modern, chic, sustainable creative life
Ever since lockdown, my husband and I take a quick espresso break together every day. Whether we’re doing home office work or housework, we take a minute for that little bit of dolce vita!
It doesn’t seem to matter where I am, I get a lovely smile with my caffeine… by the washing machine, in my office, in the hallway or behind the vacuum cleaner.
Just went to see Oppenheimer in the cinema. One word: Bravo.
Colour Palette: CBR’s Renaldo Matadeen does an excellent job analyzing the monochrome palette. Apart from the Black & White segments, I felt there was a lot of blues and browns. But there are a lot of earthtones from browns, and greens straight through to blues… with a drop of red now and then. It’s fascinating to watch Cinemarvels’ video, which just pulls colours from film stills and highlights the colour story.
It felt as if everyone in this film was stressed, struggling or both. I had to remind myself that these were rough times. Wartime. Still, to paraphrase Dame Judi Dench’s character in Red Joan (2018), we (most of us younguns) just don’t know what it was like to live with those existential fears in those days.
Also deeply moving, was sitting in the silent cinema, watching folks cheer for the bombing of other human beings. And feeling the absolute horror. Because we know now how horrific that was. But faced with the same choices and imperfect information, would we have chosen differently? Bilge Ebiri points out the reverberations that move throughout the film.
Oppenheimer is very much like Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, flawed, human, but innately curious and willing to continue research without considering any consequences. The first scene with the apple is a prime example of this. Which is begging the question: just because we CAN, does it mean that we should do something? It keeps coming up in sci-fi films like fall releases The Creator and Poor Things.
Still, what shook me, was people’s reactions to the existence of the film online has been a cornucopia of what to wear to either this film, Barbie or the double feature Barbenheimer. Quite an appropriate portmanteau word, because the title of Oppenheimer book by Pulitzer Prize winners Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin is American Prometheus. Links both quite nicely to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (whose subtitle was “A modern Prometheus”).
Yet despite the deluge of content, no one seems to be identifying with the women in the film, of the time or their fashion. Women are barely there in Oppenheimer, and perhaps this is true from Oppenheimer’s perspective. The Washington Post noticed this too. And that too says a lot about the time and the circles being portrayed.
Nevertheless, by the time the film’s over, we know a lot more about Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer than many recent female-led films. We know that simmering self-directed, self-medicated rage of the intelligent, educated woman who decided to put her career on the back-burner once a child entered the picture. Four marriages in that day and age tells us that she was looking for something elusive, in much the same way Jean Tatlock was.
And so, on to the knits.
I’m immediately struck by how very few people seem interested in what women were wearing at the time. The period immediately calls to mind Susan Crawford’s A Stitch in Time series, where she has retrieved and modernised period patterns for knitters and crocheters. The graphic elements in To Wear with a Summer Suit and Concentrate on the sleeves are absolutely in the same wheelhouse as Kitty’s party dress/blouse, when she meets Oppenheimer for the first time.
As with many of Christopher Nolan’s films, the time line is fractured, forcing us to piece together the story slowly and revise our opinions as we go. So, after Oppenheimer takes the university post and has the conversation with Einstein, we see Strauss more clearly as the Salieri to the scientist‘s Mozart (watch the film Amadeus to see what I mean).
And yet by the time the couple are back on the East coast, Kitty has settled into her role as the professor’s wife, wearing a menswear inspired shawl collared sweater (which I could only find shot from behind).
I’m fairly sure, that the sweater looks like this:
This is such a poignant shot. It sums up for me Kitty’s character. The vanishing lines disappear at the top of tower on the University building. For Kitty, that fence is a barrier, for Robert, it’s a gate. And the tip of the tower is like the pinnacle of knowledge, which he was either trying to expand or bring down to earth.
This post took way too long to write, as I was doing too much fiddling with the software to get the pictures looking right. So I’ll end it here.
Stay safe, y’all.
So, Tayler Earl of Wool, Needle, Hands recently shared a video about AI (more specifically ChatGPT) in the handcraft sector.
And it’s got me thinking.
What will the effects on the knitwear community be? Will this democratize knitwear design? I’m thinking not so much, though.
Firstly, there are so many free patterns out and about: from yarn companies, designers, blogs, podcasts. There are tons of places to find free patterns. Of varying complexity and of varying completion: some have been tech-edited, graded and test-knit, while others aren’t. Some have customer service and others don’t. It happens.
