Boys Boys Boys

You know how I'm always complaining that men get so much attention for doing "women's work?"

Brief review for those who answered no:

• How come when men do it it's news?
• Man handled
• Review of Free Range Knitter
• Will I get a Show When I Top 500
• Football Player and Crocheter
• Or Something Like That

New York Magazine hates that too. (The video is kind of awesome, but you should read the article.)

Man Handled

Oh, media, I love you and your search to make sense of our weird and wonderful world. First, there's this guy in England who's been knitting a tube since the late 80s. I shit you not.

So, what exactly do you do with 17 miles of i-cord? And frankly, has the "i" in i-cord ever been more apt? Actually it's spool knitting, which is apparently known as "French knitting" in England. (Always blaming the French...) All joking aside, he is one of us: "I just sit and watch the telly and do the knitting , it comes naturally to me and I find it calms me down" (emphasis added).

This Boston Globe article {via Craft Gossip} focuses on boys doing girl stuff, like cooking and reading in groups and knitting. Oh, my!

Don't worry, an expert on gender roles has told them, "Since men are marrying later, they tend to like hobbies and organizations that either include women or have the potential to lead them to women." So it's still about sex. Phew. I was worried there for a moment. (Seriously, you called a professor of mass communications? You couldn't talk to a real gender studies professor?)

"There is another reason men are turning to traditions previously seen as more feminine. They don’t care about that stigma, especially men who have already settled down into family life*." You think? And I'm pretty sure the gender studies professor would have given you a better quote about that than some market researcher.

*In some ways I think this is supposed to be code for "they're not gay." Thank heavens that is changing. 

 Soon, "family" won't be code for anything. Oh, happy day. See also this quote, "All men. All married." Funnily enough, there are complaints in the comments about the Globe's "gay agenda." Whatever you do, whatever you do, do not read the comments. 

Free-Range Thinking

This year, one of my resolutions is to read more. I didn't read nearly enough books last year, though one of the ones I did read was Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Free-Range Knitter. I enjoyed it because it overlaps with things I've been thinking...but she's a real writer who spent the time to flesh out her ideas.

In "Ken" she takes on the phenomenon of the crafter y-chromosome. You know, how the media covers them more or their towns put together shows for them, or in her example, how women swoon all over them like the male knitter is "a valuable racehorse." She extends her critique of our low expectations of men to women who gush when men "help" with the housework or "babysit" the kids. She concludes,

The next time you see a man knitting, try to treat him like he's not exceeding your expectations or walking on water, even if you are sort of impressed and really have to fake it.
Remember if you can do it, so can he.

I think when I start writing about this, the top of my head gets all explode-y. (I remember Maggie...have I told you this one? When the dude and I were living with my cousin and commuting three hours a day, Maggie and my aunt came to take care of my nieces while my cousin and her husband were out of town. I would come home, and to help my aunt out, I'd make dinner for the adults. After dinner, the dude would do the dishes. Maggie says, "I hate to see a man do the dishes. He worked hard all day." Um, hello? Maggie was the only one of us who hadn't worked hard all day, but don't mistake what she said for an offer.)

In "Knitting Self-Esteem" Pearl-McPhee posits that we have individuals and whole cultures trying to undermine our self-worth, and that knitting takes us to a place where we are good enough simply because we knit.

When I knit well and make beautiful things, it reminds me that I'm a winner* and a person who gets things done...Knitting could be a phone line that rings straight into the kitchen of your inner self and says, 'Hello? I just wanted to call and tell you that you're wrong about me. I'm great, and I have the socks to prove it.'

I think that's what the marquoir does for me. In fact, the marquoir reminds me of writing my dissertation. It was a huge, unfathomable project that I got done by sheer perseverance--sometimes writing every day, sometimes leaving it to languish for (gasp!) years. I didn't get my dissertation done in the "average" time, and I haven't gotten the marquoir done on the schedule of the designers (16 months). But in the end, I (will) get it done. In some ways I'm more of a long distance runner; I certainly have endurance. Certainly there are times when my tiny self esteem worries that we'll never reach the finish line.

