Tuesday, June 2, 2009
A litle bit worried
We got a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art so I'm back to knitting worsted weight stockings after a short hiatus. Yesterday I turned a heel on the bus in about half the time with about half the difficulty it normally takes me to turn a heel. Now, if I were the kind of person who believed that "sometimes it just works", I would be content. Unfortunately I'm not that kind of person and when I factor in the time it's been since I last turned a heel, the fact that I didn't even glance at the pattern and that I was deeply engrossed in conversation, I'm a bit worried. The heel actually looks good, but I wonder if this is one of those Fight Club-type situations where a string of seemingly innocuous mistakes go unnoticed until they meet a catalyst and transform into woolen napalm. What if the moment they make contact with a sink with the exact ratio of water/woolwash they detonate and take out half a city block? Wish me luck friends.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Hurdling Towards Spring
So I'm in my last semester of grad school, trying to complete (and by complete I mean start) my MFA thesis project. It's not that I've been slacking, quite the contrary. I have made a huge body of work in the last year and a half, but I still think there's one more new idea I can finalize before I'm flung into the Real World. Right now I'm waiting on the equipment I've ordered to begin working on the piece. More on this later.
In the meantime, as I am conflicted with impending deadlines and too little to do, I'm knitting a pair of socks for Andrew.
Due to my busy production schedule this past year nobody has received much knitting love from me, least of all Andrew. So, I grabbed the yarn he picked out and cast on. The yarn is Patons Kroy and the color is Summer Moss. Which when knit up, alternates between lavender pastel with mint stripes and in-your-freaking-face acid green with red stripes
It's a little loud, like when I knit in front of people they are overcome by the magnitude of its visual volume. I, however, like it and appreciate the change from knitting brown and grey socks exclusively for the past six months.
And besides, in the right environment it fits right in.
Who else has socks that match the houseplants, hmm?
In the meantime, as I am conflicted with impending deadlines and too little to do, I'm knitting a pair of socks for Andrew.
Due to my busy production schedule this past year nobody has received much knitting love from me, least of all Andrew. So, I grabbed the yarn he picked out and cast on. The yarn is Patons Kroy and the color is Summer Moss. Which when knit up, alternates between lavender pastel with mint stripes and in-your-freaking-face acid green with red stripes
It's a little loud, like when I knit in front of people they are overcome by the magnitude of its visual volume. I, however, like it and appreciate the change from knitting brown and grey socks exclusively for the past six months.
And besides, in the right environment it fits right in.
Who else has socks that match the houseplants, hmm?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Cluck
I eat meat like it's going out of style. I like it fried, grilled, roasted, barbecued. As long as it once had a face, I'll eat it and with gusto. Andrew, a vegetarian, has expressed some concern due to the great joy I take in consuming animals. My theory is that if something is going to die for me to eat, I should really enjoy it. I think we should acknowledge where our food comes from and appreciate the life that was given up for it. So this weekend I took a chicken from a live hen, to freaking delicious.
And it was good.
And it was good.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Squirrels!
Check it out y'all!
*Note: Please pardon the photo-heavy post. We got a new camera, and it's a stud.
After knitting plain stockings for the past three months, I had a physical need to knit a fair isle hat. The VDB Christmas party was coming up so I figured I'd pull one out.
BTW, No new yarn was harmed in the making of this hat. It's knit in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (I love me some cheap wool) remnants from the stash whish always delivers on the practical front. It's inexpensive, easy to knit and soft after washing. But I digress.
The squirrel pattern is from Stephieface's Squirrel Chart, and I charted the acorns by my little ol' lonesome.
Here's the inside for my fellow stranding nerds:
This hat had to be washed, blocked, dried and wrapped by today, so I was up knitting this mofo 'til 5:30 yesterday morning. Everything looked good until I blocked it, then I realized my fatal mistake:
The fair isle patterns get smooshed when they are too close to the crown decreases. Oh well, it looks fine in 3-D.
