the knitty professor

economy seat + knitting = dilemma

Typically when people think about knitting and airplanes, they are worried about whether they can bring their knitting on the plane, whether their needles will be confiscated, and what kind of scissors are allowed. 

I want to raise another knitting/flying related issue, which is somewhat delicate.  I often find that I do not have enough room in my airplane seat to actually knit.  I'm wondering whether anyone else out there has encountered this problem, and whether any of you have any advice on the best way to handle it.

Let me explain.  I typically knit with double-pointed or circular needles.  I am not waving my knitting around wildly, and I am not looking for the room to accommodate a huge project on 16" straights.  Under normal conditions, I have plenty of room to knit comfortably in the space of one economy airplane seat - aisle, window, or center.

Nonetheless, I often find that the person sitting next to me does not quite fit into his or her seat.  Sometimes, this is the person who feels the need to fall asleep leaning on my shoulder, or who thinks he has the right to the entire armrest between us and then some, or who doesn't seem to have any notion of personal space.  In these cases, I have no problem asking my neighbor to keep to his or her seat.

The difficult cases, however, are those when my neighbors do not physically fit into a single economy seat.  I've sat next to very tall men whose builds simply do not fit into the average seat.  I've sat next to a woman who asked if we could raise the armrest between us because she was simply too wide for her seat.  In these cases, no one is really at fault - except maybe the airlines, who continue to try to fit us all into one-size-fits-all seats that are too small for a significant portion of their clientele.

The problem is that, in these cases, I often find that I cannot knit.  When I try to, I end up in an awkward position where my every stitch jostles the person next to me.  Even worse, I sometimes end up with my neighbor's arm resting on top of mine, and I have to use that much more effort to lift her weight along with my own to make each stitch.

I really don't think I should have to give up on my knitting, or my comfort.  After all, I've paid for my space, just as my neighbor has paid for his.  But on the other hand, it's not like my neighbor is intentionally trying to take up my space, so it is inappropriate to get angry at her.

What do you do in that kind of a case?  Is there anything to be done?

In the short term, I am trying to get window seats on the left side of the plane.  That gives my left arm, which always seems to be the one that gets weighed down by someone else's arm, complete freedom.  But I know someday soon I'll end up on a flight where I can't get a left side window seat. 

Help!

when in Rome

My original impulse for blogcasting was to avoid posting whatever just came up, and instead to try to post more reflectively than reflexively.  However, this op-ed in today's Washington Post is worth a mention: "Misogyny I Won't Miss."  I may sometime in the future write a post about gender in the presidential campaign - but for now this link will do.

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Our subject today is the BBC mini-series I, Claudius.  With the "watch instantly" feature on Netflix, I've viewed a number of classic British tv shows from the 70s:  Upstairs, Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street among them.  I, Claudius is sadly not available instantly, but it is an excellent show from the same period of great tv.

The mini-series, comprised of 13 parts, follows the history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in the early Roman Empire, as told by Claudius.  The Julio-Claudian family produced the first five Roman Emperors:  Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.  The show opens up with battles over succession in Augustus' reign, and ends at Claudius' death, with Nero's rise to power.

For those of you who have seen the HBO miniseries Rome (which charts the decline of the Roman Republic and the rise of empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus), this series picks up pretty much where that one left off.  However, there are some very important differences. Rome attempted - by tracing the lives of a number of characters outside of the ruling families - to give a sense of what ordinary life was like in Rome at the time.  It portrays Roman life as brutal in many ways - we get to see the normalcy of rape and sexual violence, the strangeness of Roman religious customs, the dirtiness and violence of city life, and the horrifying state of ancient medicine (there's a rather gross scene involving brain surgery, not for the weak of stomach).

