Today is shaping up well. It is warm and sunny, there are leftovers so I don't have to cook tonight, the house is reasonably clean, and all the pets are fast asleep. I've started Liivi's socks from Folk Knitting in Estonia using colors pretty similar to the socks in the book. The only thing I have to do is find a decent energy bar recipe for DH. They're too expensive to buy all the time. I'd like to find something simple I can put in his lunches and give to him for his weekend hikes. I found two recipes - one cooked and one uncooked - that I'll try after I have another cup of green tea. Ahhh - it is a tough life.

Here's your favorite 13 lb rabbit/couch potato doing what she does best.

Here is the Dagmara Berztiss square - it is a Latvian moon cross which represents warriors and is also supposed to protect orphans. I made the scan smaller so you won't have to wear sunglasses to view this blog.



I desperately need to block it. I will be getting a digital camera in February so then I can show you the squares in their entirety. I am almost finished with the background square for the little mini Aran sweater so that is 3 squares finished out of 20. My next square will be one knit in the round.

I ripped out the Aran/March sock from A Time to Knit Stockings. The yarn/needle combo was making my fingers sore so I need to find a more elastic yarn. Instead tomorrow I'm going to start a new pair of socks from Folk Knitting in Estonia in my continuing efforts to knit everything from the book. So far I've made 8 of the projects.

Here's my first completed Great American Aran Afghan square - it is the Strong square which was apparently inspired by pomegranates. The inside out cables on either side may possibly be the ugliest cables of all time. My scanner doesn't appear to get along with this color - it is much more tomato red than the excessively bright orange-red it appears in the photo.

This weekend I'm going to do the basic stockinette square then tack on the little Aran sweater and perhaps I'll get a start on my 3rd square out of 20 needed for the afghan. Or perhaps I'll start yet another pair of socks.

I'm thrilled to report that we just joined Los Poblanos Organics. It is a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) and I've been meaning to do this for over a year. As it turns out they just started a weekly drop-off spot near DH's office. It costs $26 a week and they deliver organic foods grown locally (sometimes regionally) by several different farms. Our first box will include: A Bunch of Green Kale, 5 Valencia Oranges, Green Onions, 3 D'Anjou Pears, A Bunch of Spinach, A Bunch of Red Beets, 1 lb Bok Choi, Bag Salad Greens, Sweet Mini Peppers, A Head of Garlic, and A Bag of White Potatoes.

To find a CSA/farmer's market/organic farm near you, go to Local Harvest.

There is someone here who is even more excited than I am about this development.




Update: I've just been told there is a silver female Rex rabbit at Rio Rancho Animal Control. I've never been lucky enough to pet one but I'm told they are the softest of all the rabbits. I believe Amy at Knitty has Rex rabbits. Anyway, if you're in New Mexico and seeking a new, soft friend, please contact them.

Here's the photo of the March socks from Katherine Pence's A Time to Knit Stockings.



I'm making mine shorter and I'm going to continue the cable pattern down the back of a Dutch heel. I'm probably also going to continue the main cable all the way to the toe.

Working on this sock has made me fall in love with this booklet all over again. It is out of print but the designer (now Katherine Misegades) is working on a reprint - info HERE. Here are three of the patterns from the booklet I knit years ago.

Here's the men's sock from worsted weight wool in the stash. I charted out a simple design with Stitch and Motif Maker. It is pretty boring but I wanted something Mr. Picky (aka DH) would wear. I was surprised he liked it actually because now he says all his socks have to have at least 9" of ribbing rather than the 8" I was going with before. sigh



I'm working on the Aran socks and will show you the progress tomorrow. I am planning to completely change the heel and foot to fit my narrow, long feet.

UPDATE: I found it! The free shipping code for Herrschners is Q - this works for over $25 in purchases until Jan. 31.

Yes, I did just order more of the Kroy. I apparently can't resist the thought of a pair of socks for under $4. sigh

I purchased this Kroy sock yarn from Herrschners. They have it on sale for $1.97 a skein and I couldn't resist. I also got free shipping but for the life of me can't find the free shipping code I used. The super bright lemon yellow is just a wonderful color so I will look through my sock books to find a pattern that does it justice.

I'm currently doing some Aran socks (the March socks from A Time to Knit Stockings) in orange Peruvian Highland wool. I also finished a men's sock which I want to include in the sock booklet. I'll have a photo tomorrow.

