Inexplicable

Back at the end of March, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee sent out a call to knitters, asking them to engage in one day of inexplicable knitter behavior. Her readers responded exuberantly, and I can only imagine how perplexed the non-knitting denizens of their respective cities were.

The day for inexplicable knitting fell on a Tuesday, a school day, and even if I thought I could get away with skipping all my classes that day, I would've been certifiable if I thought I could a) get away with ignoring all the ancillary homework and b) starting a new project. But I am all for the idea. Ordinarily cool people can be unexpectedly narrow-minded when it comes to knitting, and one of my admittedly vindictive pleasures is shaking up their idea of The Way the World Works. It's the nature of the experiment, it's the patterns of my temperament.

Ennyway, I was standing at my bus stop this past Tuesday, working on the Icarus and musing on the two presentations I had to give that day. It was rush hour, and this bus stop is along one of the main thoroughfares, so there were quite a few cars out. About five minutes went by before I noticed how many of the drivers were staring. Blatantly. I was on a purl row, so I took my eyes off my knitting to stare back (being at a bus stop liberates one from many social norms). One burly bearded guy in a pickup with his son literally turned his head to gawk as he drove past. All these people weren't looking at me, per se. They were looking at the Icarus.

Good for them, I thought. A little culture shock before work does one good.

Skip ahead to Thursday. One of the grad students let everyone into the classroom early (it's kept locked to keep people from making off with the osteological collection), so I pulled out the Icarus and got to work. Without realizing, I spaced out, gazing deeply into empty space while I tried to figure out how I was going to organize my afternoon. A voice at the edge of my consciousness pulled me back in, and I looked over to find both the professors, two grad students, and the guy at my table staring, at the Icarus of course. I had a deer in the headlights moment, awkwardly fielding the usual queries--it's a shawl, I don't know how long it will take to make, etc. "That's impressive," one professor said. Ye gods. The man pulls conclusions about population histories out of 64-dimensional space, and the So-Easy-It's-Boring Icarus is impressive?

When half the Andean Archaeology class began to ooh, I felt rather resigned. Being the bearer of beneficial culture shock is all well and good, but it was beginning to cut into my knitting time. It's going to be a shawl, no it's not hard, feel how soft the yarn is. I was buoyed up by the fact that some of these people actually knew how to knit, and one had astutely noticed the subtle color gradients that kettle-dyed Malabrigo is famous for. Then she asked if I was using different balls of yarn to get that effect. I cringed inwardly, thinking of the way randomly switching from color to color, Fair Isle OR Instarsia style, would compromise the structure of lace, unraveling all into the holes, not to mention making the back side look like a knotty mess.

But then I had a total anthro moment. Knitting is just as foreign to most modern people as Egypt to the Victorians or South America to the conquistadores, and they can react to it with just as much ethnocentrism. As a firm believer in cultural relativity, I feel that this needs remedying. So for all its setbacks, I'll keep KIPping. That everyone who sees me is going to run out and become a knitter is too much to hope, and anyway, it's beside the point. The point is to understand knitting for what it is and knitters for who they are. And maybe one day, in a Utopian future, knitting will cease being seen as something straight out of a curiousity cabinet, and it will take a whole cadre of knitters running around with cameras and half-completed socks to really shake things up.

Little Things

The minute, the curtailed, the packable seem to be taking over my life.

Lunch fits in a box.

My working memory is about the same capacity as a floppy.

And any knitting larger than a washcloth seems an insurmountable task of Hurculean proportions.

Why? Because it's back-to-school time. Not the rejuvenated-by-summer, won't-this-be-fun, brand-new-clothes fall back to school. The back-to-the-grind, when-will-it-all-end, at-least-it's-not-500-degrees-yet spring back to school.

However, I take the bus to school, and many semesters of experience have taught me that doing homework on the bus is futile until Panic Time. Binders have a tendency to slide onto other riders' laps (or worse, dig into their legs) as the bus swings around a tight corner, and my multitasking skills are not so developed as to allow reading and people-watching all at once.

Knitting would be the perfect solution to this dilemma, and I've got a small project in the pipeline that may perk up the bus ride, make me feel productive, and use up some stash yarn.

Quant

SAS made a really elegant version. That was part of my inspiration, but I happened to have some Crayola colored sock yarn in my stash that has been causing me no end of grief every time I turn it up in my rummagings. These two partial skeins have been in there so long, they're starting to stress me out. Do you have yarn like that?

On a more somber note, tonight two pairs of handknit socks bit the dust. They the first two real pairs of socks I knitted, and Hermanita had to steel me to do the deed. I was seriously debating darning up the worn spots on the toe decreases of my absolute favorite pink pair, but then I discovered that the place under the ball of the foot was going, and so was the base of the heel. I keep telling myself there was nothing I could do. *Sigh* Such is the fate of hugely functional items.

Hazards of Combining Knitting and School

Size 0 double pointed needles aside, knitting is considered a relatively benign hobby. Yet to be explored, however, are the hazards of Knitting In Public, KIPping for short. In my experience, KIPping is a perilous enterprise at the best of times. KIPping at a University? Doubly so.

Hazard #1
Students.

The ones who stare are easily ignore. Others, however, decide to comment. After schlepping around campus with a heavy backpack all day, one is not in the best frame of mind to recieve such comments.
"Is that for a class?"
Class? No, not for a class. Once upon a time, there was a faraway land, where people did no complete tasks because they were assigned, but for creative fulfillment. That land was swallowed up by a pernicious beast, and this knitting is the last vestige of its existence.
"Are you knitting? That's cute."
By cute, you mean dazzlingly brilliant, right?

Ok--so I don't really say that to people. But they do tempt me.

Hazard #2
Professors.

Professors are notoriously unpredictable when it comes to a knitter in their classes. Some don't even notice. Others reluctantly allow it, but deep down they doubt that it is humanly possible to make socks and learn a subject at the same time. An exalted few say go ahead, whatever it takes to help you learn, but at the other end of the spectrum are the professors who veto knitting completely. To complicate matters, these types are not readily identifiable: you have to ask for knitting permission, or risk suffering the unimaginable wrath of an angered professor.

Why is it that non-knitters view knitters in the manner of bugs in jars? Being of the Anthropological bent, I am interpreting my encounters as a field study. At this point, the data point to a cultural intolerance to knitting. Gone are the days when women toted their works in progress to the theater, when idle hands were viewed as the devil's tools. Knitting is not viewed as "normal," part of the daily way of life. It is out of the ordinary, a phenomena to be viewed with suspicion and curiosity.

This state of affairs will not do. Knitting is a craft! It is an art! It is genius! And all around the world, when cool, creative people want to express themselves, they knit.

Check out all these cool knitters:

Skinny Rabbit live from France

Spelling Tuesday, the incredible technique machine out of Norway

Yarn Harlot blogging up a storm in Canada