Archive for April, 2009

I love my math class

April 27, 2009

I don’t think I’ve ever thought those words to myself before Saturday.  But I do.  I love my math class.

Math is one of those subjects that is clearly important and yet has, until recently, seemed really endlessly boring to me.  It’s not that I was awful at it, though some days I certainly feel that way.  I’ve actually always tested well in math, but I’ve rarely intuitively understood why the more complex processes work, and if you’re like me, you want to know why.  My current math class comes at a point in my life when I’m older, more serious, and more determined to understand than ever before, and I’m really getting it.  I keep seeing all these connections and patterns and I can feel my brain expanding.

My class is on Saturdays, and it lasts for close to five hours.  Around 10:30, when we usually have our break, I’m downright peckish, but also hyped up and thrilled with the sudden influx of knowledge.  Yesterday, as I went to buy a slice of pumpkin bread and a green tea, I had this momentous feeling of connection.  I couldn’t stop thinking, and, sitting down in my desk again to nosh, I unwrapped the pumpkin bread and inhaled the spicy smell.  I’m currently reading a book about spices, and the smell made me think of just how far those spices traveled to end up in my bread, how expensive they would have been a mere few generations prior.  They would have evoked lands unknown, having traveled from one merchant to another until the point of origin was mere legend.  Today, most of those spices still come from India and surrounding islands.  The pumpkin, like so many gourds and squashes, is a North American native, but has flourished well in Europe.  We must have common pollinators – so many Spanish treasures lost their value when they proved easy to grow in the Old World.  The green tea, like the spices, comes from Asia.  And the sugar for my tea and bread was cane sugar, which likely came from the Southern U.S., but in the past would have come from the Caribbean.   My inexpensive breakfast was a miniature history of imperialism.  I was gulping down what once would have been seen as treasure as though it was what it was – a cheap mid morning snack to get me through the remaining hours of math class.  Imagine.

I like that about my math class.  So much of math is about connections and pattern recognition, and once I’m in that mindset, it takes a little while to turn it off.  I keep seeing new ways of looking at my life, and I like it.

After class, I took BART to my stop, about a mile from home, and since it was a gorgeous day, I walked.  My brain was still humming, and I decided to apply it to knitting for a while.  I’m still thinking a lot about the subject of knitting classes and design, and the relation between the two.  The comments on my post were really interesting, and I’ve been reading some of the many other blog posts on the subject.  I think, like so many subjects, there’s not really so much disagreement as there are shades of opinion that amount to approximately the same thing.  I think we can all agree that licenses should be honored and that designers and shops need to be aware of licensing rules, and that designers should be credited for their work.

Anyway, the conclusion I’ve been led to is in some ways a little depressing, but it’s that to avoid abuse, the best thing to do is to charge for patterns in the first place.  I’m not sure where the rule originates, but I remember, even from childhood on, hearing that one should never offer kittens or puppies for free, even if you want to be rid of them, because putting even a miniscule price on them tends to weed out the cranks and villains.  People who want to misuse something also don’t want to pay for it.  Of course there are people who will misuse paid material as well, but even a token price tag will help deter the folks who really are unscrupulous.  This doesn’t solve the whole problem, but until unscrupulous behavior ceases entirely, there will be problems that will arise.

I’m sorry for the lack of pictures in this entry.  It’s not for lack of projects, but the only one I’ve actually photographed recently is one of those secret projects, which is a shame, as it’s also the only work I’ve done for Project Spectrum.  You’ll see it soon, though!

Posted in Design, Miscellany | 2 Comments »

Quadtastic!

April 21, 2009

I will be posting a second post about the designer/teacher issue, but things got ahead of me, and before I got to that, we had a fourth birthday that I feel takes precedence.  I mean, how often does your daughter turn the big oh four?  Not that often!

Teeth.  Nora’s got ‘em!

We had a lovely day.  The birthday girl had a couple of friends over, friends with lovely parents, which is really key when you’re throwing a birthday celebration. I’m not the most social person out there, so it makes me very, very happy when my children befriend kiddos with parents I can really talk to.  The key seems to be having hermitlike tendencies that mean your child is mostly exposed only to the children of people you’d actually choose to leave the house to see.