KNITTED CURLICUES

Curlicues are underutilized in knitting. They are so simple and can really spark up a bland project. Imagine a plain old knitted hat. Now imagine the same hat topped with a dozen curlicues in different colors and lengths. Much more fun! Nicky Epstein also suggests using curlicues for fringe but she calls them corkscrews.

I make my curlicues slightly differently than she does. Mine are not as curly as hers but you don't have the hassle of trying to bind off such tight stitches. Trust me - if you have a lot of curlicues to make, you'll appreciate this.

These curlicues were made with worsted weight yarn and size 8 (US) needles. Cast on 20 stitches. (The final length of your curlicue will be the same as the length of your cast on row.)

Knit into the front and back of each stitch loosely, ending up with 40 stitches. Bind off purlwise. Here you see the curlicue already curling on the bind off row.




Take your finished curlicue and twist it in the direction it is already curling. Voila - you're done!

Here are the curlicues used as fringe in my latest FO, the Irish Hiking Scarf. This fun free pattern is a .PDF file available HERE. I used 3 skeins of electric blue Peruvian Highland wool and the scarf is a bit less than 6 feet long.

Tomorrow I'll have an FO to show and a pattern for how I make knitted curlicues.

I just sent a $57 check to the Colorado House Rabbit Society. That is the last of the Cafepress earnings for Stranded Color Knitting before I switched to Lulu in November. The proceeds from the sale of Stranded Color Knitting and the Wild About Color Knitting patterns will continue to go to the shelter at the CO HRS.

I am going to send the money from all future booklets I create to various HRS chapters depending on need. There are always situations where shelters that get in large numbers of rabbits from abuse or hoarding cases so that is a good use for the money. HERE is an article in the Oakland paper about a recent case where they took in lots of baby rabbits and how the shelters are dealing with it.

Poor Peaches was actually dumped at the humane society two different times before she went to live with the rabbit rescuer! Every day I am amazed someone could do that to such an excellent specimen of rabbithood.

A few years ago Knitter's Magazine did a series of sampler afghans: the Great American Afghan, the Great North American Afghan, the Great American Kid's Afghan and the Great American Aran Afghan. They held contests and asked designers to submit blocks. I want to make both the Great American Aran Afghan and the Great North American Afghan this year. Both have some challenging blocks and I really could use a challenge.

Here is a photo of the Great American Aran Afghan.



I'm going to do mine in tomato red Wool of the Andes. I also want to at least start on the Great North American Afghan which has some fun colorwork squares like this one knit in the round:




To buy the patterns for these afghans go HERE. To see the Great American Aran Afghan Knitalong with plenty of progress photos, go HERE.

So far this year I've planned on knitting these two afghans, the Starmore Fair Isle pillow, some Latvian mittens, along with all the usual socks and mittens. Plus I plan on knitting and designing items for a colorwork sock booklet (yes, the ruffled socks pictured last week will be included), a hats for kids booklet, and a Christmas patterns booklet all to benefit rabbit rescue.

Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to Delusional Knitting???

I'm running late today so I'll wait until tomorrow to talk about the afghan. In the meantime, here are the Log Cabin Socks from Handknit Holidays for DH. Because he has skinny feet I used the women's size (48 sts), made sure the sock cuff was the required 8" (otherwise he won't wear them - sigh) , and used my usual heels and toes that work for our feet. The yarn is Peruvian Highland wool and the socks took about 2 1/2 skeins for his size 10 1/2 foot.

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZ

This photo can only mean:

A. My gauge is WAY off
B. Knitting for the rabbits is taking a new, slightly disturbing, turn
C. I'm also pregnant with Brad Pitt's child
D. I've started the Great American Aran Afghan from Knitter's.

Sometimes I think I learn more from my mistakes than from my successes. Here is a Fair Isle sock I began with a picot hem. Fair Isle gives me fits because of the difficulty of color selection. As it turns out I really liked the colors for this project.




What I absolutely can't stand is the actual pattern. I realized that I much prefer colorwork where the pattern is easily made out rather than muddied as it can be in some Fair Isle designs. That must be why I have knit many more Scandinavian designs.

They didn't quite fit in the scanner (blame my big feet!) but here are the ruffled socks I designed. I ended up liking the colors after all.