I had to return the book before I could flesh out all my ideas about it, but it's worth picking up if you haven't read it yet.


*In the pre-Charlie Sheen sense.

I Must Have Something I Could Be Doing...

Boy, I'm chatty this week. I must have too much to do around the house before we go on our abbreviated vacation/second wedding reception trip/formal family photo sitting {ugh} to Maine. Not chatty enough for a real post though.

Here are a few things that caught my eye recently that I didn't put on pinterest. I don't post to pinterest often--mostly because I don't actually surf the internet enough--but it's a fabulous place to say, "hey, I like this." I may try to convert my mom when I see her on the av/swrt/ffps{u}. Then maybe someone will buy me the Miu Miu shoes I fell head over heels in love with. Or not.

• "Your Crafts are not Renegade Enough for the Renegade Craft Fair" at McSweeney's. Which is a funny version of some of the points I've tried to make about Kid's Today reinventing wheels. {ht to Adrienne}
• Hand-embroidered retro-style travel pillows. I'd love to have a small collection in the map room (study). I'd even pay that price not to have to embroider them myself! {via Pink Loves Brown}
• Tea cozy contest in Australia. Here's the pull quote: "There was even a cross-stitched cosy from a male entrant who said he started his project at school more than 50 years ago." F-I-F-T-Y years to finish a project. I look like Speedy Gonzales all of a sudden. I appreciate you, sir.

Many thanks for the comments on my recent finishes, especially the patriotic needlebook. I can't take any credit for the style of it. All props go to The Silver Needle staff, Mona especially. All I had to do was figure out how to link each piece with the fabric hinges, where to put those straps and this ribbon, and which direction everything should face. I didn't have to cut mat board or batting or sew any of the fabric hinges. Even the ribbon was cut to the right size. They made it so easy!

This house isn't going to clean itself and my bags aren't even packed. Ta for now.

Newsworthy

It's only day three. I can't really be falling back on the google alerts already, can I?

No, I need to run out and get my haircut as soon as this post is up. How did it come to pass that the time has already arrived? The first car is dead (again) (I told that mechanic that if I had to come back with a dead battery that I would be very angry, and yet...). Fortunately, we kept the second car because SEPTA is out on strike and the poor dude was stranded about 30 blocks shy of his office this morning (where the suburban vehicles become city vehicles). And he only thought of getting a cab after someone else arrived at work in a hired car. So, all those other things I meant to get done today before I went out to the hair dresser? A little bit undone. But I did vote.

Phew. Thank you for all the kind words about the pooch and the "cleaner" craft room. I wonder what other treasures lie buried in there. (Because I'm a long way from done.) I doubt it will be hand addressed envelopes that I unearth next. (Coni, I use labels. And a xeroxed holiday letter.)

Here's what the innernets has for us:

• For people of a certain age.I like this, and you may recall that I recently bought some things from chez sucre chez. But how tired tired tired am I about the idea that cross-stitch is always twee? Yes, if you go to Michaels, Joanns, and Hobby Lobby, you’re going to see twee things. There’s more to the stitching life! Get your ass in a cross-stitch store.
• Celebrity face in cross-stitch, # 324 in a series. What is it that drives grown women to cross-stitch a strange man’s face? (By which I mean the face of a man she’s not related to. I mean, is the celebrity crush about to offer sex in exchange for hundreds if not thousands of hours of cross-stitching?) (Though I kind of mean—eek!—look at Engelbert Humperdink’s face.)
• More celebrity yadda yadda. Does it even look like Robert Pattinson?
• More evidence that boys get all the attention.

In the News

Well, I should have known my readers would be in the know. Or, you know, too frightened of me to say anything bad about my politics (evil grin).

I'm working on a secret project right now (even though I have eleventy-million things on my list of August goals), so I have nothing to show. I do, however, have a few interesting items I found in the news to share.

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Biker Babes
From an ad for online photo sharing

“Perhaps you belong to a cross-stitching club or the other end of the spectrum, a motorcycle or classic car club.”