I, Claudius, by contrast, is focused much more narrowly on family intrigue.  We rarely see street scenes, or any action outside of family homes.  This focus on the family underlines the impotence of the Roman Senate under empire - we rarely see senators acting as anything other than yes men for the current emperor.  The only important political figures, it seems, are members of the family, by blood or by marriage.  The benefit of this way of telling the story of this era is that the mini-series is able to develop certain key characters at length, even though many of them only last for a few episodes before they are murdered, banished, or otherwise removed from the power struggles at the heart of the family.  The downside is that the Rome of I, Claudius doesn't seem so strange, so foreign from our time (except perhaps while under the rule of Caligula, or when Calpurnia, wife of Claudius, stages a contest during his absence with a famed prostitute to see which of the two of them can last longer in bed, trying to satisfy an endless stream of men).  Rome is screwed up, to be sure, and Claudius presents us with a reasonable 20th-century critique of monarchy and absolute power - but the characters' motivations and actions are rendered entirely comprehensible to us moderns in a way that rings a bit untrue.

What impressed me the most about the show, though, was the acting.  The series spans a period of over sixty years, and the longer-lived characters age significantly during this period.  My favorite to watch was Siân Phillips, who plays Livia, Augustus' scheming wife who is a major power player in the family.  At the beginning of the series, Livia is perhaps in her late thirties or early forties.  She ages gradually over many episodes, until she dies in her late eighties. Her hair and makeup age her subtly over the years - and whoever is responsible for this physical transformation deserves a huge amount of credit.  But Phillips also ages herself - in her speech, in her mannerisms, in how she moves in her body.  Other characters in the series did not age as well - Augustus and Tiberius both bugged me as they got older, for example - but Livia and Phillips portraying her stood out.  Hers was a phenomenal acting job.  Derek Jacobi's Claudius is another strong performance.

This is an excellent mini-series for anyone who enjoys historical dramas.  You don't need to know the history to enjoy the story - the mini-series is adept at integrating historical details to make sure viewers are following along.  There is some disturbing violence and sex - although most of it (unlike in the HBO mini-series) takes place off-screen.  Nonetheless, you may not wish to share this with younger children just yet. 

The cautionary tale the series relates - how a republic can be permanently lost because of powerplays for imperial succession - is a reminder today of how easy it is to lose political freedoms we take for granted.  However, it is also a reminder of how far we are today from the kind of empire the Romans had in the early years of the Roman Empire.  We - despite the dominance of certain political families - do not have an official policy of inherited power.  We may have bitter battles over who will succeed each president, but these are battles that take place - at least in part - out in the open where we all can see what's at stake.  Unlike Claudius' Rome, we haven't yet completely lost our republic.  If the United States is imperialist, it is not an empire in the Roman sense - which means that in our case there is still a republic we can fight to save.

the ticking clock

July 20 is getting closer and closer, and the ReVIB project doesn't seem to be getting any closer to being done.  Why, oh why, do I do these things to myself?

Here's where I am on the projects I've been working on:

These are the overalls - you can actually see that they have an overall shape now!  I've got some ends to weave in, some buttons to sew on, and a front pocket to embroider and attach, then they are done.  They'll need some blocking to get all the edges to lay flat, too.  Super cute. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the squares for the stripes and circles blanket - only two are complete.  These shouldn't take that long - 60 stitches wide on size 8s.  But for some reason, each square seems to take forever.

 

 

 

 

So, where do things stand with the ReVIB project?

Finished (9):  

2 jackets

1 pair pants

4 hats

1 pair mittens

1 pair scary bloomers

In progress (8):

1 pair overalls

2 blankets

3 sweaters

1 pair pants

1 mobile

Not yet started (16):

1 sweater

1 jacket

1 book

2 pair pants

1 changing mat bag

1 pair mittens

6 stuffed animals

2 hats

1 pair shoes

 

Hm.  My math sucks.  This means I have a total of 33 projects, when I only need to make 32.  Yay!  I can knock one off the list!!

 

In other knitting news, my mom was very happy to tell me that I had given her "the clap" for mother's day.  Gross.

Here she is modeling the clap (worn inside out, mom - but hey, if you prefer it that way, go for it).  I'm so happy with the colors of that yarn on her!!  Exactly what I was going for. 

