The Domestic Soundscape

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I have been loving reading people’s lists of woolliness, written in response to the Snowcase contest post. You can read loads of great notes in the comments, but the entries that fully satisfied the entry criteria came in from Ellen, Liz, and Anna. I enjoyed different things about all these entries; for instance I admired Ellen’s impressive layering skillz and her wool-positive assertion that 4 knitted tops ISN’T overkill! I for one would certainly wear four knitted tops in this horrific coldness if I possessed four such garments that would comfortably layer. But my penchant for rather loose-fitting garments means that such an experiment would result in my looking like a fashion-mistake duvet. I also liked the cheeky inclusion of a shopping bag in her entry; I thought it showed innovation and a distinctive knitterly flair for creativity being both handknitted and something that could reasonably be about the person of a knitter, even if it is not specifically a garment. I admired this tactical personal embellishment!

Photo used kindly with Ellen’s permission

Further evidence of the inventiveness that I so admire in the knitting community was shown in Anna’s entry to the competition. Frankly, I think that including her child and his handknits in a duo-posed photograph was a stroke of genius. In fact, when I saw the photograph I realised I should have added a caveat to the contest stating that any parents wishing to enter could include handknits they had made for their children in lieu of all the personal knitting abandoned in favour of clothing their little ones. Is *anyone* more beautifully accessorised than a small child who is loved by a knitter? Go here and check out Anna’s photo for yourself if you need convincing.

Liz’s entry to the contest possibly gains the most kudos for colour coordination. Observe the complimentary pinks, greys and creams adorning her person and the specialist, knitterly adaptations of familiar garments such as the pockets on the scarf and the own-design and infinitely sensible, flip-top mittens!

Photo used kindly with Liz’s permission

As usual it is difficult to pick a winner when the standards are so high, and so I have pointed up the entries according to the original Snowcase Contest rules:

For each knitted item that you manage to cram into your January 2010 BIG FREEZE Ravelry Projects Snowcase Contest™ entry photograph, you will score 1 point. However, consideration will also be given to the following elements of your entry;

1. Ingenuity of layering. How ingenious is your use of different, handknitted layers?
2. Inclusion of rare/highly-specific types of garments. Snoods, cowls, shawls, mufflers, and other items probably-only-owned-by-handknitters types of garments will all be viewed highly favourably in terms of overall entry score if incorporated.

According to this, the points to be awarded are as follow:

Ellen – garment count: 10 + ingenuity of layering (1 extra point for skillful garment layering) + inclusion of rare/specific types of garments (1 point for neckwarmer, 1 point for innovative inclusion of market bag in ensemble photograph)

Total: 13

Anna – garment count: 8 + ingenuity of layering (1 extra point for doubling up wristwarmers/mittens and cowl/scarf/shawl combo. Good layering skillz! Also 1 extra point for genius inclusion of child in contest photo, complete with adorable handknits and thoroughly charming smile) + inclusion of rare/specific types of garments (2 points for cowl and wristwarmers)

Total: 12

Liz – garment count: 8 + ingenuity of layering (1 extra point for skillful leg-warming action – 2 pairs of socks and legwarmers!) + inclusion of rare/specific types of garments (1 point for wearing what is specifically a Tam, 2 points for scarf with pockets and amazing flip-top mittens)

Total: 12

So it was a very close contest!!!

I realise my counting system is possibly flawed and in retrospect it would have been good to include some provision for own-designed items and handspun yarn since both of these types of things undoubtedly enhance one’s WOOLFACTOR, but it seems most unfair to retrospectively add these caveats to the points system. I suggest instead that we all just love on the woolly goodness of the own-design projects and handspun evidenced in all their glory amongst the entries.

I for one think you all have the WOOLFACTOR and am very happy that you entered The January 2010 BIG FREEZE Ravelry Projects Snowcase Contest™, but I think in the end we must admit that Ellen trounced everyone with her definitive, 4-sweater stance re: The Big Freeze; I’m so jealous of all those woolly layers that I’m seriously considering spending this whole year knitting jumpers in time for next Winter.

Massive congratulations to Ellen, I shall contact you about your prizewinnings. Thanks to everyone for leaving comments and to Liz, Anna and Samuel for bringing your WOOLFACTOR out to play in the cold! And thanks to Skeinqueen for the beautiful skein of yarn you donated to the prize-parcel.

The deadline for the contest has been moved yet again due to MORE SNOW! Do take up the coldness as an opportunity to don as many woollens as you can and get outside to be photographed in all your handmade finery. There are treats involved.

