Behold The Awesomeness That Is The Worlds Largest Crochet Blanket, Certified By Guinness World Records

Behold the awesomeness that is the World’s Largest Crochet Blanket, certified by Guinness World Records on January 31, 2016. Measuring 11,148.5 square meters (120,000.98 square feet), this colossal blanket was created in Chennai, India by members of a social media group called Mother India’s Crochet Queens. A total of 2,500 participants contributed to the project, ranging in age from 4 to 93, and originating from all over India and 13 other countries besides.

“Subashri Natarajan, the crocheting enthusiast who initiated the project, asked contributors to send in granny squares, rendered in their choice of color and style. The simplicity of the request was deliberate: It allowed not only beginners to take part, but it also made it easy to combine disparate pieces into one massive whole. Many sent in entire tapestries, each revealing the unique personal style of its maker.”

The entire project took about six months to complete. After the blanket was assembled and the record certified, it was divided up into 8,034 individual blankets to be distributed to people in need, which is possibly even more awesome than the world record itself.

[via inhabitat]

Figs. 8-15. Embroidery on paper. Rainy day pastimes for children. 1910.

Right and below the needle: 8 stitches in five different threads, all in the wrong place. -____________________-

This afternoon I am giving a talk at UCL about the Stitched Iliad. It is open to the public, if you happen to be in London at around 4.00pm

Tagged: #this is a really sad p0st #because y0u have t0 have s0 much hate t0 take s0mething that is literally taught in anger management as a relaxati0n technique and make it n #0t relaxing #y0u kn0w the saying D0 what y0u l0ve and never w0rk a day in y0ur life #it apparently d0es n0t apply t0 this pers0n #n0r d0es hist0ry

Thanks for you expert insight into my psyche and all my hatred. No, I don’t make a “fucking fortune” from my job. I just don’t find it relaxing. I am allowed to not find it relaxing, because it is, unfortunately, not “literally relaxing”. If you find it relaxing: good for you! I never said you, or other people, couldn’t find it relaxing, but I am tired of people assuming that I must find it relaxing. I’m not telling you that you cannot find it relaxing, and all I ask is that other people don’t tell me that I should be finding it relaxing because it “literally is”.  Apparently this is too much to ask.

But here’s the thing: I don’t. I don’t find it relaxing. And I am very much allowed to not find it relaxing. And I will defend my right to experience embroidery as not relaxing. I shall sit here, obscenely sewing without finding it relaxing, defying science itself and the very ordering of the universe with my stubborn refusal to find my job relaxing. I shall lead the subversive revolution of people being allowed to enjoy things they don’t find relaxing, to do things they don’t find relaxing regardless of whether they enjoy it, and to get annoyed when other people tell us that we must find it relaxing. And presumably, with every non-relaxing stitch I sew, a puppy with die and a fairy will lose its wings. 

“I can’t make a living 0ff this and I actually d0 enj0y it.”

You are conflating “relaxing” and “enjoyment”, and then implying that I claimed I didn’t enjoy embroidery, and you even go so far as to later assert that I hate it. You are putting words in my mouth. “relaxing” and “enjoyment” are not the same thing and I never once claimed I didn’t enjoy embroidery. Other things I enjoy without finding relaxing: rollerskating, mountain climbing, writing academic articles, horror movies. 

“ I have n0 idea where y0u’re getting this n0ti0n that embr0dery wasn’t s0ld at high prices.”

Perhaps the reason you have no idea where I got that notion from is because that is not a notion I have, nor one that I expressed. But apart from the fact that that’s not actually a thing I said, the citation for the quote I was discussing is right there in the post. The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker. 

The history of embroidery is long and complicated. When it was sold, it was sold at a high price. When. By the 18th Century it was seen by a large group of people as a leisure activity, something that women did to decorate their homes, NOT something they sold. These are the women I am talking about - I even acknowledge that this ignores other women: “But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour.” 

“I have n0 idea h0w y0u t00k an activity specifically designed and scientifically proven to be relaxing…” (my emphasis)

Citation needed. 

“and made y0urself hate it”

Citation needed. 

The person reading hate into this is you. The person assuming I hate something that I never said I hated is you. I really don’t appreciate being so mis-represented, to have someone claim I said things I never said, and to even go so far as to make assumptions about my mental state and assert that I hate things without any evidence that that is in any way true. And to then imply I don’t know anything about history, or think that it doesn’t apply to me: It’s rude. It’s really, really, rude. 

Finally: There is a reason a whole range and variety of therapies and relaxation techniques exist: it is because different things work for different people. It is because there isn’t one universal thing that has been scientifically proven to work for everyone. And context is important. Sometimes I find cooking relaxing. Sometimes I don't. It's the differences between cooking for myself or my loved ones, cooking recipes I am familiar with or making it up as I go along, and knowing that it can take as long as it takes; and cooking to a deadline, having to strictly follow recipes I'm unfamiliar with for people I'm also unfamiliar with. Embroidery is my job and I still don't find it relaxing.

Don’t tell me embroidery is relaxing.

“By the eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a leisured, aristocratic life style — not working was becoming the hallmark of femininity.” (The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker, 1984: 11)

Women’s work as an oxymoron: if women do it, it cannot be work. Women cannot work, so anything a woman does cannot be work. Therefore, embroidery, actually called ‘work’ by women, cannot be classified as work. It is instead, a leisure pursuit – assuming one is not paid for it. And one cannot be paid for it because it is not work, cannot be work if it is produced by an upperclass woman. To try and pay her for it – for her to try and sell it would be to undermine her husband’s fragile masculinity by implying he cannot support her. But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour. 

I think this is one of the reasons I get irritated by people telling me it must be so relaxing to sew. I don’t find it relaxing. It is work. It is labour and it is my job. I don’t tell other people that their work, their job, the thing they do everyday must be ‘so relaxing’ because that would be an absurd assumption to make. Maybe they do find it relaxing. Or maybe they enjoy it, but don’t find it relaxing because actually it’s hard work and concentration. But it is not my place to assume these things, and of all the questions one could ask about another’s job, whether it is ‘relaxing’ is a strange place to start. What are people implying when they tell me I must find embroidery relaxing? That it’s easy? Unskilled? Requires no concentration? That it’s not work. 

Some people find embroidery relaxing because they do it as a hobby. They do it as a thing which is not their job. Just as some people take up wood-carving as a hobby. But do people tell the professional carpenter that their job must be relaxing because it is considered by others to be a hobby? 

Don’t tell me my job is relaxing. Don’t tell me my job isn’t work. 

Things I'm working on at the moment: a giant hyperbolic mass, in super bulky/chunky yarn. This is 12 balls in. (It takes about 40 minutes to get through one ball). And some geometric crochet - beginning with a simple series of Platonic Solids. Currently layering and layering fabric stiffener onto one triangle for the tetrahedron to see how many coats it's going to take to get a sturdy enough facet.