The real question is:  is she actually knitting in that picture?  Or is she just pretending to make progress on a project she's really saving until we see each other again and I can fix it for her!?!?  Mom, if you are stuck on the project, just set it aside and buy the stuff to make another one.  That's what yarn stores are for!

80s music piracy

I'm always amused when I encounter young people who think that they are such rebels for getting pirated free music online.  Music piracy did not start with napster, or even with the internets. To be sure, the quality of music piracy increased with the widespread availability of digital music (e.g. on CDs) and the software to copy it.

However, even before the advent of CD technology, us old folks were pirating plenty of music - on cassette tapes.  (I'm a child of the 80s, so I am not going to get into earlier forms of piracy, but I know they existed.  Cassettes, though, made piracy widespread, cheap, and easy.)

Today's song celebrates the rebelliousness of casette piracy.  It's not a fabulous song musically, but it is an important one historically.  It's C30, C60, C90, Go! by Bow Wow Wow.  When the song was released as a cassette single, side B was blank.  As wikipedia reports, their label, EMI, was worried that this promoted music piracy, and quickly dropped the group.  What really promoted piracy, though, was the song itself.

The narrator of the song goes to the local record shop.  There, she is offered discounts and deals as incentives to buy music in vinyl or cassette form.  However, like all brick and mortar shops, this record shop is limited by its current inventory.

It used to break my heart when I went into your shop

And you said my records were out of stock

So I don't buy records in your shop

She's figured out two important ways to get the music she likes whenever she wants it.  First, she tapes music off the radio (which sounds so old-fashioned today, but was a great way back then to get a copy of the latest music, or - in my case - the latest French music I could pick up on Belgian radio, but couldn't buy in the shops in Holland).  Radio is free, varied, and disposable:

Off the radio I get constant flow

Hit it, pause it, record it and play

Turn it, rewind it, and rub it away

And, then, of course, you can record vinyl or copy other people's cassettes.  I still have very fond memories of the parties we used to have in high school, where everyone would bring blank tapes and share music.  Now, of course, you don't even have to know the people you share music with, nor do you have to have a party.  Not as much fun.

Yeah, now I got a new way to move

It's shiny and black and don't need a groove

Now I don't need no album rack

I carry my collection over my back

Ah, the portable cassette.  "C30, C60, C90" of course, refers to different lengths of blank cassettes you might buy:  30, 60, or 90 minutes.

Blank cassettes become for our narrator a weapon against the music industry:

My cassette's just like a bazooka

She takes aim with her bazooka at the record shop owner, and at the policeman trying to enforce copyright laws, proudly proclaiming

I'm a pirate and I keep my loot

Of course, a cassette copy is a degraded version of the original; it can't compare to the quality of a digital file.  The major labels never really went after people for copying music onto cassettes, because they weren't concerned that it would undermine their business in the same way that digital piracy today does.  Anyone who cared about the quality of the music would buy vinyl, or CDs when they came out.  And in fact, as I started to make more money, I gradually replaced my degraded cassettes with CDs.

Music piracy isn't new.  But it has become tinged by lawsuits aimed at bankrupting ordinary people.  As much as I want artists to be rewarded for their efforts (and I do buy music at the inflated music industry prices), I miss the lightheartedness of those high school parties, and the fun of discovering new music without having to blow my weekly allowance on a single album.

episode 3: the search for a new home for my stash continues

Hello everyone!

When I dream, I dream of real estate.  It's not good.  I've spent the past week obsessively checking craigslist for new postings.  And I've reached that point in apartment hunting that I can only describe as panic.  I've given notice to my landlord, I have to move out by the end of June, and I have no idea if I will have a place to live!  Good apartments are hard to come by, it seems - at least at a price I would consider reasonable.  So I just have to wait for the perfect place to come on the market (assuming it does) and somehow manage to snap it up before anyone else can.