Secondly, AIs like ChatGPT still isn’t so good at mathing, which is what a pattern is… as discovered by various crocheters online. There’s still a ways to go here.
Trend researcher Li Edelkoort believes that “hybrid process, between the handmade and the machine is the recipe for the future.” She sees the machine helping the crafter, calling the product “semi-couture” where there is still uniqueness and creativity on the small scale.
I’m wondering if this is a hype or a short-lived trend. Right now many knitters either do their own thing or gravitate towards certain designers. We may like their design aesthetic, their values, their personality and the community built around use of their patterns. AI not so much. I’m not sure we’ll want machines telling us what to do.
Still, it is a thing and it’s not going away.
Spoiler alert: Don‘t read on if you want to watch this series. I will be discussing the three endings of the book and series.
A while back, I wrote the first part of my review about the first 6 episodes of The Swarm, on Netflix. It’s taken me almost a month and a half to figure out what I liked about the last two episodes and WHY I liked it. I‘ve also been talking to folks about whether they liked it, and why or why not. It‘s been a lot to parse.
First off, the series changed the novel‘s ending. In the book, Schätzing has the team of scientists heave overboard the body of a dead colleague, who has been „injected“ with a message for the Yrr, that we are all one. A message of togetherness and recognition. (Something like that, it’s been more than 15 years since I read it)… all well and good.
It wasn’t til I saw the new ending (let’s call it Ending 2), that I realized what bugged me about that solution: why would the Swarm care about a dead human enough to ‚read‘ the message? Why would that have been enough to save the world?
So the series ending, Ending 2 has Charlie, slipping into a submersible and in effect going underwater to meet the Yrr. She sacrifices herself to save the crew and the rest of the world. She goes and makes an intense connection with this new lifeform/collective consciousness in the knowledge that she’s giving up her life to do so.
As she slips out of the submersible, we see her sinking into the Yrr, her arms out like Jesus Christ on the cross. I did roll my eyes, because so many movies underline self sacrifice with this type of visual.
Everything fades to black, for a good while, then we see Ending 3: Charlie washes up on shore in Antartica, and her eyes glow blue. So she‘s a bit more than when she went into the ocean. Hmmm… it’s not merely the scriptwriters/showrunners jockeying for another season, as many reviewers have written. It’s an absolute twist, where although kitschy it‘s absolutely common within the horror and sci-fi genres.
It wasn’t until I started listening to Brian Godawa‘s book „Hollywood Worldview“ for the second time, that it clicked for me. This series had Charlie as the secret hero in the team of scientists. In fact, Charlie is an incredibly lonely main character. She’s lost her parents, her best friend and her lover. The truth about her comes out gradually – she‘s so hungry for connection, that she becomes a scientist like her deceased parents.
We get to realize that being a scientist is her secondary identity, because she’s constantly knocking heads with her supervisor and she goes a lot off her intuition and hunches. This didn’t click for me at first, because scientists also often use intuition within their research.
It’s no surprise then, that she’s the only member of the science team who we see looking with awe at the Yrr doing CGI tricks in the water inside the boat. It follows on, that she’s the one who wants to make physical intentional first contact.
On the one hand, it made me think of various materialist arguments, that we are just one of many consciousnesses (i.e. so humankind isn’t so special) on the planet, and that we‘re the problem. Which (while it is uncomfortable to think of ourselves as the villains) isn’t very helpful in the movies or in real life. Charlie‘s willingness to sacrifice, to go beyond, is much more interesting and pragmatic than wallowing helplessly in our guilt.
It‘s the idea of reconnecting with nature, rediscovering the awe and beauty of it all that may be naive but the root of the solution. She knew she would die, but did it anyway. That may have been what fascinated the Yrr so.
I‘ve also spent some time pondering on whether whatever they find in her mind was enough to give humankind a second chance. What was in there? A bit of Goethe? Shakespeare? Memories of a few Bach or Mozart concerts? Art? Architecture? Or maybe the ability to hold values from both science and religion…
Longtime fans of Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm (Der Schwarm) are doing back-flips because our public broadcaster ZDF has finally released a high quality production based on the book – not as a film, but as a series.
The critics apparently aren’t crazy about it, but most people I’ve talked to, who’ve actually READ the book are loving it. Just loving it.