Money’s been a rather tight of late, so I decided to revive last year’s failed birthday knit.  I already had the yarn, and several completed limbs of a Muswell cat that had been sitting in a drawer for a year.  It’s such an adorable pattern, but I don’t love dpns, and knitting with worsted weight yarn on size 2 needles was painful and tiring, so I’d done my see no evil trick and shoved the whole thing into the drawer, which is the knitting equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion.  I shove it there to forget.

But with the birthday deadline looming, the cat made a reappearance.  This is a girl who loves dolls and cats and playing dress up with her toys, and I knew that if I could actually finish the darn thing, it would be a big old hit.  There was a minor catch, however.  When I bought the pattern, I downloaded a PDF to my computer.  I printed out one copy and used that to get started.  In the months between when I started and when I took it up again, my hard drive crashed and all patterns saved to the computer were lost.  The one copy of the pattern I’d printed was missing one or two pages.  And since I was trying to save money, I didn’t want to buy a second copy right then.

This means that the muzzle and the ears and the dress are made up out of my head, and any wonkiness is due to my limited imagination and time constraints, not the pattern, which is extremely well written and adorable.  I left off the tail, figuring I didn’t have time and that the dress would fit better without it.  This was a lucky decision.  I had one skein of Cascade 220, and to finish the limbs, body, head, and ears, took all of it.  I have only a few yards left.  The muzzle was knitted in Rowanspun 4 ply, held triple, and the dress is a random skein I got in a swap.  I suspect it to be Kathmandu Tweed DK, but cannot prove it.

I don’t have a picture of it, but there’s a detail I really like on the dress. The straps cross in back and I used some really cute buttons on the inside of the dress so that Eleanor can take the dress on and off.  Since she’s currently into pink and bows, the dress has a little bow right on the front.

I’m really, really happy with this project.  Nora loved it, and has been carrying it about since she got it.  The cat is named Fleesa, after a cat she’s been drawing a lot lately.  It was pretty cool to see her realize that – ZOUNDS! – the character she’d imagined had somehow become tangible!  She has already requested more clothes for the fleecy feline, and Fleesa is sleeping in her bed at night.

All in all, a successful venture!

Posted in Miscellany, Toys | 10 Comments »

What think you?

April 15, 2009

Having gotten good feedback on one complex set of opinions, I have another set of complicated opinions to put out there.  Please comment, argue, let me know what you think.  My opinion seems to be at a slightly different angle than most of the knitting world so far, so it’s certainly possible that I’m wrong or that I’m out of step.

The lovely Pam at Flint Knits recently posted about yarn stores using free patterns to teach classes.  I dig Pam’s blog and patterns and photos, so I’m always interested in what she has to say.  She was responding to an earlier post by Kate at Zeitgeist Yarns about her own patterns and their use.  Both of these ladies have generously offered some truly beautiful patterns for free, and if you’re not familiar with their work, I encourage you to check them out.  (There are a bunch of other blog posts on this – these are just the two I read.)

Kate and Pam had slightly different points, but I wanted to address the parts I agree with before I get to the parts where my opinions differ.  First of all, even the simplest pattern takes a good deal of work to write up so that other knitters can replicate your original.  Sizing patterns takes a good deal more work.  When designers offer their patterns for free, the very least that you can give them is credit.  Free means that you don’t have to pay for it, but it does not mean that the work is without worth, and credit is most of what designers have.  If you love a pattern enough to knit it, you love it enough to credit the person who took the time to think it up and put it down for you to knit.

Apparently, some local yarn stores have been offering classes in popular free patterns without crediting the designers or sources, and I think this is plain wrong.  I also think it’s wrong if the use violates the license on the pattern, as in the case of Kate’s free patterns.  However, I think there are some points being made about free patterns and the law that miss the mark.

First off, is it wrong for a yarn store to offer a class using a free pattern?  My answer would be, “Sometimes.”

In the case of a pattern with an explicit license forbidding use in a commercial venture, then yes.  In the case of a pattern that a store prints out and distributes without crediting the source, then yes.

However, if the store offers a class in a for-sale pattern, it’s usually a requirement that class participants purchase a copy of the book or pattern ahead of time.  If stores are directing class participants to obtain their own copies of the free pattern from the original source, then I don’t really see the problem, unless the pattern is, of course, licensed specifically against commercial use.