I have done enough apartment hunting over the past five years to recognize this as a necessary phase in the search.  But that doesn't make me like it any better.  When I've got a lease or two, I'll feel a lot more comfortable.  Until then, I am a bit of a stressed-out mess.

In other news, Knitting Daily has posted pictures of men wearing the brick pullover that I blogged about a while back.  These pictures confirm two things that I've long suspected about IK:

1. their patterns look very different on different body types - so much so that the knitter should beware what she casts on for whom.  This is, of course, true of all knitted garments - but Knitting Daily bravely advertises this fact for all to see.  I appreciate Sandi's attempts to suggest how we ought to modify a particular garment to better suit different bodies - but some of the "models" in the gallery should never wear the garments they are asked to put on, no matter how modified they could be.
2. whoever is selecting models for IK does not have the best eye for which garments look best on which people.  I complained earlier that the brick pullover looked like a big brick on the model in the magazine.  But it looks great on Aaron in the photo gallery!  Maybe if Aaron and Erin modeled everything for IK from now on, I'd want to knit it all!

And, what you've all been waiting for! The results of the Best Aunt Ever contest.

It was a lot of fun to see what you all came up with.  Some of you have had fabulous experiences with loving aunts in your own lives that you relayed to me.  For others, the best aunts are the sisters who supported you with your own children.  Laura took the cake in this category, with the story of her sister who was a surrogate mother for triplets!!!  Now that's a great aunt.

But, having just celebrated Not Mothers Day with my sister Jamie yesterday, all I can say is OUCH!  Much more my style was Anne's suggestion, that the Best Aunt Ever would "buy the nephliece its first contraceptives."  Indeed.  That way, the Best Aunt Ever would be spared having to start knitting for the nephliece's children, too!!

In the knitting department, Sarah's suggestion that the BAE would spin all the yarn to make outfits, blankets, and toys for the nephliece was typical.  Some of you wanted the BAE to raise her own fiber-producing animals, then clean and card their fiber, then spin it, then knit it.  I definitely was humbled by these suggestions, but then it occurred to me:  where would I get the time to lavish attention on my nephlieces if I had to take care of the collection of alpacas, angoras, sheep, and silkworms?  Not to mention the plantation of cotton, banana trees, flax, and assorted other fiber-producing plants!  Even the Best Aunt Ever can't do it all!

Chris also suggested that the BAE would be a very involved aunt in the nephliece's life - but here, I am pretty sure she had herself as the model.  She suggested knitting the very thing she is knitting right now - the dodecahedron Celestine Sox.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Jenny's suggestion was that I do some knitting, but of a different sort.  She thought, quite reasonably, that I should focus more on being the best cat parent ever.  There could be a VIK project (Very Important Kitty, of course) - which would have to involve making cat hats of the world to adorn kitty's lovely head.

The most intriguing suggestion, however, came from Lisa, who enigmatically wrote that "the Best Aunt Ever would use metaphor to keep the niece from being lost in life."  Metaphor, after all, is the milk of the imagination - or something.

Anyhow, thanks to all of you for entering.  Jenny and Lisa - you two are the official winners of the contest for making me giggle so much!

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And now on to the agenda...

This week, I've got a lot of exciting posts in store for you!  Tomorrow, we start learning what 80s music has to teach us about the music industry by taking a look back at the technology that shaped my experience of the decade:  the cassette tape.  On Wednesday, we'll catch up with the ReVIB project, check in on the overalls I've been knitting, and maybe see the Clapotis modeled by its recipient - my mom!  (Speaking of which, hey mom - send me a picture!)

Thursday, I'll review the mini-series version of I, Claudius, the sort of show that I have to watch periodically to remind myself why life before indoor plumbing was not worth living, even if the costumes were great.  On Friday, I'll reflect on the complicated ethics of airborne knitting - a subject which I was reminded of painfully on my trip to Seattle last week.  Finally, on Sunday, Perry & Emily will respond to their mail and give more advice on how to be a dignified cat in the digital age in their segment, The Last Meow.

the last meow: the dignified cat in the digital age

Hey there!  My name is Perry and I'm a five year old Aries.  I'm into lounging, loving, and long naps.