And if anyone could help me spread the word, that would be great; twitter, blogs, Rav groups…

Thanks.

ETA – ***THE CLOSING DEADLINE FOR THE SNOWCASE HAS NOW BEEN EXTENDED AGAIN TO 10TH FEBRUARY BECAUSE THERE HAS BEEN MORE SNOW!***

There are 2 excellent entried to this context at Ellen’s Blog and Liz’s Blog and there is more snow expected this week!

However, in the event that snow does not fall, and acknolwedging that it will still be fairly cold anyway for the next few weeks, I am going to extend the contest deadline to February 14th, giving you knitters all a good shot at getting your WOOL-FACTOR on.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check this out.

Last night I went to bed with a hot-water bottle, wrapped in 2 blankets and a double-duvet, wearing 2 jumpers, a thin, long-sleeved vest, my pyjamas and a pair of woollen socks, and I was still cold and couldn’t get to sleep on account of the sound of my chattering teeth keeping me awake. I’m guessing the last gas bill here (which was around eleventy billion pounds) provoked someone else who lives here to make the Estate Agents put the heat on some really stingy setting so that even having the radiator switched to 5 still means I can practically see my own breath when I wake.

This morning I decided to take serious action. It was time to UNLEASH THE WOOL. I emptied my entire collection of FOs onto my bed and selected an outfit that would allow me to utilise as many items from it as I could colour-coordinate and fit under my waterproof shell. Thus garbed and feeling pretty pleased with myself, I headed out to Oxford to do some recording for The Hub.

As I was walking towards BBC Oxford, I realised – and I say this with some knitterly pride, dear readers – that I was in fact too hot, and so I was forced to remove my jacket along the way to the studios. Swathed in wool and wearing a ludicrous quantity of secret, concealed layers beneath, I began to wonder when I would ever again get the opportunity to showcase so much of my own handiwork in a public situation. Catching a glimpse of my reflection in a window I passed, I realised I was basically one giant advertisement for my Ravelry Projects Page.

I started to think of all the knitters who I know who must be in similar positions right now, and the thought of all those knitted projects being unleashed against the snow, en masse, filled me with such glee that I felt compelled to instantly create a blog contest around the idea of who can feasibly wear, at a single point in time, the most projects that they have handknit themselves. The basic idea of the contest is very simple and I am sure the skilled/longterm knitters amongst you can probably beat my paltry, accidental, un-premeditated score of 5 knitted items with an enormous and innovative pile of your own.

1. Cairn tea-cosy
2. Feather and fan scarf
3. Guinness Shrug
4. Fyberspates fingerless gloves
5. Layter

To enter, simply put on as many knitted items as you can sensibly* wear, get someone to take a photograph of you in said items in the snow, then upload this photo to your blog with links to all the projects you are wearing on your Ravelry Projects Page, and leave a comment here to announce that you have done so.

This is an extremely silly contest, so there aren’t really any serious rules. However, with the ever wise and sagely insights of Liz this evening at our Bluestockings meeting, we decided that it is probably not OK, for instance, to photograph yourself swathed in 16 scarves to boost your project-count. However, boot-socks on top of thinner socks, on top of a pair of tights is quite acceptable if this is how you are combatting the cold with your considerable knitted prowess during this cold spell. For each knitted item that you manage to cram into your January 2010 BIG FREEZE Ravelry Projects Snowcase Contest™ entry photograph, you will score 1 point. However, consideration will also be given to the following elements of your entry;

1. Ingenuity of layering. How ingenious is your use of different, handknitted layers?
2. Inclusion of rare/highly-specific types of garments. Snoods, cowls, shawls, mufflers, and other items probably-only-owned-by-handknitters types of garments will all be viewed highly favourably in terms of overall entry score if incorporated.

The contest stays open until the snow has all melted and the temperature has stabilised above 0 degrees Celcius. I am following all the weather-announcements I can in my twitterfeed so hopefully I will be able to confidently announce the end of the contest when it comes!

The person with the highest amount of points overall for facing the cold down with their handknitted goodness will be officially declared The winner of the January 2010 BIG FREEZE Ravelry Projects Snowcase Contest™, (AKA WOOL-FACTOR**) and will receive a collated bundle of wonderment in the post, organised by myself. This will include one knitting book, some yarn, probably a mixtape, perhaps some knitting, and definitely a lot of love. As a marvellous side-effect of this project, perhaps the wealth of woolly imagery will help to stave off the misery of all this coldness!

