Craftivism?

I know I have not been updating this blog as much as I should, and I apologize. I have been having a bit of writer's block: so much is going on in my city, my country. Living in DC, we are really on the edges of the maelstrom: we know so many people who are deeply involved in politics and government, and there is a low-level anxiety to almost every interaction.

Hopefully, my federal job will not be part of the purges (but who knows when statistical agencies might become the enemy), and my husband is a federal contractor (defense is probably a safe industry), but we live in scary times. It is hard to just write about ordinary things.

So I guess I will compromise. I won't talk about ordinary things, I will talk about craftivism.

If you haven't heard the term, craftivism is putting your time and effort into works of art for a cause. A well-known example is the AIDS memorial quilt, which powerfully brought visibility to the AIDS epidemic in the United States.

What is the appeal of craftivism? Most obviously, it is fun - people like crafting, and they like having a reason to craft. But there are other benefits. People spend hours crafting - and hours thinking about the cause, whatever it is. They often come together to craft, and those sewing circles or stitch and bitch sessions can be places to plan and organize political or social movements. There are other benefits to the movements as well - art grabs people's attention, especially coordinated art.

Which brings us to today's most noticeable instance of craftivism: the pussy hat project.

Me and fellow marchers wearing pussy hats on Jan 21. I made the three on the left.

If you hadn't heard of the project, it was an effort to get knitters, crocheters, and sewers from across the country, whether they were going to a Women's March or not, to contribute by making a pink hat for a marcher to wear. Many of the hats had "pussy" ears, in a sideways reference to the President's disparaging remarks. This project demonstrates one of the most powerful parts of craftivism - craftivism can convey a sense of magnitude even beyond the sheer numbers of people marching.

Marchers on Independence Avenue in DC, about 2 pm Jan 21st

Not only are all of these women and men marching for women's rights, but they have a common dress code. The hats are pink, but not just one shade of pink, because most were handmade by a marcher or a friend. The hours of crafting to make hundreds of thousands of unique hats is overwhelming, and sends a powerful message. Pictures taken at any of the US marches are unmistakable, because of the ubiquitous pink hats with cat ears.

Now, this is a crafting blog, so I should talk about the three hats I made.

I saw this as the perfect opportunity to use up that hideous pink yarn that was gifted to me a decade ago. I don't really like flamboyant clothing, so I really had nothing to make with it until now. But marches are for wearing eye-catching things, so the yarn was perfect. Plus, I didn't have much pink yarn, as I'm not usually a fan of the color.

My first hat was made almost entirely with the eyelash yarn, and is pretty eye-catching.

Pussy Hat #1

I held the yarn double, and knitted it in the round. I used a pale pink wool from my stash for the ears (I used intarsia techniques) and finished it off with kitchener stitch: no decreasing required. The yarn was pretty annoying to work with (it was nearly impossible to see what the previous stitch was, or even count my stitches) but I definitely got a lot of attention working with it on my metro commute!

Hats 2 and 3 were more normal. I didn't have much left of the eyelash yarn, so I just used it for a bottom border.

Pussy hats #2 and #3

I used similar techniques for these hats, but smaller needles. I pretty much used up all of my pink yarn, which is why I also used some of the lavender alpaca yarn from North Light Fibers (it actually looks mauve when it isn't contrasted with the pink).

My husband wearing one of my pussy hats at the march

I found making the pussy hats to be more meaningful than I expected. I started with the idea that I would just make one to use up some of my pink yarn. But there was something pretty powerful about knitting for a larger purpose, and I became somewhat addicted to looking at pictures of the hats that others had made. My local yarn shop had knitting circles to make them. It was an important part of the march for me.

As an aside, I also wanted to show off my latest purchase. This is also tangentially related to craftivism though. I follow a group called The Yarn Mission on Twitter, mostly for the pretty pictures of knitwear that they post. But they are a craftivism group for black liberation. I recently bought some fiber from them:

Hand-Dyed roving from The Yarn Mission. Sandy decided that he wanted to be in the picture.