So there are quite a few scandals surrounding the series, which we’ll get into. But first, kudos to ZDF for taking some real money out of the kitty to get it done well.
This series is stunning. From landscape shots, to underwater, to the production design (kudos Julian Wagner) and the costumes (big up Carlo Poggioli), set decoration (well done Melanie Raab) to name a few from the team!
The way almost every shot has the cool oceanic blues contrasting with various earth tones, really evokes the idea of water vs land.
I have to admit, it’s not an easy thing to show how science works. Or to have the scientific method become a character in a film. But that’s precisely what was done here: we see a problem and try to figure it out. But there’s a fine line between exciting and too science-y. And here we come to the first scandal: the author, Frank Schätzing didn’t like it and was very vocal about this.
A huge faux-pas, because his book has that exact problem: you have to get through 100-150 pages of Marine Biology super course before getting to the action. On the one hand, the latter half of his book reads like a movie, but in order to get into that cinema, you have to pay the steep price of wading through all of Schätzing’s “research notes”. He didn’t solve the “how much is too science-y?” problem, but expected the series runners to do it for him. Well, they did, but he apparently didn’t like how they did it. Partly by dialing down the horror, and turning up the human relationships between characters.
He also didn’t like how they modernized the story. He felt they could have done more. I had a good laugh about that, because the book was written in 2004. Does anyone remember what the Internet was like in 2004? In the series, there are smart phones, Zoom-meetings, travel easy quick and easy, and surprise surprise a heck of a lot more diversity in the scientific community being shown than in 2004. And guess what? It absolutely works.
Anyways, the series was launched and then pulled from the Berlinale’s new series competition, for various reasons, but the ordinary everyday folks in my acquaintance are watching. They don’t much care about what critics have to say. It’s exciting, each episode ends in a way that makes you want to know what happens next (some cliffhangers, but not always).
I’ll admit, I’m fascinated by how science is communicated. Whether in science fiction, murder mysteries, cop shows (remember Dexter?) or in the horror genre. Remember the first season of Stranger Things how painful it was to watch each person slowly trying to sort things out by themselves and how rewarding it was when the characters finally started sharing information and working together? That’s a strength of science, and showing that process is a real plus in the series.
So, sometimes the process is slow… either in observation, naming the problem, formulating a hypothesis, creating an experiment that actually measures what you want it to measure or pulling it all together for an analysis. Any one, any combination or all of those stages can take time. Or might not lead to conclusive results. But with others looking at the same problem or from a different perspective, it might help the scientist at each stage. And then the process speeds up, when scientists are collaborating.
We’re only 6 episodes in (out of 8 in total), so the suspense is building. I know how the story ends, so I’m enjoying the ride of getting there. One of my friends says it’s amazing watching it on a big screen with all the lights off, and no kids coming in randomly.
The knitwear in the show so far, are fairly utilitarian and minimalistic. So I decided to have a look on ravelry for some sea- and ocean-inspired pieces…
In fact, Monica Jakobsen Lunderøy’s Ocean Sweater (top row middle) reminds me of the practical, no-nonsense pullovers worn by a few of the characters.
Going anti-clockwise, Emalie Dam’s School of Tuna top drew me into the fascinating book-project R:E:D (Rescue Endangered by Design) book, with loads more lovely water-based patterns like Baleen Beauty, Odd Stripe, Ranger Danger, Tuna on Parade and Warm Embrace from various designers.
Sea Listening hat by Elizabeth Nihoniho (bottom left) reminds me of how oceanographers try to listen to life in the sea. Also has a matching pullover.
Sea Blouse by Anna Tanskanen (bottom right) reminds me of easy breezy days by the sea.
Ocean Pathways Pullover by Françoise Danoy (top right) also has a matching cowl. It reminds me both of oceanographic machine displays, but also iceworms. Go figure.
So, I’m looking forward to the final two episodes dropping next week, and hopping the public broadcaster ZDF Mediathek servers don’t crash from the streaming demand.
If sci-fi isn’t your jam, but you want to see lovely whales, I can also recommend Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a South Korean series where the main character Woo sees whales and feels the ocean breeze whenever she gets a good idea.
Take care.
Well, what is avant-garde?
The folks over at Barbara I Gongini define it as “a forward-looking movement animated by innovative designers and artists who dare to go against the mainstream and propose ideas that stand out from the conventional”
Ankestrick’s Mrs Garter from 2013 has both the high funnel neck and the longer sleeves.