A momentary digression about licenses.  Licenses are contracts.  When you download any pattern, free or paid, you are, in essence, signing a contract to abide by the rules imposed by the license.  Not all patterns have a license attached.  Most of mine don’t.  Those that do, though, should inform you of the terms before you download the pattern.  Even if they don’t, your use of the pattern constitutes agreement.

What licenses are not is the law.  You cannot be dragged into criminal court over a license.  You can be sued, though, for violating a contract or for violating copyright law.  This is unlikely in the case of individuals, but could be justified if, say, a major manufacturer was violating copyright on a pattern.

Back to the subject of classes.  This is where I start to diverge from the opinions I’ve read thus.  I certainly do not think that knitting classes are making money unfairly in teaching from free patterns.  What is being sold, provided the patterns are obtained fairly, is instruction.  Knitting teachers who are not violating copyright have to create their own class materials, have to come up with methods of instruction, have to create a whole class schedule around their chosen project.  Looking at classes offered in the area, the focus is on skills obtained with an attractive finished object as a motivator.  You want to learn cables?  Great, we’ll make a cabled hat.  It’s more fun than a big old swatch.

Knitting teachers are sometimes designers, but not always.  And that is because these are separate skills.  If I want to take a class in modern American literature, I am not going to start ringing up authors on the New York Times Bestseller list.  If I sign up to take a class about themes of loneliness in American literature from 1955 to the present then I’m going to look at classes offered at local schools, and I’m going to have to purchase the class materials, which are certainly going to include books that are under copyright.  If the teacher wanted to refer to materials freely available on the internet, but still under copyright (this is increasingly common) then the teacher needs to refer the students to the source.

What he or she doesn’t need to do is ask permission of the authors to teach their work.  Though the teacher’s salary comes from teaching the words of other people, the skill of teaching is separate from the skill of writing.  There are many great writers who are not good teachers, and many great teachers who are not good writers.

Knitting classes are not simply a matter of printing out a pattern and handing it to people in the class.  The reason people take a class in the first place is because they want to get instruction, not because they want the pattern.  I’m not referring to knitting stores that are outright deceptive, passing a pattern off as their own or otherwise preventing the knitter from finding the pattern at its source.  That’s a different and clearly shady problem.  I just object to the characterization of knitting classes as being a way of making money off of someone else’s work.  It would be just as easy to apply that to any endeavor, including pattern writing.  I am working on a pattern currently that uses elements I learned from many sources, including Barbara Walker, Elizabeth Zimmermann, and whatever pattern first taught me seed stitch.  I got opinions on how to change parts of the pattern from the Lady.  The idea for the pattern, though, and the construction, the writing – putting it all together – this comes from my own work.  Teaching is not dissimilar.  The pattern is only one component in instruction.

Pattern writers are free to put a license on their patterns that forbids their use in classes, or that requires that a store ask permission before using the pattern for a class, and that’s fine.  We, as knitters, need to be aware of these licenses and avoid violating them.  I think, though, that the attitude that a teacher is somehow stealing money from a designer in using their free (or not free) patterns in order to teach a class is wrong, and should be considered by those of us who design.  If we want respect for our own intellectual property and skills, then we need to extend respect to other fields and understand the different skills involved in teaching.  My personal opinion is that a class that credits the designer fairly is likely to be a boost to that designer, not a leech on their material.

Thoughts?  I would love to hear from you on this.

Posted in Copyright, Design, Teaching | 7 Comments »

Thank you

April 13, 2009

I have yet to email everyone who commented on my last post, but I really want to thank you all for weighing in.  I think some of my own biases blinded me to a few important points that were brought up in comments, like the fact that for some kids, medication is a true godsend.  That’s not the case for my little guy, but I shouldn’t knock it universally.  And there’s also the fact that a “cure” is not something I’m seeking, but I have a relatively high functioning child who is expected to be able to live on his own one day.  That’s not the case for all people with autism, and for more severe cases, a cure might be a blessing.  I think what concerns me about the language of cures is how we use the language at a time when a cure does not exist.   The reality at the moment is that there is no cure, and I think focusing on how to function, assist, and accomodate is more useful than focusing on a far off cure.  I think that when we pin our hopes on a cure, we neglect the present sometimes – people think it’s about curing and changing others, not accepting them as they currently are.  But I phrased some of that rather poorly as one is wont to do when ranting.  I love that you guys keep me honest on here.  I’ve always gotten such thoughtful comments, and I really appreciate it.