I love that the colors utilize a traditionally African American color palette. The only thing that I am worried about is that it was advertised as good for "spinning and felting". Usually, if it is good for felting, it is not good for spinning. I guess I will see when I spin it up.

Dyeing for the first time

Whelp, I did some dyeing. I know I said that it was too messy and I wouldn't do it, but my shawl needed a bit of color, and I was bound and determined to make everything in it from raw fleece. So I bought a small amount of acid dye (enough to dye 4 lbs of wool, the smallest amount they sold) and did a bit of dyeing today. I am currently waiting for it to dry so that I can find out whether or not it felted.

First, I started with a small amount of wool. I scoured 2 oz using dish soap, ammonia, and vinegar (just like I did for the rest of the shawl). The tips were still crusty, but flicking should deal with that when I spin.

Dry leicester wool, ready to dye

I took about an ounce and made sure it would fit in my "dye pot": a mason jar.

Measuring out an ounce of wool

Next, I soaked the wool in warm water for an hour, to make extra sure that all of the soap was out.

Soaking the wool

I mixed a small amount of dye powder with water in the mason jar while the wool soaked. Unfortunately, I didn't have any way of measuring the tiny amount of dye I would need for only an ounce of wool (the directions call for 1/4 ounce of powder per pound of wool). So I guessed the amount. Maybe I should have bought something to measure? I did get a dust mask though - the dye powder can be hazardous!

I filled the mason jar halfway with hot water from the tap before putting in the wool. I didn't want to agitate the wool by filling up the jar with it in there.

Jar filled with dye

After adding two tablespoons of vinegar to set the dye, I cooked the wool in a double boiler for an hour, making sure that the water never got hotter than a simmer. Occasionally, I would turn the wool over with a chopstick.

Cooking the wool and dye

I must have put it the right amount, because the water was almost entirely clear when I pulled the wool out, and the rinsing required was minimal before no more dye came off the wool.

I set it to dry on some newspapers. It's a bit darker than I was going for (though we will see how it looks when it finishes drying) but I can always mix it with the undyed wool for a lighter color. Well, how do you think it looks?

Wet, dyed wool locks

Spinning with Color

One of the hardest things to learn about buying fiber for spinning is that, no matter how pretty the fiber colors are, it will not look like that when it is spun.

Unless you are doing a gradient of some kind, the colors will mix and mingle as you spin them. You get this a bit with knitting variegated yarns, but less so - for the most part, the colors never "run" together like a bad watercolor.

Now, maybe I am just inexperienced, and, if I knew what I was doing I could get clean, clear color transitions. But I think that it is more than a matter of technique. If I want that kind of yarn, I need to dye it after I spin it.

So, for instance, if I buy wool that looks like this:

Yellow wool from Little Barn

The final yarn will be much more uniform, with almost no variation across the yarn:

An early yarn made on my wheel, 2-ply

There is a depth of color, but the shading that I really enjoyed in the fiber just isn't there in the final yarn.

Sometimes, the colors I get are completely unexpected though:

Jacob roving from Blue Flower Flock

I thought that this would come out mostly white, with a bit of gray tinge. Nope! I got a nice, dark tweed.

Three-ply Jacob skein

And finally, the spinning project that inspired this post. I took a batt of dyed coopworth and spinnoodled (this is now a thing) a small skein this week. I could tell that the locks had been partially felted when they were dyed, and the drum carder had difficulty in making a usable batt. But the colors were really interesting:

Rough coopworth batt from Blue Moon Fiber Arts

Maybe I just don't know how to handle this kind of stripey fiber, but it came out really weirdly blended:

2-ply skein on the niddy-noddy

Maybe it is just me, but the colors don't seem to match at all with what I started with.

Here is a close-up:

Well, it is interesting. I don't know what I will make with it. Maybe I will only spin from uniform colors in the future, and leave variegated yarns to the dye vat.