Happy Holidays, my friends. Keep knitting, keep warm.
*Note: Please pardon the photo-heavy post. We got a new camera, and it's a stud.
After knitting plain stockings for the past three months, I had a physical need to knit a fair isle hat. The VDB Christmas party was coming up so I figured I'd pull one out.
BTW, No new yarn was harmed in the making of this hat. It's knit in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes (I love me some cheap wool) remnants from the stash whish always delivers on the practical front. It's inexpensive, easy to knit and soft after washing. But I digress.
The squirrel pattern is from Stephieface's Squirrel Chart, and I charted the acorns by my little ol' lonesome.
Here's the inside for my fellow stranding nerds:
This hat had to be washed, blocked, dried and wrapped by today, so I was up knitting this mofo 'til 5:30 yesterday morning. Everything looked good until I blocked it, then I realized my fatal mistake:
The fair isle patterns get smooshed when they are too close to the crown decreases. Oh well, it looks fine in 3-D.
Happy Holidays, my friends. Keep knitting, keep warm.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Black Friday
*Note: I'd like to preface this post with the fact that this is my first Thanksgiving where I didn't see my family and I apologize if I wax nostalgicly. Also, as unbelievable as this story may seem, it is the honest to God truth, so that should give you some insight into how I became the person I am today.
While Thanksgiving is nice, my favorite late November Holiday is Black Friday. Ever since I was a young boy, my dad would wake me up at 3:30 AM the morning after Thanksgiving so that we could sneak out of the house without waking anybody and whisk ourselves away to the Winter wonderland that is the shopping mall. Now, my more obsessively organized father has always had the Christmas shopping done for the entire family in July, so shopping was the last thing on our minds this early in the morning. Our mission, and we accepted it with pride and humility, was to seriously fuck with the days of every other crazed shopper in the Metro Atlanta area.
The reason we got up so early was so that we could score one of the highly coveted parking spaces close to the doors of the mall. *Note: this information will be useful later.
Inside, we would stroll leisurely looking in windows and silently applauding the efforts of the few women in reindeer sweaters milling about over christmas ornament soup turines who had enough forsight to get to the mall before even God woke up in order to avoid the crowds that would come around 7:00. These women are virtuous and do not deserve our wrath.
7:00 am. All. Hell. Breaks. Loose. Thousands of people descend on the mall, raping and pillaging the sale tables in the doorways of every store. Every thirty feet is another door way into an alternate universe where moms in sweatpants and grandmas in Reeboks fight over artfully ripped polo shirts to the soundtrack of canned techno muzak (oonce-oonce-oonce o-o-oonce).
Once the carnage begins, Dad and I jump into action. I don't know if it comes from raising small kids or what, but my dad has an uncanny ability to read someone's mind and know exactly what they are going to reach for a split second later. While useful with children to keep them from grabbing hot or sharp objects, on Black Friday he uses this skill to grab anything and everything that anoher shopper has eyed and is reaching for. It doesn't matter what it is or how much of it there is, he will grab it and grab it all. T-shirt? He'll grab the whole stack out from under the nose of another shopper. Batman action figure? I've never seen a man balancing that much vacuu-formed plastic while running to the back of the store in order to price check each one.
Since retail staff is stretched so thinnly the day after Thanksgiving, we always do our best to step in when someone needs assistance. "Can you bring me this in another size?" Absolutely. "Is this a band my son would like?" Uh-huh. After we've expended our welcome, but not before we've liberally sampled the perfume testers, we move on to our most challenging feat.
The Parking Lot Game.
So, because we, unlike our fellow shoppers, had the forsight to arrive in plenty of time to snag a coveted parking space we are in a position of power. Cars circle the parking lot, looking for a space, any space. They see my father and I walking down the aisles to our car, past our car, back around and around until they lose interest. When we get back to our car, we start the motor, adjust the heat and radio then begin to pull out. At this point it is certain that another driver sees this and patiently waits for us to pull out. If this is the case, we pull back into the spot, get out of the car and go back into the mall.