My Olympics knitting project is going to be Alice Starmore's Celtic Keynot pillow. I've had the kit for several years and started it once only to realize my gauge was way off. DH just bought himself the leather chair of his dreams and the pillow will look good with the new chair. The price for the kit now is astronomical and probably about twice as much as I paid for it. I dearly wish I'd purchased more of her kits back when the dollar was stronger. I have a photo of the yarns from the kit but unfortunately Blogger won't let me upload photos today.

Lately I've been drinking a lot of tea. Here is my version of chai using green tea. I think most chai recipes use way too much cinnamon and I like this better because you can taste the cardamom.

GREEN TEA CHAI

You can also use black tea or decaf for this recipe.

4 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp. green cardamom pods
1 tsp. whole cloves
2 Tbsp sliced fresh or frozen gingerroot (I slice it up fresh then freeze it for teas)
1 tsp. black peppercorns (optional)
4 green teabags

Bring water to a boil. Add cinnamon stick, cardamom, cloves, and gingerroot and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, add green tea bags, cover and steep for 10 minutes.

Serve with milk (dairy or non-dairy works) and the sweetener of your choice.

Time offf

Until the end of January I probably won't be able to post. In the meantime, enjoy the archives and the links.

A few weeks ago Saartje showed the contents of her knitting bag. Currently I don't use a knitting bag but instead use baskets so I can see all the yarn colors I'm using at one time. To hold all my knitting accessories, I use this container. I believe it is a tackle box for fishermen and cost me less than $2.




I use this container for my measuring tapes, stitch holders, stitch markers, tapestry needles, crochet hooks, small packets of Eucalan, Burt's Bees lemon cuticle cream, bobbins, and a small amount of buffalo fiber from a schoolteacher at the Waldorf school on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation.

I do have one bag I keep around for sentimental reasons. I received this bag during an Aran knitting class with Alice Starmore when she did her tour of the U.S. to promote her Broad Bay yarns.

Crisis etc.

There's a huge crisis in the Portuguese Ministery of Culture, and I'm writing about the influence of the CIA on the abstract art of the 70's. Escapism?


Francois Lefranc, Escapism (2001)

I've heard from some blog readers who also enjoy classes from the Teaching Company. I recommend that anyone who orders a class from them take all the online surveys they conduct. I also send in the little feedback forms that come with each class. As a result they sent me 3 free copies of the American Ideals course last year to help evaluate their new packaging. I'm hoping some day to get on their list to evaluate possible new lecturers. Also, only order the classes on sale. They all go on sale at some point every year so you shouldn't have to wait too long.

Here are some reviews of the classes we've purchased. So far we've only done the classes on audiotape to save money but our next class will be video or DVD.

Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment - This was the first class we tried and we loved it. My undergraduate degree is in French so I'd already read Candide but it inspired DH to do so also.

American Religious History - This course is absolutely fascinating and was our first class with Dr. Patrick Allitt. He is by far our favorite Teaching Company lecturer. He has an obsession with unearthing all sorts of strange little snippets and quotes. Although initially I thought it was weird that a Brit was teaching a class on American history, now I'd take any class with him on any subject any time.

The High Middle Ages - This course was DH's choice and honestly, neither of us were completely excited by the professor. Yes we know you went to Harvard because you mention it constantly! I did find some of it interesting though so I'd give it a lukewarm thumbs-up.

Victorian Britain - Another class by Dr. Allitt and so far my favorite Teaching Company class. He relies heavily on Queen Victoria's personal diary for the class. He also discusses a lot of literature from that period - Dickens, Gaskell, Trollope, etc. I actually went and bought most of the novels Dr. Allitt recommended.

Robert E Lee and His High Command - DH's choice and not my cup of tea at all. If you like Civil War military history and discussions, this one is for you. DH ended up listening to most of this class while driving to work although I did enjoy hearing just how loony tunes Stonewall Jackson was.

Thomas Jefferson: American Visionary - We had high hopes for this one but the affected accent the professor used whenever he quoted Jefferson just drove us nuts. This is the only class we didn't finish - fortunately it was one of the inexpensive ones. It doesn't seem to be offered for sale any more anyway.