Welcome to the part of the blog where us cats get to blog about cats, for cats.  But first, let me introduce my big sister...

 

 

Hi!  I'm Emily, the brains of the operation. 

Today, we are introducing a segment that Perry and I call "The Dignified Cat in the Digital Age."  In this segment, we'll give advice to kitties everywhere about how to groom your online feline presence.  It's a dangerous world out there for the cybercat who doesn't take the time to learn the dos and don'ts of the latest in technology.

We've got a lot of ideas for all you wired kitties, but please feel free to write to us with your own questions about how to navigate the twisted series of tubes we call the internets.  Just leave us a note in the comments and we'll post a response next week!

 

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Today's tasty tidbit:

Don't post a video on youtube of you walking on a treadmill.  You may think it's really, really cute.  But it's so 2006.

 

And that's the last meow!

   - Emily & Perry

partial affronting feminism

Last fall, I rocked Mary-Kay's world when I told her that she was a feminist.  She, like many of us, had grown up with the idea that feminists were man-hating (and paradoxically mannish) radical lesbians who don't know how to have a good time.  Some of us are, I'm sure, but hardly the whole lot.  (The mannish radical lesbians I've known all know how to have a very good time!)  This is an old stereotype designed to scare all of us away from thinking critically about the role sexism plays in our society.

Funny thing is, the stereotype doesn't keep us from noticing sexism and wanting to do something about it - it just scares us away from using the f-word - feminism - to describe who we are and what we are doing to make the world a better place.  That's how someone like Mary-Kay could simultaneously call people out on their sexism and deny that she is a feminist.  Oh, but she is!

I've been thinking a lot about my conversations with Mary-Kay, and wishing that I knew of a good book I could recommend to her about feminism - the issues, why it is still important today, its history, and so on.  (For reasons that I'll have to go into another time, bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody is not the right book - but I am eager to hear any other suggestions you all might have.)  When I found out I was reading Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism for a book club, I thought, "Maybe this will be it!"  After all, it is subtitled, "A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters."  We're young women, right?  Sounds promising, doesn't it?

Okay, this book is probably a good read for young women who are already pretty deep into feminist issues.  And by young women, I mean women who aren't offended by profanity, explicit discussions of sex, and poorly written text that jumps from topic to topic without really getting into anything in detail.  It is not the right book for anyone who is in the least socially conservative, has ever identified with the Republican Party (which is the subject of a few cheap ad hominems), or who will be put off by a very familiar authorial voice.  (And that's the book I am looking for, frankly - the one that aims to raise the political consciousness of women who disassociate from feminism because they think it is too lefty, irreligious, dangerous.  It is, of course, in some flavors, but not all.  And I'd rather try to make those people into allies than pretend that women who are more conservative than I am can't possibly be feminist - as if I myself have always been as progressive as I am today.)

The book club discussion attributed Jessica Valenti's writing style - often superficial, flitting from topic to topic, full of curse words and pop culture references - to the fact that she is primarily a blogger - at Feministing.com.  I found this to be just mildly dismissive of blog culture (and I did try to stick up for us!) - it's not like all blogs are written in the same style!  Some attributed it to her youth - but I also think that is problematic.  When I was 29, I didn't write like her.

Her writing style, as irritating as I found it, has a specific purpose:  she hopes to energize young women who are already interested in political activism by writing passionately about issues that they should be concerned about: who gets off in bed, the epidemic of violence against women, pay equity, pop culture's weak role models for girls and women.  I imagine that it would be successful with women and girls from 14-74, depending upon how open-minded they are about the way that Valenti presents her arguments.  After all, in the first few chapters, she swears like a sailor.  She tones it down quite a bit when talking about violence against women - because that's a "serious" issue - but why diminish the importance of the other issues by cursing so much!?!?