I haven’t forgotten that this is a knitting blog, I swear, but I figured one month a year it doesn’t hurt to delve into something so important to my life a little more deeply, and to open a dialog with folks who may not have it on their minds.  I’ll post later today or sometime tomorrow with actual knitting content.  Thank you.

Posted in Autism awareness | 2 Comments »

Autism Awareness Month rant

April 11, 2009

I’ve been very busy lately with classes and secret projects and children who are on Spring Break (oh my!) and such, but there are a few things I’ve been thinking about that need a little space.  Last year, around this time, I had an Autism Awareness Month contest. I asked people to donate to the Autism Research Institute to be entered into a raffle.  I won’t be doing that this year.  I’m disturbed by the presence of Jenny McCarthy’s book on the front page of the Autism Research Institute, as well as the slogan, “Defeat autism now!”  These are separate and complicated rants, so I’ll try to parse this as best I can.

Jenny McCarthy is, I’m sure, a caring parent, but she is not a doctor.  I saw her site, the now defunct “IndigoMoms”, prior to the time when she claimed to have “cured” her son’s autism, and it was there that I saw autistic children referred to as “Crystal Children” and “Indigo Children”, higher evolved beings with auras of indigo or crystal.  I shit you not.  At the time, I found this view beyond naive, even potentially dangerous.  If a child is too highly evolved to function with the rest of us non evolved beings, I don’t see a lot of motivation for parents to accept the interventions that make such a difference in an autistic child’s life.

Now, Jenny claims to have “cured” her son Evan.  Once autistic, she says, Evan is now autism free!  And your child can be, too!

Oooookaaaaay, then.  There are so many issues here that it’s hard to know where to start.  But, picking at random, let’s start with the fact that Jenny, on her new, less flaky website, is still promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism.  There is no reputable study that indicates that this is the case, but still, vast amounts of autism research money are still being spent on yet more studies to prove that the unreliable studies are false.  This after the doctor who sparked the scare was found to have lied and fixed the results of his study linking vaccines to autism.  Dr. Wakefield still has his supporters online, supporters who are curiously open to the possibility of a conflict of interest in the case of other studies, but not to their idol’s own conflicts of interest.  Dr. Wakefield chose the twelve research subjects for his study.  Of those, at least four, probably five children were selected from among a group of parents suing the companies that provide vaccinations.  Dr. Wakefield himself was paid up to £55,000 to find evidence of a scientific link between autism and vaccines for use in the lawsuit.

So there’s that.  I have a real problem with wasting money on research where there isn’t a strong indication that it will do any good.  There hasn’t been a single study disproving the autism/vaccine link that hasn’t received a chilly reception by those who wish to believe the opposite.  And believe me, I understand the incentive.  It would be so, so lovely to have an easy source for the rise in autism diagnoses.  We must remember, however, that correlation is not causation.  Yes, autism rates have risen around the same time more children began getting the combined MMR vaccine, but without evidence linking those two, the two rising charts do not indicate a solution to a knotty problem.

At the moment, the research is pointing in a different direction – a combination of environmental and genetic factors.  I personally, from my non-scientific stance, think it’s entirely possible that for some small percentage of children with a genetic predisposition to autism, vaccines could be a trigger.  But we don’t know, and when the research indicates pretty conclusively that for most children with autism, the MMR was not the cause, I think it’s foolish to keep harping on the matter.  Autism research has long been driven by parent concerns, and this is good and bad.  Without the influence of parents, we might still be living in the bad old days of refrigerator mothers, an idea that still has some ground in parts of Europe. Parents pushed for more and better research, and today in the United States, the idea that autism is caused by frigid mothers is luckily a thing of the past.  At the same time, parents are, for the most part, not scientists, and we don’t always understand the scientific method.  The plural of anecdote is not data, but for most of us, anecdote rings truer than any study.  We believe what we want to believe.  I’m not immune to this, though I’m trying to approach the mass of information before me, as a parent of an autistic child, with as little bias as I can, and with as much concentration on the method as possible.