Great Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt - Very well done and another one of my favorites. Honestly I wasn't even that interested in Egypt but Professor Brier proves that a really good teacher can make any subject fascinating. I really regretted not getting this one on video or DVD because I really wanted to see all the specific pyramids and monuments he was discussing. Some of his lectures like the one on discovering Tutankhamen's tomb were incredibly suspenseful and compelling. I believe Professor Brier did a tv show on the Discovery Channel. I plan to order another class on this subject with him, on video this time.

American Ideals: Founding a Republic of Virtue - We haven't started this one yet but we're looking forward to starting it this week.

Abstract art's secret agents

Sam Francis, “Untitled” (ca. 1988-89)

Reposting can really be a good thing.
In 2003 Mark Vallen, the author of one of the most conservative contemporary art blogs I know, wrote a review of a book called The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. Because of a recent exhibition of Sam Francis' works (mind you, Mark Vallen despises abstract painting), he reposted the text. Here are some fragments:

(...)during the height of the Cold War in the 1950's, the CIA secretly promoted abstract expressionism as a means of discrediting the socialist realism of the Soviet Union.(...)The spy agency created and staffed an international institution they named the Congress for Cultural Freedom(CCF,) and from 1950 to 1967 (when the front group was at last exposed as a CIA operation,) the spook endowment had secretly bankrolled the abstract expressionist movement with untold millions of dollars. (...) The CIA orchestrated the publication of a major article on Jackson Pollock in LIFE Magazine declaring him "the shining new phenomenon of American art," and the "greatest living artist."(...) The CIA applied considerable muscle in its endeavor to support and advance the abstract expressionist movement, and in large part they were successful. Realism became passé as art critics focused on singing the praises of action painting.

While this is certainly a very one-sided way of seeing things, the very fact that the CIA took such an active part in the art world is spooky. It's a classic conspiracy theory gone alternative, cynical and bewildering, as all good conspiracy theories are. Where does that put us? In the box of silly lunatics, children that are easily manipulated by anyone with money to spend on PR?
Possibly.
Nonetheless, if we read into art history a little more closely, and if we compare it to the changes in Western mentality, this apparent manipulation of the CIA is really just participating in a much bigger wave. I hope this blog shows that, contrary to what Mark Vallen would like us to believe, this wave hasn't only brought "decay and primitivism", but also many wonderful, crazy, profound, unexpected or simply - beautiful experiences. And one doesn't need to adore Sam Francis (I don't) to appreciate that.

For more on the book in question:

Today is the three year anniversary of this blog so I thought I'd reprint my very first blog entry. Everything is the same except we now only have 2 cats and 1 enormous new pet rabbit. (Rest in Peace Pumpkin, Flip, and Snickerdoodle.) I've still haven't learned to weave tapestries but at least I finished all the projects mentioned.

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Welcome to my knitting blog! My name is Nanette, I live in a passive-solar house on 2 acres outside of Albuquerque, NM, with my husband Bruce, 2 spoiled house rabbits, and 3 cats. I'm the author of 'Tis the Season: A Vegetarian Christmas Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, 1995). I own a Ashford Traveler spinning wheel and many beautiful spindles and I want to learn how to weave tapestries this year. My main passion in life is knitting especially Norwegian designs.

My current works-in-progress are the Dale of Norway Sirdal cardigan (photo here at Allegro Yarns), the St. Enda sweater from Aran Knitting by Alice Starmore, and a traveling stitch vest.I'm waiting on some plum Richesse de Soie (cashmere/silk blend) to make some mittens for my friend Gracie. I've never worked with cashmere before and I can barely wait.

Here are some photos of my work - Landra's Gloves from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia knit in Stahl Baby Merino and the Selbu Star Gloves from Vibeke Lind's Knitting in the Nordic Tradition knit in Country Garden DK.

Art Bar

What would a real Art Bar look like? Of course, it would have nothing to do with those fancy, plushh interiors for posh people that have art director written on their business cards. It would have to be a place that corresponds to the very thing art is. And that wouldn't necessarily be so happy, would it?
Here's an attempt at imagining what a real Art Bar would look like. The 2002 work is a funny, light, and at times fairly sophisticated art amateur's inside joke, by Steve Whitehouse (and the Petrie Lounge).
The site has several other little gems, like this DaVinci Blues (1999 Flash animation that still looks fresh!), also by Steve Whitehouse.