But what of the women who stitch these?

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Aren’t Stitchers Dumb?
From a Salt Lake Tribune article on the two women chiefs-of-staff for the senators from Utah:

[Her bag] also holds her latest cross-stitch or needlepoint work and she surprises people when she starts stitching in the middle of staff meetings or negotiations with Democratic staffers. They are more surprised when they realize she has understood and distilled everything that has gone on.

Her sense of humor can be as sharp and pointed as her needles - and can rub some the wrong way, say those who know her.

Teehee—don’t anyone tell them she’s stitching with blunt needles! But, yeah, how come you can't listen and stitch at the same time? Is it because others find it difficult to walk and chew gum?

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And Men are Great at Everything
An article from Monroe County News on a woman's county fair prizes

Leonard Hopkins Jr. of Trenton presented the award. He has been presenting the award for the last couple of years. He's a former Homemaker of the Year for Wayne County.

Crochet Boise Beanies

Today's College Game Day featured a profile of Ian Johnson (pictured left), a tailback from Boise State who's one helluva crocheter. Seriously. He wanted a hat one winter, so his mother taught him to crochet. In high school he made as much as $600 selling his crocheted goods. When he first started college, he couldn't give them away (he was selling them at $15 a pop); now that he's scoring 13 points a game, he's got a backlog of 100 orders (still only $15).

You know I tend to complain when guys get attention for doing crafts that women do all the time--no one's written an article about me learning to shoot and fish before I could ride a bike, have they?--but this guy's got a real charm about him (you wouldn't figure from the photo, but you could see it on the teevee).

Now I want a beanie.

Will I Get a Show When I Top 500?

A New Windsor man had a show which gathered all of his cross-stitch pieces--500 of them--for a show in his hometown. Once he hit 500 he wanted to see them all together. I just have the feeling though, if some crazy broad went over number 500 and wanted to hang them all up in the local Y, the local newspaper wouldn't have thought it newsworthy. Well, if I wanted to have my 500 projects covered in the paper, I imagine I would have to move to a tiny little town.

What I liked about this guy was how he put a mini-journal on the back of all his pieces. Reminding himself what was going on in the world and with the weather--are all old people obsessed with the weather? I ask because my grandmother always asks about the weather and gives me a dissertation on hers whenever we talk on the phone. You can imagine how boring this was when I lived in Los Angeles. At any rate, he must be a one-at-a-timer because he can do that. I mean how would I write a message about the ten years I've spent on Toy Gatherer, to name one? It's an idea, though. And I put it out there for you.

Or Something Like That...

"Outstanding" by John Ryan
From Redding.com, the Redding, (northern) CA paper

Not bad for a guy who also has a mean counter-cross stitch, skills he showed en route to a December tournament.
Spoon says he didn't actually see Schaub break out the needles -- he resigned to a different van after losing to Schaub in a battle of wills for "shotgun" -- but he heard all about it.
"People were calling me from the other van saying that Alex was crocheting from 'my' front seat," Spoon chuckled. "I actually saw his finished work, it was pretty good."
His coaches were just as ... impressed.
"Yeah, I didn't find out about that until we went down to Vacaville," Elliott said. "We stopped and ate, and one of my assistant coaches, my JV coach gets in the van and says, 'You know what Alex is doing right now?'"
Elliott said it was an ongoing razz for the rest of the year.
"Yeah, he was my first (knitter) and maybe my last," Elliott said. "Unless there are some more Alex Schaubs out there ... doubt it, though, with that kind of talent.

Apparently the young man also drives the puck hard when he shoots the baskets. I understand that boys get confused about "women's work." My dad refers to my stitching as "knitting." Isn't it amazing, thought, that some of us girls manage to remember the rules of football, basketball, hockey, soccer, and baseball. (Although the infield fly rule does boggle the mind...) And we remember these rules all while we are playing at counter (sic) cross-stitch.

Extra points to she who can answer this headscratcher: which form of needlework does the young man do?