Jenny McCarthy finds it comforting to believe that her son is no longer autistic, and were she a private citizen, this would be a harmless belief.  But she’s not a private citizen.  Jenny McCarthy, actress, former Playboy model, is driving research in autism.  Jenny McCarthy is writing books about how to cure autism.  Jenny McCarthy is being given an enormous public forum for her ill informed ideas.  The tyranny of equal time in American media means that her claims are taken as seriously as the claims of actual doctors doing actual research. This is comparable to times when we’re shown one of the few scientists who doesn’t believe in global warming debating one of the 90 plus percent who does.  It is not fair, and it is not an accurate portrayal.  Most doctors studying autism do not think there is a link between autism and vaccines, and they do not think that autism can be cured.

This is a good time to discuss the second part of my rant: curing, defeating, or fighting autism.  Personally, I’m not for any of those things.  Don’t get me wrong, I want lots more research and I want lots more interventions and help for the children (and adults – they do exist, even if they’re hardly ever mentioned) who have autism.  But the militant language that often comes with autism research from organizations fronted by parents really disturbs me.  My son has autism, and I have no desire to erradicate it.  His autism is a part of who he is.  His dear, loving little quirks are part and parcel of the whole package.  Take away his autism, and you’re taking away a part of who he is.  What I want is to teach him how to live with his differences, not make him exactly like a neurotypical child.  There’s a lot he has to learn to fit into a society in which the balance of people are neurologically different from him, but you know, it’s not just those with autism who need to learn.  We who call ourselves normal need to make an effort as well.

The problem with the language of cures and fights is that it starts with the premise that autism is something wrong with people.  At this point, people with autism will live out their lives as autistic people, and many autistic people do so with great success.  There are quite a few blogs by autistic adults on the internet, and if you read them you’ll notice that what most of these people want is not to be unburdened of their autism, but to be treated as capable human beings with autism.  In my personal scope, I think that autism is less “something wrong” than it is something that requires a different approach.  My son is not medicated.  All of his therapies involve learning to parent and teach him differently, to maximize his success and help his differently wired neurosystem succeed.  I would love it if life was a little easier for him, but I would not love it if we lost the gifts that come with his autism.

This year, if you want to do something for Autism Awareness Month, my suggestion is just to learn a little bit more about autism from several different viewpoints.  You’ve just gotten some of mine, but my view is pretty limited in scope.  Check out some of the blogs out there by parents of autistic children, by autistic adults.  Read an article about autism.  Learn a little bit more.  Our children can only benefit when people are better informed.

Posted in Autism awareness, Blocking, Day's Eye Hat, Design, Finished Projects, Hats, Miscellany | 8 Comments »

Paulette

April 2, 2009

Now available for purchase!  A huge thank you to my test knitters.

Paulette is a simple bonnet for girls ages brand new to ten, knit in one piece with i-cord edging and a decorative flower.  So sugary sweet you just might get toothache!

Sizes:

0-6 months [6-12 months, 12-18 months, 2-4 years, 5-6 years, 7-10 years] (shown in sizes 0-6 months [pink], and 2-4 years [purple])

Materials:

65 [70, 90, 95, 120, 150] yards DK weight yarn
Size 0-6 months shown in Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk [50% alpaca, 50% silk; 146yd/133m per 50g skein]; 1 skein held doubled
Shown in Blush
Size 2-4 years shown in Classic Elite Moorland [42% Fine Merino Wool, 23% Baby Alpaca, 19% Mohair, 16% Acrylic; 147yd/134m per 50g ball]; 1 skein
Shown in Dusty Lavender

[20-40] yards worsted weight yarn (for decorative items)

U.S. size 6 needles, straight or circular (4 mm)
U.S. size 7 double pointed needles, pair (4.5 mm)
U.S. size 3 single double pointed needle (3.25 mm)

2 stitch markers
tapestry needle
1 set snap fasteners, for sizes newborn through age 3

Gauge:

20 stitches and 28 rows = 4 inches in stockinette


Skill level:

Intermediate

Creative Commons License
Paulette by Kristen Hanley Cardozo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

You can sell Paulette (the finished hat, not the pattern) on your blog or Etsy site as long as you credit Knitting Kninja for the design.  If you wish to sell Pauline on a larger scale, please contact me at the email address listed in the upper right hand corner of this blog.

You can purchase the Paulette pattern for $5.00 USD by clicking below.

Posted in Hats, Kidswear, Original Pattern, Pattern for sale, Paulette | 1 Comment »

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