Technorati: digital art, net art, internet art, art, contemporary art, new art, vvoi, vvoitek, modern art, cool

Duchamp, Urinals, and the Press

Yes, Duchamp's Fountain is safe. It was attacked by an old man with a hammer, but without success. Only some pieces of porcelain were chipped away. The porcelain seems to be of good quality.
The author of the act considers them performance art. Maybe in an act of revenge, the police wouldn't reveal his name - although we know it's Pierre Pinoncelli, as this wasn't his first act of performance art with this piece - in 1993 he peed into it (and I think he also tried hitting it with a hammer).
The act itself isn't particularly original. The fact that Duchamp disapproved of museums could be an argument, but then of course, he tried, unseccessfuly, to put Fountain in an exhibition. Is messing with other people's work bad? Using other people's works for the creation of new ones is an entire tradition. A few years ago Maurizio Cattelan stole another artist's (Paul de Reus's) entire exhibition and put it as his own (and had troubles with the police because of that), Robert Rauschenberg erased drawings by De Kooning, etc, etc...
I have no problem seeing both a piece of art and a crime in such an event. I don't see why these two should be incompatible.
There is another interesting thing about the recent art attack. The way it was described by the media. Comapre the title in USA Today: "Dada artist accused of vandalizing Duchamp piece" with the one in The Independent: "Protester tries to chip away at the reputation of Duchamp's urinal". The latter refers to the artwork as to "the urinal", without even giving its title! Fortunately, other sources of information are available: the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza writes about the object's history, Le Monde has the longest and by far the most comprehensive article, citing the perpetrator/artist ("It was going to have a miserable existance...it was better to end it using a hammer"), and even mentions a rarely mentioned fact: the urinal is not the original Fountain, but one of the eight copies (??) that were made by the artist in 1964 (!!!), since the original was "lost" in 1917.
PS. According to one commentator, the dadaists made an exhibition in the 1920's where every visitor received a hammer, thus allowing her to participate in the art...

Technorati: art installation, fine art, installation, performance, performance art, art, contemporary art, new art, vvoi, vvoitek, modern art, cool

Conceptual or not conceptual?

Photosynthesis Robot, by Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine of Futurefarmers, is a possible perpetual motion machine driven by phototropism - the movement of plants towards the direction of the sun. The motion of the plants upon this four wheeled vehicle would propel slowly over a period of time.

I've been working with a group of artists on an idea not too distant from this, with one great difference: our project is not conceptual (sorry, can't reveal details for now). If it comes to life, it will be a highly complicated and high-tech work, nothing even similar to what I've been doing so far. And it costs. A lot. We're now fighting for funding. The question is: is it really worth creating "real things", if a "dummy" does the job? I mean, isn't that just the cutest thing in the world? Do we need to need more? Or maybe "doing the job" is actually hiding the possible diversity of such "jobs"... I just wish we came up with this simple witty idea instead of moving into heavy artillery.

Thanks Ivan Franco at YDreams for the link, and to we-make-money-not-art for the discovery.

Technorati: art installation, installation, art, contemporary art, new art, vvoi, vvoitek, modern art, cool

Because I'm working on the Log Cabin socks from Handknit Holidays, I wanted to show how I do cables without a cable needle. I used to spend my life losing cable needles so this method is much faster. (I do occasionally use a cable needle for some really complex cables, a la Alice Starmore.)

There are four steps to cabling without a cable needle. This is a 6 stitch cable where the 3 stitches are held in front (a left-leaning cable).

1.Start by dropping the first 3 stitches off the needle. Just let them hang there for a brief moment - don't worry they won't go anywhere. Then gently transfer the next 3 stitches to the right needle. Here you see the three stitches hanging loose and the right needle is starting to pick up the next 3 stitches.



Now all three stitches have been transferred to the right needle and the three stitches to be cabled are still hanging loose.




2. Transfer the 3 stitches hanging loose to the left needle in sequence without twisting the stitches.




3. The scary part is over! All stitches are accounted for. Transfer the 3 stitches on the right needle to the left needle. Here you see all the stitches back on the left needle.




4. Knit across all 6 stitches normally and you're done.

To do a 6 stitch cable where the stitches are held in the back (right-leaning), you transfer the first 3 stitches to the right needle and let the next 3 stitches hang loose.