Espace Tricot’s Getting Warmer and Jamila Modiste’s Jumbo Capelet which do bring this exaggerated collar to mind…
Now according to Bliss Foster, a new-to-me content creator and fashion commentator on Youtube, the Avant-Garde is about pushing the boundaries of Content, Form (particularly subdivided into Process and Wearability).
And knitwear in particular is extremely versatile in pushing all those boundaries… of course what is created/collected at the boundary, then gets translated for the masses in the centre/mainstream. While humanity and fashion keeps moving forward, and hopefully getting better…
So, I was watching Maria Schrader’s 2021 film “Ich bin Dein Mensch/I’m your Man” with Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert. And I got to thinking about the future, the future of knitwear and hand-knitting/crocheting/crafting in particular. In the film, the future doesn’t look drastically different sartorially than today, which is the jarring thing. This future could be just around the corner.
I loved the dramatic angular architecture in Berlin juxtaposed with the really old stuff in the Pergamon museum.And yet it’s talking about the future… so I started looking at the future of fashion, and stumbled ontoTechwear, athleisure, cyberpunk, and of course avant-garde fashion.
Of course we can look at wild and wonderful Rei Kawakubo’s work, but I thought I’d peruse a new-to-me designer, Rick Owens.
The most unusual silhouette is what I have dubbed “Angel Wings” because that’s what these statement shoulders look like to me. Owens also used them in his Autumn/Winter 2022 show as well.
Although their is a sheerness to the fabric, which speaks to our continued vulnerability, to me this dress is representative of the collection. A sort of, ‘yes, we want to get out into the world, but don’t come too close and don’t look at my tummy.’ There was a lot of draping around or near the tummy.
The platform thigh-high boots, the asymmetrical hem, the shoulder treatment and the metal wrist cuffs may put this on the avant-garde, but we’ve been seeing these elements individually for a while now…
I thought I was going to have to explain why a resurgence of the puffy sleeve (à la My Favorite Things’ Sweater No. 10) could be understood as being conceptually the same thing as angel wing sleeves. But Ravelry is literally a treasure trove! Here is fairly new designer Kristina Tyk’s 2in1 Viktoria Sweater and T-Shirt with very similar sleeve shaping.
The similarities between Teva Durham’s Skirt with ribbed detail, Anna Jaune’s Red Velvet Skirt and the Rick Owen’s runway piece have me reconsidering packing the handcrafting community into a conservative ‘we like what we like’ corner.
New plan… let’s look at how avant-garde our making community truly is… Happy Valentine’s Day.
After a sudden illness, one of the greatest teachers of fashion history passed away last month.
Amanda Hallay-Heath was a professor of fashion history, who shared her knowledge and her bubbly, cheerful, humorous personality through her Youtube channel and her Facebook community page. Her over 10,000 followers and subscribers will miss her.
“Fashion’s not an island, it’s a response.”
Our condolences go out to her family and friends.
Trigger warning: if you can’t bear non-graphic descriptions or discussions of fictional assault, revenge, female rage, transformation or reptile births then just scroll to the end for the pattern links.
Medusa first gets a little backstory in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses. Before this, in Greek myth, she’s the human sister of two gorgon sisters. In the Roman myth, she is raped by Neptune in Minerva‘s temple. Now some may say that Medusa was punished… but honestly, I don’t think so.
Look, Athena/Minerva was a very intelligent goddess. She was the goddess of warfare, wisdom and strategy. But she’s got beef with her Uncle Neptune because Athenians chose her (yay olive tree gift) over him. So what’s his revenge? To defile her temple by assaulting Medusa. In some stories, Medusa is her priestess, in others, she‘s having a consensual affair with Neptune. These facts are minor, the main point is the temple was defiled. So you have my permission to roll your eyes if you read that Athena/Minerva was jealous of Medusa.
So my theory is that Medusa‘s transformation WASN‘T so much a punishment (unless you go with the affair version) as a weaponizing of the woman‘s rage. In the affair version, there’s still an element of coercion implied, because no mortal in their right mind would defile a god‘s temple just to hook up. So both versions lead to the same outcome.
