When someone asks me “how was your day/week/summer/year” I, like everyone else say, “pretty good on the whole.” I mean really now, is there anything else that someone can say?
But that makes for a really boring essay, but I when I think about the quality of my days, weeks, summers, and years, I think I tend to think about them in terms of what I’ve produced.
I’ve had a good summer on the whole, but I haven’t gotten much writing done, I’ve completely neglected a minor academic project. At the same time, I’ve grown a lot as a spinner, I’ve discovered and developed a my inner pedagogical side, and I have a basket of some pretty cool knitted objects to my credit.
I think that I’ve produced about as much this summer, as I did the summer I wrote the first 42% of the book. (That is the summer before my junior year of high school for those of you keeping track at home). But of course it’s in a much different form.
That summer, when I was done, I had an intellectual creation which, especially in retrospect isn’t that great, but seemed really promising at the time. When I was writing Circle Games, I thought that I had a half decent shot at getting it published, and I thought that one way or another that professional/freelance writing would be a large part of my career both in the long term and in the short term (during the end of high school and college). That’s something that hasn’t quite panned out, and while writing remains a large part of my future career plans, it no longer has that sort of vocational aspect that it once did. I don’t get home at night, and say, “gee, I hope I can get a few moments to write tonight.” On the other hand, in many ways, life and days at school revolve around writing, so maybe that’s a healthy reaction.
I guess ultimately the difference between my knitting and my writing, is that my essays and the book had, at least on the conceptual level, the ability to live on and beyond me. Even on the much smaller scale of this blog, I have the possibility of affecting people by these words who I don’t know and have no connection to except the words I’m putting together. The knitting is different. It’s artistic and creative all the same, but the effect is different. I affect myself, as knitting is entertaining, and I affect the people I teach knitting to, and the people I who wear things I’ve knitted. But it’s much more direct, more concrete, and finite. Especially in response to the “how was your day/week/summer/year” question.
Being who I am, with the analytical lens that I seem to have, I think I should draw attention to the gendered aspect of this comparison. I think knitting has been a women’s activity, not particularly because of the impact of the industrial revolution (but I won’t deny that that has had a huge impact on knitting), but because of the more ephemeral aspect of the craft. Since the advent of agriculture, women’s work has tended towards activities that didn’t have an enduring quality, and I think knitting is very much a product of this trend. I mean of course there are lots of factors at play here, but I think this idea should be incorporated into gender and knitting related historical analyses.
In a related tangent, I’m going to read a book called “No Idle Hands; A Social History of American Knitting.” It looks really cool. I’ll get back to you on this.
So there. And I didn’t even tell you what I’ve been knitting, so stay tuned.
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I wrote this entry a number of weeks ago, and then didn’t post it, and then I my offline weblog editor needed to be registred, and one thing lead to another. So here it is. Don’t hold it up to the usual Standards. Please. Cheers, and check back soon.
I had this little promise with myself going, where I told myself that I wouldn’t post here again about knitting stuf until I did some critque kind of post. So here it is. Critique requires an active enguagement with other work, if not dirrectly in the piece, then as a secondary effect of interaccting with other work and ideas. I’ve become woefully bad at this in the past few months, and I suppose that’s why I haven’t been writing. I’m going to make a mental note to fix this. Being a bad citizen of this owrld, I haven’t read Harry Potter, not any of them, so that might be a project to embark upon in the near future, and I have all of them with me, so now is as good a time as any.
I have been watching television a bit more than usual which I suppose doesn’t say very much given that I go months without watching even a spec. Now I’m not turnning into a mindless numb, but I’ve found, TV, is helpful in the persuit of knitting. I think I’ve gotten so used to knitting as a background feature to the rest of my life: durring meetings, while reading, while waiting, while riding in the car, while listening to lectures, etc. that I have a hard time devoting all of my concentration to a knitting project, so now, when I don’t have to concentrate on other things, if I’m just knitting I get antsy. So there I am.
I’ve been watching a lot of Farscape. Seems’ the internet connection where I reside now, has a Usenet sever that carries binaries. Which I think is mostly responsible for the fact that out of 140 gigs of storage avilable (40 from the ipod, and 100 on this powerbook) I have about 10 free at the moment. I might be able to eeke out another one or two out of the ipod, but needless to say, I need more stoarge. Firewire drives, here I come.
But about the televison. Here’s what I’ve been watching: Farscape seasons 1 and 3 (coincidence, haven’t found any season 2 yet, and wouldn’t have space for it if I could). Stargate (both series, I’m almost compleatly up to date, having seen all of Atlantis, and all but a very few SG1), and I’ve been rounding out my Babylon 5 collection, because I feel I’ve been remis.
On my list of things to get: There was a spell of really good episodes of B5 in the middle of the third season, and I’d like to have those. I also want to get Firfely, because those episodes are the kind of thing that I’d really like to have in my collection (but I have friends who have the DVDs and given my lack of hard drive space, that puts that on hold for a while. And so that’s that.
As I watch more Farscape, I find it reminds me a lot of Firefly. They both adopt a “wild” view of space, that is where governments don’t or can’t extend control over interseteller territory for the most part, and starships with a reasonable sized cast operate. Also I think there’s a definate similarity between Malcom Renolds and John Crition. They’re both spunky leaders who don’t dake themselves terribly seriously, and I find that to be an attractive characteristic in TeeVee science fiction. I’m not sure that I like it as much when it’s written, but that’s just me.
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tagged: TealArt