Gently transfer the 3 stitches moved to the right needle back to the left needle with the 3 loose stitches not on needles still hanging out in front of the work. Pick up the three loose stitches with the right needle (in sequence, untwisted) and put them back on the left needle. Knit normally across the 6 stitches.

I've been tending to a sick spouse for a few days. Today he went back to work but he may end up staying home again tomorrow. So far I've managed to resist getting sick by washing my hands 500,000 times a day and spraying down the house with my herbal antibacterial room spray (20 drops of lemon essential oil and 20 drops of lavender essential oil in about 1 cup of water in a spray bottle.)

I 'm going to start the cabled socks in Handknit Holidays. I need something that doesn't require too much thinking on my part because I have two magazine articles to write this week - one on herbal teas and a Cinco de Mayo menu article.

Peaches is planning to help me - she's quite a fan of paperwork.

I saw a brief segment on color knitting on the Knitty Gritty tv show. They talked about slip stitch color knitting, intarsia, and Fair Isle knitting (used to mean all stranded color knitting I guess). I only use the term Fair Isle knitting for traditional, only 2 colors per row, no long floats, geometric designs using Shetland wool. There are differences between Fair Isle knitting and the traditional stranded color knitting of Scandinavia, Latvia, Estonia, Turkey, the Andes, etc. I haven't done many Fair Isle projects but here is a tam I designed a while ago. I was going for a water theme with the wavy pattern and the colors.



The 2-color knitting shown on tv was done by picking up and dropping each yarn as it was needed; they didn't show any of the various methods for holding both yarns. Then the host of the show said (I videotaped it and watched it again to get the quote right) "I think another thing that we don't really talk about is that a lot of, I know a lot of people also don't do color knitting because they think it tends to be ugly." They went on to reassure viewers that you could use whatever colors you like for color knitting and use color knitting as a form of artistic self-expression. I honestly had no clue that some knitters thought two-color knitting was ugly.

The ruffled mitten has turned into a sock. I'm not sure if I'm going to use this second chart pattern either. sigh My knitting is so much faster and more productive when I use other people's patterns rather than always having to invent something on my own. I am waiting anxiously for my copy of Handknit Holidays so I can make the cabled socks. If the book doesn't come tomorrow maybe I'll go through my huge pile of Dale of Norway patterns and pick something.

Art of(f) the Edge

The internet "intellectual site" Edge has recently published the answers to its Question of the Year. The question this year was "What is Your Dangerous Idea?" The answers came from a range of intellectuals, 117 of them to be precise. Most of them are physicists or psychologists, many scientists from other areas, a few writers. And three (non-writer) artists. Make that four - I forgot Michael "Nez" Lesmith, ex-member of The Monkees, who writes that according to him "Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective". (I'm glad - and somewhat scared - to know that.) As for the other three artists... The first one to appear is Richard Foreman, declaring that "Radicalized relativity" is his dangerous idea:

In my area of the arts and humanities, the most dangerous idea (and the one under who's influence I have operated throughout my artistic life) is the complete relativity of all positions and styles of procedure. The notion that there are no "absolutes" in art — and in the modern era, each valuable effort has been, in one way or another, the highlighting and glorification of elements previous [I think it should be "previously" - Vvoi] "off limits" and rejected by the previous "classical" style.

This rhetoric is so old I think it isn't really worth spending too much time on its critique (I've been writing about the issues and problems of the avant garde quite often anyway). Suffice it to say we all know there are no "absolutes", until we build them. And Foreman's theater has built such an absolute out of a particular stage language, a very consistent and not at all "off limits" one, at least not if by the term one means something innovative.
The second artist to answer the question is "famous landscape painter" April Gornik. And she makes an interesting remark:

The exact effect of art can't be controlled or fully anticipated
Great art makes itself vulnerable to interpretation, which is one reason that it keeps being stimulating and fascinating for generations. The problem inherent in this is that art could inspire malevolent behavior, as per the notion popularly expressed by A Clockwork Orange. When I was young, aspiring to be a conceptual artist, it disturbed me greatly that I couldn't control the interpretation of my work. When I began painting, it was even worse; even I wasn't completely sure of what my art meant. That seemed dangerous for me, personally, at that time. I gradually came not only to respect the complexity and inscrutability of painting and art, but to see how it empowers the object. I believe that works of art are animated by their creators, and remain able to generate thoughts, feelings, responses. However, the fact is that the exact effect of art can't be controlled or fully anticipated.