ETA – The inspiring Skeinqueen of Reading, Berkshire, has informed me that the contest winner will receive a skein of her beautiful yarn in the package! If you haven’t seen her yarn already, do check it out on Skeinqueen.co.uk, also the lovely Anarchy in the UK kits designed by Alabamawhirly, and knit with SQ yarn. Skilled local artists; we haz dem.

ETA – ***THE CLOSING DEADLINE FOR THE SNOWCASE HAS NOW BEEN EXTENDED AGAIN TO 10TH FEBRUARY BECAUSE THERE HAS BEEN MORE SNOW!***

*’sensibly’ in this contest is quite a loose term, open to variable interpretations
**Have you got the WOOL-FACTOR?

After reading Oxford Kitchen Yarn’s moving and well-written post on her creative aspirations for the next year, and following the links to Bowerbird’s C.O.N.T.E.S.T., I decided to put togther something here, detailing the creative challenges I want to set myself for between now and this point next year. I decided that, in the spirit of review, I would use photos from exactly one year ago to illustrate each point within this post. So we have images from last year, the 5th August, when The Oxford Bluestockings enjoyed a marvellous yarn crawl together in London, combined with my aspirations for the coming year.

Firstly, I want to cultivate the small projects that keep me physically making. I’m talking about constantly stocking my Etsy store with little things, always having a swap on the go, and finding ingenious ways of having small and mindful objects flowing through my life. This is coupled with the desire to cultivate and appreciate small moments where form, colour, image and idea come together. I’m talking about feeding my habits re: creation and appreciation.

However, unlike in this photo I took last year in Wagamama where brand new chopsticks are carefully combined with costly Habu yarn for the sake of an ‘Art Moment,’ I want my creative endeavours to become more and more reliant on imagination and engagement and less and less reliant on expensive raw materials. I would like to develop a habit of creating beauty abundantly and inexpensively.

I aim to cultivate a practise of constant making, to always have rough patches on my hands.

I intend to make objects that inspire out of the backs of flour bags, saved pieces of brown paper envelopes, odd ends of string and old cereal packets; to bring attention to the value of such things and to render them beautiful through effort and mindfulness. And I want to do it all the time, and make it a habit. My first creative challenge for myself is To Make All The Time, Out Of Anything.

Secondly, I want to develop a podcast out of my experiences with the Fantastical Reality Radio Show and The Missability Radio Show. I want to continue building my radio portfolio and to begin integrating more and more everyday and found sounds into what I create. I want to find a listenership and to become involved, through radio and podcasting, in an online creative community.

Here is one of the letter-pressed fliers I handmade, advertising The Missability Radio Show Knitted Walking Stick Cosy Competition. The competition didn’t garner the large response I wished for; I am still learning why this was. I especially want to understand, – and this is the greatest creative challenge I am setting myself – what inspires a person to participate? So my second creative challenge is To Discover More About What Draws People In.

I also want to make a museum of mindful things, based on the interviews Mundane Appreciation and I did for the Fantastical Reality Radio Show, to attend with great care to the details of peoples’ lives. I have been constantly haunted, for instance, by one interview Mundane Appreciation conducted with a man who once had a bad encounter with a stapler. He now only uses sellotape, for fear of hurting his hand. I wish to attend to such feelings, captured in conversation. To knit a stapler for the man who is afraid of the real thing. To beautify the washing-up area for the person who hates washing up. To Attend To The Details Of Life And To Love Them. That is my third creative challenge to myself. This is the spirit in which I made my polka dot walking stick cosy; to Attend To Something. The Museum is just one way that I might do this, but there are other ways… my creative challenge is to find them and to develop them. How does a person make affirmative art work? That is the question.

These creative challenges serve to underpin a much more focussed and detailed portfolio of practise-based PhD research, all being well with my funding for year 2.I have learned in my first year of PhD studies that I need concrete projects and a huge range of creative strategies on hand to just keep on making work. With sometimes a month between meetings, no solid deadlines for handing in a dissertation and a vague, self-directed study programme, the onus is on me to keep my internal fires alight. The broader and more generalistic creative challenges I’ve set myself here are the things that underpin the day-to-day development of actual art projects. The weekly plans are the nuts and bolts; this is the architectural drawing and the manifesto:

* To Make All The Time, Out Of Anything.
* To Discover More About What Draws People In.
* To Attend To The Details Of Life And To Love Them.

To write about your own creative challenges, go to Bowerbird Knits and check out the C.O.N.T.E.S.T. for yourself.