On the very positive side, one of the things I really liked about her book is that Valenti acknowledges that feminsts are all works in progress.  None of us start out fully feminist.  She mentions this in the context of relationships with men:  she can think of relationships she had when she was younger in which she made mistakes that she wouldn't make now.  She's learned how to be more of a feminist in her relationships (how, she doesn't quite explain - but I'm guessing she has more orgasms and stands up for herself) - but it was a learning process.  I think it is very important for feminists to acknowledge that feminism is a learning process for themselves - and for others.

That's exactly why I want the elusive book on feminism written for the very women Jessica Valenti writes off:  the women who care about equal pay, the women who won't stand to be treated as less than men, but who find themselves drawn to a more conservative world view.  Why shouldn't we reach out to them as feminists, too?  Why shouldn't we try to teach them about what else we know about gender, gender equality, sexuality, and so on?  And why shouldn't we want to learn from them about what we (in our leftist, progressive myopia) may have missed?  If feminism is a process for all of us, then we do it a disservice when we refuse to address women who aren't already fully feminist themselves (as if any of us know what that would mean).

the Democrats vs. democracy, part 2

Last week, I argued that the Democrats are in an unenviable position.  Their primaries have been exposed as fundamentally undemocratic, and there is no way for them to decide on who will be the presidential nominee at this point without some significant portion of voters thinking that the decision was made in an undemocratic way.

As a number of you pointed out, this is a criticism that can be made of the Republicans, too: their nominating process is just as open to charges of undemocraticness.  But in the current climate, we've forgotten to worry about whether McCain was selected democratically (he wasn't), because the main issue dominating headlines is whether we can democratically choose between Obama and Clinton (we can't, because there is no purely democratic procedure for nominating candidates).

On the one hand, you could take my argument about the nominating process to be something like:  we can't democratically choose a candidate, so we shouldn't even bother trying.  That's not the position I am opting for.

The "system" is not hopeless.  It may be impossible to have a purely democratic procedure for selecting a nominee, but that doesn't mean that we can't have better procedures than we have now.

I'd like to suggest two changes to the nomination system (for both parties, not just the Democrats):

1.  We should shorten the primary season.

It strikes me as deeply undemocratic that candidates have an incentive to try to "lock down" the nomination as early as possible in the primary season - in order to eliminate opponents, save money, and start strategizing about the general election.  What happens in an ideal primary season is that the pool of candidates gets narrowed down by the votes of just a few states (think Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina this year), and we have a clear winner as early as possible (think McCain).  It's in the parties' interests to have a nominee selected quickly, even though this has the deeply undemocratic side effect of disenfranchising those voters who have not yet had a chance to go to the polls.

This is why many leading Democrats and Obama supporters have been calling for Hillary Rodham Clinton to drop out of the race:  it's better for the Party.  It's not better for the voters.  It's not better for the late-voting states whose electorates may have different needs and concerns than those who voted earlier.  And it is certainly not better for democracy to only take seriously the votes of those people lucky enough to live in a state with a Party-approved primary/caucus early on the schedule.

If the Democrats (or the Republicans) have any pretense to being a national party, then major decisions (like who to forward as a candidate for the Presidency) should be made by a nationwide electorate.  An electorate that represents not a part of the people, not the people who get to vote first, but all of the people.

One important way to do this is to shorten the primary season (although we could think of others). We should try to eliminate (or at least mitigate) the Party's incentive to arrive at a decision before all votes have been cast.  I would prefer to have everyone cast a vote at the same time, but I would settle for a primary season that is, say, two or three weeks long.  Long enough for the candidates to campaign in different places, but not long enough for the parties to start complaining that the lack of a nominee is going to hurt them in the fall.

 

2.  Every voter should have the opportunity to vote on the same slate of candidates.

It bothers me that, when the Democrats come to Denver in August, the elected delegates to the convention will have been selected in what were completely different elections.  In Iowa and New Hampshire, people could vote for Bill Richardson.  He withdrew on January 10th, with only a tiny portion of the national electorate having voted. People voting in Pennsylvania were choosing between Obama and Clinton.  Anyone who voted for Richardson there was throwing away her vote.

