditure of time or psychic energy, on the second hand I haven’t really taken up another activity (like, writing, web-design, reading, photography, exersize, television) to replace knitting. I do have school work which does take out some of the knitting, but I think that I’m going to blame this mostly on my involvement in student government, which I’m working on checking out of (I lost a bid to be vice president, I’m still chair of a fairly influential committee so there’s a lot less that I have to do.) note to self, rectify this situation.

Next semester, I’m going to knit two sweaters, for an art special project, which I think will be really fun. This is going to surprise all of you I’m sure, but I have two concerns: the first is that I’ll have a problem getting them done, but when I do the math, it should work out just fine, as long as I commit to it, and am able to get a lot done during break(s), the second, is that I’m going to have to design the sweaters myself. These should both be surprising to you. I’m worried by the first option, because we’re talking about making a sweater that is, at least 300 stitches around, which is a huge amount, and the needles will be small, so it will be slow going, secondly, at least one of the designs, will have horizontal patterns, which are harder to memorize, because they don’t repeat in the same way. It’s just something to think about…

Oh well. Cheers, Sam

After an argument with Heather last night, I find myself asking, where the line is, in regards to essentialism, and essentialist formulations of gender and sex.

I offer you a quote: > “‘man’ and ‘woman’ are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs” and that “we are . . . a multisexed species.”

I’ll offer reference upon request… but it’s surprising at least to me.

Monique Wittig, also (very much in the tradition of Simone de Beauvior) offers a similar statement that locates the notion of “woman” and “man” (as well as “lesbian”) as being historically and contextually meaningful.

Are these people off the hook? I mean, if you put the post-structrual disclaimer in, does that in some way de-essentialize the argument? Perhaps is there a way to say, this kind of argument may not actually essentialize identity completely, but leads to essentialism?

Can/do post-structuralists essentialize identity still/too? Is that splitting hairs?

If so, and even if not, is identity and collective identity still a meaningful site of analysis? I mean I certainly think that identity groups are meaningful and helpful, but at the same time, it’s a huge can of worms….

Just some thinking Cheers, sam

So like everyone else I’ve tried to get involved with this little website thing, Heather is like “must post only very good things, and I’m scared because people might actually read it, and your family reads the site” (yeah, tell me about it, but I think I’m working on making the site more approachable and less rambling like),* and I thought that while this shouldn’t quite make our project (the category) website, it’s funny and people should read it.

So Heather emailed me this from across campus and yeah….

Also, a snippet from Maureen Seaton that I thought you’d appreciate:

We/ are all the same Underneath, I said,/and you could count the dusty/ liberals nodding in deadly agreement

love it.

*For the record, as I get more academic and self directed in my projects, I feel tealart becoming less formal, and I’m totally down with that, and want to push it in that direction.

For those of you who don’t know I’m working on a special project with my next door neighbor and co-conspirtor. We had set up a livejournal community for this project, but quickly came to the conclusion that that wouldn’t be the right place for that. So I’ll offer you the little description I came up with when I made the category. And then we’ll get start postings really without much further ado.

I like having projects like this at TealArt, it makes the site useful in a practical sense, and I think it’s entertaining because you get to see a certain level of back and forth with our thought processes, and that’s cool. That’s why I think collaborative blogs rule, and why all of my independent blogging projects inevitably fall on their faces. So sit back, and if we seem to be starting in the middle, it’s because we are, Though I will attempt to mirror some content that I have lying around.

Home of Sam and Heather’s lovely Special Project! (Doesn’t “Special Project” sound secretive and scandalous? Oooh.)

Basically the shtick is that we’re really intrested and amazed by the agency and creative power that identity and identity communities can provide people. We also have a great love for pre ‘third wave’ pre queer theory, feminisms and lesbian and gay studies (the discipline as a whole isn’t very good at chosing gramatically correct titles.)

We’re asking questions about poetry, theory, identity, how the’ve been historically intertwined, and the shape that that connection takes in contemporary movement(s).

This category will contain everything from summeries of articles that we read and feel as if they need to be indexted here, to larger guiding questions that we run into. We’ll also post, messages to ourselves. It will be grand. Some will be private, some will not. You’ll get to see our trains of thought. Enjoy!

Cheers!

So, I decided to change the name of the TealArt blog again, as I’m sure you’re all aware. While I liked the firefly reference (You Can’t Take the Sky from Us"), and the cool grammatical insights of the newspaper like title (The Times of TealArt), the newest title is a reference to a class discussion I was part of earlier in the semester concerning “work in the generous sense.” Since then a few of my friends have taken this modifier, and used it whenever we are bending the meaning of a word a little more than perhaps is necessary for the sake of argument. Examples include: Activism in the generous sense, resistance in the generous sense, truth in the generous sense, women’s studies in the generous sense and so forth.

The thing is, that it makes sense for TealArt. I’ve owned the TealArt domain for more than five years at this point, and while I’ve grown quite fond of the color, I must say that the only reason I have the domain is that some fairly random person on a Greymatter discussion board gave it away for free. By this point, I think we are as much a part of it as it is of us. While I may have made allusions to being an artist (at least in the context of TealArt) at one point, I certainly don’t now. Art in the generous sense, indeed.

While the recent transition to word-press 1.5 necessitated a little redesigning, for the most part, TealArt has remained quite consistent over the past year. But I’d like to submit for your approval, a new banner. Nothing radical. Just a change. It’s about half the size of the current banner (kb wise, same visual size). It also uses a font derived from Jane Austen’s hand writing. How cool is that? Thanks to Neil Gaiman.

Which one do you like more? I’ll orient the winner the right way when I decide, I’m partial to the second: I think the lines look confusing in the first.

Cheers, Sam