More Geometric Play. The Symmetry Isn't Perfect, But Given The Amount Of Tension Points, I'm Happy With

More geometric play. The symmetry isn't perfect, but given the amount of tension points, I'm happy with it. The stitches used here are all really basic - twisted satin, buttonhole, vandyke, lazy daisy, whipped wheel. The complexity comes from how they interact with and tension each other (e.g the vandyke stitch will loop around the cross junction of two button hole stitches, and pull them into a new positions (and then you have to try and get exactly the same tension another 9 times). I don't know if there's an official name for this type of embroidery. I have a lot of stitch dictionaries and collections, and I've never seen anything like this in any of my books. If no one else knows of a pre-existing name for it, I'mma have to invent one. Maybe... Arachne work.

Stitch play. Originally I was just intending to try out the thread itself, to see what stitches the variegation would work well with, and then I just ended up playing with stitch ideas I'd had in my head for a while. Unfortunately, this thread wasn't really the best for some of the chain stitch variations, so I'll probably do those again on another sampler.

I looked up from my work for a couple of seconds to watch the kittens play, and when I looked back down this little punk was crawling over it.

So… This is the kind of thing I have mixed and complicated feelings about.

I’m not going to say “that isn’t art” because my position is that art is in the eye of the beholder.

But I *will* say that this is something that hundreds and thousands of knitters and crocheters the world over do ALL THE TIME. It’s called frogging. It’s just efficient. You find something that’s not going to be used or worn, but where the yarn is still reasonably undamaged and you frog it. You store the yarn for a future project.

Like I said, I’m not going to claim this isn’t art, but what I don’t understand is why it gets acknowledged as art when two white men do it in a gallery-space, and not when hundreds and thousands of (mainly) women do it every single day in their own home.

If Lernert and Sander are unaware that this is common practice amongst yarn-based crafters then their research is piss-poor and they should do better. If they did know, and just chose not to acknowledge their indebtedness then they’re just appropriative assholes.

Yes, frogging finished items is a beautiful thing and it’s art, but it was art already when everyone in the yarn-based craft community did it. These two men doing it doesn’t magically make it art when it wasn’t before.

I feel this is the sort of thing that they should have written an ‘academic’ (whatever that means) article about, acknowledging the actual community engaged in this practice and then discussing what makes it such a beautiful phenomenon, rather than just plagiarising a community’s common practice and getting praised for it because ‘omg, men working with a material stupidly designated by society as being for women, HOW AMAZING.’

I also have issues with this relating to necessity/thrift/class/wealth, but I cannot brain well enough to articulate those right now. But there’s definitely something insidious about taking a practice based on reusing and saving money and ‘making do’ and importing it into the corpulent, lucre-obsessed art world. And the act of importing it devalues the concept/practice in the same way private collectors devalue the work when they rip a Banksy piece of a wall and store it in their private galleries.

Small relaxation project from last night. Lots of detached chain stitch, buttonhole variant, a whipped woven wheel (or double whipped, I wrapped around the two strands of the chain stitch spokes separately) and Ceylon stitch in the middle. It was more an experiment in shape and design than stitch techniques. As you may be able to tell, I'm rediscovering my love for geometry.

As you may recall when I posted about it before, Anchor have changed the dye lot for their red 19 colour. It is visibly different, and useless to me.

And it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to find the old one, and I reckon I need at least 12 more skeins.

So, here’s the deal, if you have...