Similarly, people who chose Clinton or Obama in January were working with different knowledge about the candidates than people voting in March, April, or even May.  I might have cast a vote for Obama in February, thinking it was a vote for change; and then changed my mind when the whole Wright controversy broke out.  Or I might have voted for Clinton in January thinking that she was the most experienced candidate, and then wished I could take it back after the race-baiting in her South Carolina campaign. 

If you hold an election on Monday, you will get different results than if you held it on the following Wednesday.  That's partly because some voters make up their minds at the last minute, and don't have deeply held views about who they vote for.  It's also partly because new information comes up that changes some people's minds (e.g. Bill Clinton starts saying outrageous things, Reverend Wright shows up on youtube), and can affect the final outcome in a tight race.

It's problematic to compile the results of such very different elections as New Hampshire in January and North Carolina this week and act as if they are votes in the same election.  They aren't.  This is especially true when we are equating primaries with caucuses, votes open only to party members with votes open to non-members.

If we want to give the voters the chance to "test" candidates for their electability, we should have run-off elections.  We should schedule a first round of primaries/caucuses.  If that round does not produce a clear winner, then we should have a run-off between, say, the top three vote-winners, or all the candidates who won at least 10% of the vote in the first round.  Letting all of us vote at the same time on the same slate of candidates does not have to mean sacrificing our ability to whittle down the pool, or to subject candidates to repeated examinations.

 

There's a lot we could improve about the nomination process.  But I think if we start with just these two ideas, we'll have a process that is more democratic, more fair, less controlled by the party's interests and more by the people's.  At least we can hope...

scotland, unplugged

I've waxed poetic before about the joys of Netflix - and especially its "Watch Instantly" feature.  As a result of this feature, I've been watching a lot more tv shows and mini-series than I normally would, and a lot less live tv.

One of the shows I've been working on recently is Monarch of the Glen - a sort of Ballykissangel-like show set in Scotland.  The first three seasons are available online through Netflix; season 4 should be in my mailbox when I get home.  So, I'm only reviewing the first three seasons here.

When I say that Monarch of the Glen is like Ballykissangel, what I mean is that it is about a group of largely non-English persons living in a small, English-speaking town.  The shows treat "foreigners" - by which they mean the English, the Americans, the Japanese, and anyone from a big city - as idiots who don't understand how things work here, and as a fundamental threat to the way of life of these quirky, small towns.  This conflict between locals and outsiders is the source of much of the shows' attempts at humor.  It gets a little tiresome over time.

In Ballykissangel, the main conflict of the three seasons worth watching was the conflict between religion (e.g., the priest from England) and nonreligion (e.g., the beautiful local bartender).  Monarch has a similar set up - although here it is the old British bugaboo:  class conflict.

The story (and you get this from the very first episode, so I am spoiling nothing) is about an aristocratic family suffering from holding a large amount of property that it (in an era where feudalism and gross exploitation have been rendered illegal) does not have the income to manage.  The large manor house and the extensive grounds are all deteriorating as a result of a lack of capital to maintain and improve them.

The son of the family left long ago to pursue a college degree and a hip, urban life in London.  He comes back to see his ailing father in the first episode, and the family tries to rope him back into a rural life of pseudo-feudal responsibilities to the family, to the clan, and to the local townspeople.

Class becomes a source of conflict in many ways:  between the "wealthy" landowners and the local activists agitating for a redistribution of land wealth; between the aristocrats who have managed to find sources of income and those whose landholdings have left them impoverished; between the family running the manor and the staff who are (sometimes) paid to do all the dirty work.  It's an interesting premise, but a tricky one.  We are supposed to pity the poor little rich boy, Archie MacDonald, whose parents burden him with the responsibility of turning their fortunes around.  And yet, he's awfully privileged.  Even when the plumbing backs up or poachers are stealing the game on his extensive hunting grounds, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for him.  Fortunately, the shows many less-privileged characters are there to put his trials and tribulations into perspective.

