Interdisclipinary Cross-Fertilisation

The school holidays are over, and it is back to the old routine. I was working very hard in academia in the last two weeks; a complicated ethics application and then a last minute edit for a team’s grant application, a job through the research office. Very little knitting… but when I picked up the vest again – I knew exactly where I was at with it, thanks to Walter’s new regime of swatching, record keeping and instruction writing policy!

And now it occurred to me that I must really marry my two disciplines!

I started writing a real pattern for the red vest! And I will take pictures of all the details and publish them as a knitting pattern with tutorial in different sizes!

Not sure why this sounds so revolutionary to me, but you have seen all my previous notes and instructions for my projects, which I barely am able to follow a second time ’round myself; Timothy’s Bull jumper is a brilliant example of this. But since I am in stringent editing mode in my work at this moment, I will apply it to knitting, so others can enjoy the benefits! Watch this space!

A weekend at the Northern Rivers

I should never leave home without camera… I have been in Lismore for the week end, what different life style, mentality, pace… I flew up to Ballina and stayed near Clunes in a small villa. The purpose of the trip was training another 24 Ethics teachers for Primary Ethics at the Southern Cross University.

Mission accomplished! As always, we had the most amazing people volunteering for this task, to teach Ethics to primary school children, giving their time and spirit to enable children to develop critical thinking skills, as well as embarking on their own personal journey in volunteering for this role.

Being thrown together with these people from all walks of life was – as always – a deeply enriching experience and I feel truly inspired by all the conversations we had in the breaks, as well by all the contributions to the course as such!

I will just have to go back, for a girls week end and enjoy the peace of that beautiful place!

And I have just about no photos, just a few I took with my phone. So no pictures of stray dogs walking the streets of Nimbin, all the beautiful vegetation, cane fields at the side of the road, sculptures of big female forms made from old car doors…

My Knitting Process (2)

There is so much talk about how best to achieve a good result in knitting! And there is no one right answer. Here are two books that summarize exactly how I have done it for years. When I came across these books, I felt like I reconnected with a long lost friend.

To me, these two books are what Simone Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’, Aristotle’s ‘Virtue Ethics’ or Immanuel Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ are to a Philosopher.

I have done “it” intuitively for so many years, and whenever I rush or stray from this approach, I pay the price: unraveling, unraveling, unraveling. I start with an idea, a gauge, a shape, a paper pattern, some arithmetic, lot’s of scribbling and then knitting – and a lot of checking as I go.

These two books are truly wonderful, thank you Maggie Righetti! “Knitting in Plain English” spends the first of the four parts on everything you need to know before you cast on! It is a comprehensive course in knitting.

“Sweater Design in Plain English” takes the magic and the good luck factor out of knitwear design – it delivers all the essential knowledge of the thought process, the creativity and combines those with sound rules about how knitted fabric behaves and how the human body works. It is so thorough – it starts talking about how design flaws are usually disguised in fashion photography. As a trained tailor, I think this is the most sophisticated book for designing knitwear.

Both books are a fun to read, needless to say. Thrillers.

An old friend

There has been no shed activity, just work work work and on top of work a number of meetings relating to my first training of Ethics Primary School teachers. It is very exiting to be involved with this project. So for the purpose of this post, I am digging out an old friend of mine.

I bought this Guatemalan jacket in Germany about 20 years ago. I fell in love with it. It was too big, too wide in the shoulders. I didn’t care. I wore it for years, but 2 winters ago I just had enough of wearing this ill filling jacket. I can be turn it into a nicely fitted jacket, a bit more of a tailored look!

I took it apart, re- cut the sleeves, put darts in the back and the front. I had to remove a pocket to put a dart in – then I had to hand sew the slit close… Because the shoulders are the right width now, the sleeves are 6 cm too short. I have to find some black fabric for the cuffs…. all in all a HUGE job, but really worth it.

I will wear it this winter!

Here is something to cheer us up in this rain – Josephine took this picture a few weeks ago on a wonderful sunny dog walk.