Classics Craft Workshop At KCL

Classics craft workshop at KCL

King’s College London are hosting an event on the 16th October 2015 called ‘Craft process & cultural response: making & thinking about making in Greco-Roman antiquity’ There’s a choice of a mosaic workshop and a textile workshop, followed by an evening talk. 

It’s free but you do have to register (which you can do through the link above). I already signed up for the textile workshop (shocking, I know). 

I’m a huge supporter of alternative approaches to classical material - especially craft approaches. There are experiences you gain from engaging in a making process that you just can’t pick up from translating texts or reading texts, looking at pictures, or reading academic research. It’s an approach that I’d recommend anyone interested in classics tries at least once. This event looks pretty good to me, so, y’know, if classics/craft is your thing and attending seems doable to you, maybe register for it. :3

Published by the London Review of Books, 8 November 2012

In Anne Carson’s six translations of Ibykos, the mode of fidelity to the source text varies not according to the closeness of cross-lingual synonyms but according to the spirit of the translation. It is an extreme example of a translator bringing herself and her own ideas into a text, and also an effective one—if her goal is not to replicate Ibykos but to play with his work.

(cp. 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei [Eliot Weinberger, Octavio Paz]; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird [Wallace Stevens])

Just proof that I'm still alive and doing other stuff beyond baby blankets: the WIPs I currently have on square frames. Does not include any knitting, crochet, or embroidery in round frames. The main light in my lounge is so yellow and rubbish. I need to sort that out.

And this is the point where I have to accept that I need to write out the next page of pattern. (The orange T is theta, the dark red T is Tau).

Differences achieved by slipping knitwise/purlwise for an SSK decrease, for anyone who has ever wondered. Top left is traditional SSK - both stitches slipped knitwise. Top right is SSK with both stitches slipped purlwise. Bottom left is first stitch slipped purlwise and second slipped knitwise. Bottom right is first stitch slipped knitwise and second slipped purlwise. You can see that the traditional SSK gives the smoothest line. But that might not always be the best style for a pattern. If you're working something that emphasises corners and angles, try one of the other three. SSK with knitwise then purlwise completely hides the second stitch being decreased so it gives a simple step pattern in the decrease. The other two allow a leg of the second stitch to show through so could work with designs where you want to emphasise complexity or a 2-1 rib design, etc.

This is another WIP from fellow artist Sam, and I just want to say: THIS. So much this. Every article I've read about the Prometheus Bound which argues that Zeus isn't a big bad points to this "gentle touch" that impregnates Io as if it's a good thing. Like, "well it's not rape because it's just a touch, a sort of immaculate conception so we don't even have to worry about consent at all." I'm working a bit on the Prometheus Bound right now as one of the only sources outside Hesiod that mentions Kratos and Bie (two of the children of Styx) and I'd been sending Sam problematic extracts from what I'd been reading, and then she just produces this: this beautiful, succinct piece of art that is this fantastic rebuttal to all these stupid articles I've been reading. And it's just. The. Best. Thing. Ever.