So, in comparison with Ballykissangel, Monarch's attempt to dramatize class conflict is less successful than the religious conflict in the earlier series.  But it is still a very entertaining ride.  There are the quirky locals, just as in BallyK, and they can be just as annoying as fodder for sideplots.  And then there are numerous romances, which gives this show a bit more tension to exploit than BallyK had with just its central two characters.

The bottom line is:  if you enjoy quirky British shows about smalltown life, you'll enjoy this one, too.  It's easy to knit to, it's entertaining enough to keep your interest, but it also isn't pushing the envelope of what could be possible in this genre.  They're still making the show, though, and I've only seen the first three seasons - could it get better over time?  I'll keep you posted!

mind less knitting

This past week has been very work-intensive, and so I've had to focus on projects that are portable, easy to put down and easy to pick up, and easy to work on in company.  It's good to have this sort of knitting on the needles, but I'm getting really bored of it.  Too bad it's all I brought with me for the Seattle house-hunting trip!  (Hmmmmm....  maybe I'll just have to go shopping!)

The first project I've been making progress on is a ReVIB blanket - "Circles and Stripes" from itty-bitty nursery.  The blanket is worked in four huge squares (love the minimal seaming!), some solid, some striped - all in simple garter stitch.  I've got 2.5 squares done, two of whom are pictured here at breakfast:

I'm enjoying this project for now, and I *love* the yarn (Blue Sky Alpaca's natural cotton).  But you might notice that something is missing:  the circles mentioned in the pattern title.  Those get added on after the easy stockinette part is done. You'll know I've moved on to that part of the blanket by my cries of pain, audible even over the internets.

Still, I am enjoying working on it, and I love how the stripes are worked - in rows of three.  You knit three rows, then move the project to the other side of your circular needles, and knit another three rows in the next color.  Clever.

The other project I've worked on is the warm and chic overalls from Chic Knits for Stylish Babies.  These, along with matching sweater and hat, are all sized for 3 months, so it is really important that I get them done soon.  I imagined they would be worn in the early fall, but you never do know how big a baby is going to be at birth.  Time to get cracking. 

Just so you know what you are looking at (it's hardly obvious!) that's the back of the overalls on top (the part I'm working on right now), with the front on the bottom.  Kind of hard to see, but hopefully this time next week they'll be seamed together and cute, and you'll get it, and I'll be thrilled with it, and we'll all be well on our way to Knitting Fairyland where all projects turn out exactly the way you envisioned them!!

I do think there is something weird and unnatural about making pants with just two pieces of fabric - a front and a back.  I'm thinking the crotch seam won't quite work.  Please let the Benevolent Gods of Knitting Fairyland prove me wrong!

I've also finally woven in the ends on that Clapotis.  I decided not to block it, for fear that I would ruin the curling in the yarn.   I figure the recipient can be given strict instructions on how to block it herself, if she doesn't like it.  Now I just have to pop it in the mail!

Here's the clap in blurry wrap-form.

And here she is draped more like a scarf.

While weaving in the ends in a cafe, I got some interesting Muggle questions:

• what are you doing?  knitting?

Um....  I am using a darning needle, lady.  Does it look like I am knitting!?!?

• how do you find the time to do that?

Same way you find time to sit around doing nothing in a cafe at 10 in the morning on a Wednesday, honey. 

Today is a day I wish I had the Yarn Harlot in tow.  I of course bit my tongue and made polite conversation.  The person who asked where I find the time to knit followed up with, "What kind of work do you do?" (a question I am rarely asked as a woman of childbearing years in the Microsoft suburbs, where the presumption is that you don't work).  I was pleased to be able to respond, "I'm a professor."  If I can find time to knit, you can, too, lady.  Pick up the pointy sticks and get going!