I‘ll stick with the rapey version because there were a lot of stories like this in ancient Greco-roman mythology. Let’s assume (but please remember it‘s just a story and no real people were harmed here), that Medusa, a rape survivor wished to avenge her violation. What would the goddess granting her wish look like?
She took away that beautiful hair, by making it into poisonous hissing snakes. In some versions, she is turned into a half-snake hybrid. In effect, Minerva has removed what made Medusa attractive to men and made out of her a weapon that would literally stop men in their tracks. Turn them to stone. Weigh this against all the unfortunate encounters of women with other gods, where the women are turned into plants: flowers or trees. Very sweet, but I‘ve always found THAT unfair.
So Medusa is literally female rage personified. But this can’t go on indefinitely, so Minerva sends Perseus to end Medusa‘s reign of terror. Or put her out of her misery. There’s a bitter price to pay for making every man into stone – sometimes you turn the good ones to stone as well. So after quite a few years or centuries, off Perseus goes with a shiny shield and a good tip on getting close enough to behead the gorgon. Society can’t continue if you have a monster turning all the heroes to stone.
Even though Perseus sadly succeeds, and Medusa loses her life (we could debate on whether her life was lost in the temple much earlier), her power is not diminished. Her head still has that power to petrify.
Her head was used by Perseus and later given to Athena, who placed it on her shield or aegis (there‘s still discussion on what exactly that is, a skin, cloak or shamanic juju pouch). The point being, that Athena wore Medusa‘s head close to her. In a position of honour. This is why the jealousy-idea makes no sense.
Gorgoneia (and in particular depictions of Medusa‘s head) were and still are popular apotropaic (protective magic) amulets and signs. She still has the power to make someone stop and think and perhaps reconsider doing harm.
Following another train of thought, from Medusa’s neck springs her twin offspring from Poseidon: Pegasus and Chrysaor. Now, I don’t know how long she was pregnant, but having a winged horse and a human (in other sources, he is sometimes referred to as a winged boar) inside one does not sound comfortable in the least! No wonder she was so cranky in the movies! I‘ve often wondered why she couldn’t give birth… some reptiles do, although most lay eggs.
My guess is she just didn’t want to. Which leads to other interesting questions about trauma, feminism, and motherhood of boys. Yes, myths give us a lot to think about, despite all the swashbuckling. What does it mean, that she refuses to give birth to those babies – both male? Or that her rage is so all-encompassing that she’s no longer able to be creative or give birth. Her head (that rage principle) must be removed in order for the life to come forth.
Siri Hustvedt has a mention of Medusa in her 2016 book A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women (here‘s the Guardian review), but that’s about the link between hair, snakes and Freud. Zachary Fruhling has an interesting blogpost on the gaze, looking and averting one‘s eyes. Without a doubt, the eyes have it… that power that not even a goddess would dispose of. Regardless of all the various things projected onto Medusa by the feminist movement (which sadly have no evidence in the mythic literature – no laughing woman warrior, protecting women‘s secrets), and I think it’s the power of hyperfocused attention.
There’s something chthonic going on here, darker, deeper, older perhaps which takes me back to Athena’s good friends the Erinyes (the Furies) from Aeschylus‘ Oresteia (another unfun family soap opera full of murder and revenge). They were called jealous rage, endless anger and vengeful destruction. That‘s some powerful stuff. Interestingly both Medusa and the Erinyes have serpents for hair, so I’m calling a connection. Dante thought so too, because he had them all guarding the city Dis in his work The Divine Comedy (links to the particular illustrations)
The Furies were goddesses of vengeance. According to Wikipedia, they avenged „the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants.“ They hounded the culprits mercilessly in the myths. But there was always a gap in who they defended… female victims of assault. So was Medusa a temporary „effort“ to close that gap?
Knit links:
Medusa the Gorgon by Laura Tegg
Medusa Loop Scarf by Leah Coccari-Swift
Medusa Mittens by Annie Watts
Medusa Wrap by Melissa Dehncke-McGill
All images from Ravelry.com
While I was looking up pictures of clouds, I came across this lovely cloud sweater by Lirika Matoshi, which has been often reproduced by clever knitters and crocheters around the world. I thought I‘d post the original, which is handknit by Kosovan women in three days.
I‘ve also found a lovely free pattern on Lovecraft and a sweet baby blanket on Ravelry.
Stay safe, friends.
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knitting, crochet, other string tricks, and forays into other creative endeavors
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