This is indeed interesting, and every artist must have had this experience - the work lives its own life. It isn't quite what I would call a revolutionary insight, but it is probably something new to many amateurs (and amateur amateurs) of art.
Finally, we have one of the "art starlets of the 90's", Eric Fischl. I do not particularly appreciate his work, but here is a thought of his that might sound intriguing:

(...) Vermeer puts me into what had been [his subject's] condition of uncertainty. All I can do is wonder and wait. This makes me think about how not knowing is so important. Not knowing makes the world large and uncertain and our survival tenuous. It is a mystery why humans roam and still more a mystery why we still need to feel so connected to the place we have left. The not knowing causes such profound anxiety it, in turn, spawns creativity. The impetus for this creativity is empowerment. Our gadgets, gizmoes, networks of transportation and communication, have all been developed either to explore, utilize or master the unknown territory.
If the unknown becomes known, and is not replaced with a new unknown, if the farther we reach outward is connected only to how fast we can bring it home, if the time between not knowing and knowing becomes too small, creativity will be daunted. And so I worry, if we bring the universe more completely, more effortlessly, into our homes will there be less reason to leave them?

What should I make of this? If you happen to have no background in philosophy, you might be impressed. The problem is, right next to this answer are more than a hundred answers that prove it wrong. They are ideas and reflections that put us back into a state of uncertainty, which, it is true, "spawns creativity", demanding new answers, new questions, new ways of touching.
Maybe, just maybe, the artists are supposed to be the ones touching, and not reflecting. And that would be the reason for such (I'm sorry) lame answers. My point is not that artists are stupid though. That they express, but are bad at analyzing. Many proofs have been giving of how false this statement is. Rather, I wonder - weren't the artists supposed to be the ones with dangerous ideas? The revolutionaries? The inventors of new worlds?
Here's an idea: they still might be. But nobody really cares, because artists live in a parallel world. Even the intellectual elites have no idea who can be an (intellectual, not just "intuitive" !) challenge for them. Who can be a partner in a crazy conversation about the future.
The good news is, no Hollywood stars even got a chance to answer the question. The bad - if the artists keep on answering so badly, or so quietly, they're bound to disappear, too. Without the comforting entertainment-style check...

pictures by April Gornik - Field and Storm (2003) and Storm at Sea (2005)

Technorati: visual art, fine art, art, contemporary art, new art, vvoi, vvoitek, modern art, cool

I should have been a waiter

Would you look at that: 195 comments!

Technorati: art, contemporary art, vvoi

I think Nicky Epstein is the most underrated knitwear designer working today. I currently have four of her books out from the library and am going to save up to buy three of them (Knitted Embellishments, Knitting On The Edge, and my favorite - Knitting Over The Edge.) Maybe she isn't given enough credit because of *what* she knits. Sure, most of us don't have a great need for a 3-dimensional round pillow shaped like a golf ball (with dimples just like a golf ball has) but she had to have a lot of knitting knowledge to figure out how to do it.

I think intarsia is currently even less popular today than stranded color knitting (if such a thing is possible!) but she's never afraid to do huge intarsia projects like the incredible Regal Tapestry Afghan in Knitting For Your Home. Here in my house I've officially declared it "Nicky Epstein Appreciation Week."

Anyway, I was looking through her books and thinking about knitted ruffles. I wanted some on the cuff of a mitten I'm knitting. Most knitted ruffles are done at the end of a knitted item, not when you cast on. They essentially are just a lot of fabric rapidly decreased so I cast on double the stitches I was planning on using. I knit a few rows, then cut the stitches in half by decreasing (K2TOG across row). I ended up getting a basic ruffle as seen here.




I hate the design I charted though so that part is being ripped out as soon as I finish typing this.

Fluffy crazy sculpting

Botanica Beluosa - Monstrous Botany - soft sculpture ("Fabric Sculpture Installation ") by Martha Sue Harris
(via)

Here are the Selbu mittens finally. I used Nature Spun fingering weight yarn and size 0 dpns. I'm going to donate them to DH's office where they give away various clothing items to the treatment foster care kids.