Yes, I know that these are innocent humans minding their own business and that we are the kind of jerks that really take the fun out of the holidays. However, my most cherished memories of my Dad came to be at the expense of others, and I wouldn't trade that for all the good karma in the world.
Happy Holidays, y'all. I'm off to eat gravy in bed.
While Thanksgiving is nice, my favorite late November Holiday is Black Friday. Ever since I was a young boy, my dad would wake me up at 3:30 AM the morning after Thanksgiving so that we could sneak out of the house without waking anybody and whisk ourselves away to the Winter wonderland that is the shopping mall. Now, my more obsessively organized father has always had the Christmas shopping done for the entire family in July, so shopping was the last thing on our minds this early in the morning. Our mission, and we accepted it with pride and humility, was to seriously fuck with the days of every other crazed shopper in the Metro Atlanta area.
The reason we got up so early was so that we could score one of the highly coveted parking spaces close to the doors of the mall. *Note: this information will be useful later.
Inside, we would stroll leisurely looking in windows and silently applauding the efforts of the few women in reindeer sweaters milling about over christmas ornament soup turines who had enough forsight to get to the mall before even God woke up in order to avoid the crowds that would come around 7:00. These women are virtuous and do not deserve our wrath.
7:00 am. All. Hell. Breaks. Loose. Thousands of people descend on the mall, raping and pillaging the sale tables in the doorways of every store. Every thirty feet is another door way into an alternate universe where moms in sweatpants and grandmas in Reeboks fight over artfully ripped polo shirts to the soundtrack of canned techno muzak (oonce-oonce-oonce o-o-oonce).
Once the carnage begins, Dad and I jump into action. I don't know if it comes from raising small kids or what, but my dad has an uncanny ability to read someone's mind and know exactly what they are going to reach for a split second later. While useful with children to keep them from grabbing hot or sharp objects, on Black Friday he uses this skill to grab anything and everything that anoher shopper has eyed and is reaching for. It doesn't matter what it is or how much of it there is, he will grab it and grab it all. T-shirt? He'll grab the whole stack out from under the nose of another shopper. Batman action figure? I've never seen a man balancing that much vacuu-formed plastic while running to the back of the store in order to price check each one.
Since retail staff is stretched so thinnly the day after Thanksgiving, we always do our best to step in when someone needs assistance. "Can you bring me this in another size?" Absolutely. "Is this a band my son would like?" Uh-huh. After we've expended our welcome, but not before we've liberally sampled the perfume testers, we move on to our most challenging feat.
The Parking Lot Game.
So, because we, unlike our fellow shoppers, had the forsight to arrive in plenty of time to snag a coveted parking space we are in a position of power. Cars circle the parking lot, looking for a space, any space. They see my father and I walking down the aisles to our car, past our car, back around and around until they lose interest. When we get back to our car, we start the motor, adjust the heat and radio then begin to pull out. At this point it is certain that another driver sees this and patiently waits for us to pull out. If this is the case, we pull back into the spot, get out of the car and go back into the mall.
Yes, I know that these are innocent humans minding their own business and that we are the kind of jerks that really take the fun out of the holidays. However, my most cherished memories of my Dad came to be at the expense of others, and I wouldn't trade that for all the good karma in the world.
Happy Holidays, y'all. I'm off to eat gravy in bed.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Work
Hey y'all! Long time no internet see. I've missed you all dearly. I have some things to show you guys.
So do you remember how I thought I could knit five pair of knee high stockings in six weeks? Yeah that didn't happen so much. It was more like half that. Five socks. Five performers. What is a resourcefull knitter to do? This would be a great time to show you a photo of five men, two wearing a pair of socks, me wearing one sock while furiously knitting the other. Unfortunately that photo doesn't exist s so we'll just have to look at the ones I do have.
The performance is called "The Body Parlor: Rudimentary rituals for biological self-production" and it's a collaboration between myself and Katrina Erickson. Why am I showing a bunch of knitters performance art you ask? Well, because it happens to be about sheep.
We've been working with the idea of sheep and humans as combined sacrificial bodies in religion and science, the products produced from their bodies turned into sacred objects and medicines.
These are the lamb masks Katrina made. They're cast foam felted with lambs wool.
Here the sheep's socks are removed and collected before his feet are washed in lamb fat soap and milk.
The milk was then syphoned from the basin and is now in being processed into cheese.
This sheep is being sheared and his fleece is collected as a relic.
So that's what I've been doing lately. Later on in the week I'll show you guys how I made the soap from butcher shop to bars, er... art. Yeah that's it.
Till then I need to get my ass knitting.
So do you remember how I thought I could knit five pair of knee high stockings in six weeks? Yeah that didn't happen so much. It was more like half that. Five socks. Five performers. What is a resourcefull knitter to do? This would be a great time to show you a photo of five men, two wearing a pair of socks, me wearing one sock while furiously knitting the other. Unfortunately that photo doesn't exist s so we'll just have to look at the ones I do have.
The performance is called "The Body Parlor: Rudimentary rituals for biological self-production" and it's a collaboration between myself and Katrina Erickson. Why am I showing a bunch of knitters performance art you ask? Well, because it happens to be about sheep.
We've been working with the idea of sheep and humans as combined sacrificial bodies in religion and science, the products produced from their bodies turned into sacred objects and medicines.
These are the lamb masks Katrina made. They're cast foam felted with lambs wool.
Here the sheep's socks are removed and collected before his feet are washed in lamb fat soap and milk.
The milk was then syphoned from the basin and is now in being processed into cheese.
This sheep is being sheared and his fleece is collected as a relic.
So that's what I've been doing lately. Later on in the week I'll show you guys how I made the soap from butcher shop to bars, er... art. Yeah that's it.
Till then I need to get my ass knitting.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
How To Look Like You're Actually Working
There's always a constant struggle between feeling like you need to be working and the shear all-consuming hatred of whatever you're being forced to work on. I'm navigating this slippery slope by knitting stockings for an upcoming project. Now, I've always tried to keep my kniting and my art seperate, but this project is a strong culmination of the work I've been doing for the past six years and it just happens to require five pair of handknit men's wool knee high stockings It's working out perfectly because I can carry them around with me and work on them anytime I can. It's psychologically fulfilling because I'm constantly working on my project, but they don't require me to focus on the mind-n
umbing ins and outs of conceptual art while I knit.
Let's look at some, eh?
This is the first one finished.
Please excuse the blurry photo. Have you ever tried to take a picture of your leg in a knee high stocking? It sucks. Find a friend to do it for you.
This is the one I'm currently working on. It's going pretty fast, knit on size sevens with worsted weight wool
.
The astute among you may notice that these socks are knit from two very differnt colors of wool. This occured because I didn't order enough yarn for these black holes passing as socks. More yarn will arrive shortly so I can make actual pairs.
There's a fairly handsome cable running down the leg of the first sock, but it has been eschewed for the future generations of socks, as it is both a time suck and yarn eater.
It does look mighty fine though, if I do say so myself.
umbing ins and outs of conceptual art while I knit.
Let's look at some, eh?
This is the first one finished.
Please excuse the blurry photo. Have you ever tried to take a picture of your leg in a knee high stocking? It sucks. Find a friend to do it for you.
This is the one I'm currently working on. It's going pretty fast, knit on size sevens with worsted weight wool
.
The astute among you may notice that these socks are knit from two very differnt colors of wool. This occured because I didn't order enough yarn for these black holes passing as socks. More yarn will arrive shortly so I can make actual pairs.
There's a fairly handsome cable running down the leg of the first sock, but it has been eschewed for the future generations of socks, as it is both a time suck and yarn eater.
It does look mighty fine though, if I do say so myself.
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