Category: Knitting

Fleeting thoughts of granny squares

10/25/2024

The Wet Coast is no place for this fuzzy fantasy

The trees are sun-kissed radiant red and gold as I hunker down to write this, in that little sliver of crisp and dry days between the months of dumb-dumb flipflops and the damn rain boots. Not that I’m complaining about life-giving precipitation in these drying times but by the time this is published we on the Wet Coast will most likely be entering the seven months of sog. So just for today, I’m loving this:

I don’t actually own an outdoorsy sweater. I have various rain-repelling jackets and coats and pants and some base layers spun from plastic pop bottles: ‘outdoorky’ gear, mostly in sensible black. Yet it occurs to me that since I have competent needleworking skills I could design something completely unique and unsensible: a vibrant visual statement! A colourful conversation-starter!

I’ve knit several sweaters in my time while commuting by bus and SkyTrain across four municipalities during four years as a reporter at a suburban newspaper. They were mostly derivative of the ‘Doctor Huxtable’ sweaters, more not-bad than bad-ass, for my man at the time. They were not keepers.

I have just one of my own: Logo Sweater, made in the months before the 2010 Winter Olympics here, to test the extents of corporate copyright and appropriation of the traditional Cowichan sweater design.

‘Logo Sweater’, 2010, made with the assistance of my mother, a truly competent life-long knitter, and modelled by my brother.

What I’ve decided after those years of increasingly complex sweater-making is that knitting, as a creative action, suuuuuucks.

In my hands, the knitting needles are tools trying to perfectly emulate what a machine can — and does — do: create perfect loops upon perfect loops on rows upon rows, stuck in a matrix, so mindless you can do it blindfolded or watch movies at the same time, which I guess is the appeal. It’s a laborious endurance; you can binge every Grey’s Anatomy episode and you still might not get that baby blanket done.

I’m with the hookers. Could knitting needles have created the hyperbolic-crocheted Spore from a 24-foot-by-28-foot deteriorating plastic tarp I dragged out of the forest? Or this other version in found fibre-optic cable? I’d like to see knitting needles try working up these tight mathematical models of hyperbolic growth.

Two crocheted objects in the “Fuzzy Logic” series. (Carlyn Yandle)

Just one agile hook is all it takes to create fast, improvisational and three-dimensional objects. It can be a meandering journey through rows of neat little stitches that erupt into large saggy loops before settling down the side in thick ribbing then circling back to the beginning. How about a curly lettuce frill here? How about stitching up a rose?

How about a few Roses Against Violence? Since that fun little project was introduced by an Austrian artist in 2018, crocheters have been tagging street infrastructure all over the world with purple roses with a message to stop gender-based violence.

Collage of Instagram posts from around the world (@rosesagainstviolence; #rosesagainstviolence). Austrian artist Claudia Grünzweig’s started the crochet-tagging in 2018 to call for the end of gender-based violence.

How about hooking up an alternative to the bland Barbie universe?

Work by Xenobia Bailey: “Her Royal Flyness”, part of an overlooked “Funktional Design” movement, “Poke In The Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture”, Seattle Art Museum, August 2024

Or a human-sized frock of funk fantasy?

(Garment, 1990s. Single-stitch crochet: acrylic and cotton four-ply yarn, “Xenobia Bailey: A Childhood Dreamscape In the Aesthetic of Funk Almost Deferred”, part of the “Poke In The Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture” exhibit, Seattle Art Museum, August 2024)

I am inspired by this outrageous aesthetic overlooked in the West Coast crafty counter-culture of the late last century. It has me mining my own memories of a fuzzy milieu of crocheted granny squares and afghans.
I googled “duster” and “granny squares” and there it is:

So much inspo: u/Birdfin on the r/crochet sub-Reddit; dreamcrochets.com

Not a word of a lie: As I type this last sentence, a loud crack of thunder rattles the place. I unplug the laptop.

Wait — is this grandmacore? Comes a time when the specialness of the old-lady look is lost when it’s worn by an old(er) lady. Any attempt at personal flair might read more ‘picked out of my seniors’ centre lost-and-found.’

So grandmacore is to be avoided. Also cottagecore, a baffling combo of simplicity and clutter. And definitely not the froufrou fairycore as there is no occasion when I will be attaching little wings to gauzy day dresses. Apparently (according to a handy online quiz) I relate mostly to the earthy goblincore. I do appreciate swamps and lichen and tree-trunk hidey-holes. But mushrooms have the feel of phlegm on my tongue so I will not be adorning my clothes or livingspace with any manner of those.

I was still visualizing a calf-length duster of earth-toned granny squares when the rain started firing against the windows like birdshot. So much for sweater weather.

End of an era for Vancouver makers

9/7/2024

The one great store that fuels textile dreams is closing due to small-business struggles

Judging by the early deluge of reactions on Reddit last week, we Vancouver makers are stunned to learn that our mecca for material and more is selling off its inventory and properties and closing for good. And I’m dealing with it like the full-grown woman I am.

Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!

Vancouver has never had the big shmata (cloth trade) districts like Montreal or Toronto. In these parts, we have Dressew Supply, a sort of rough-around-the-edges department store almost bursting with bolts of liquidation fabrics, sparkly applique patches, headbanger wigs, thousands of buttons, zippers, feather boas, skeins of yarn, rolls of ribbon and every sewing notion imaginable to satisfy the city’s crafty counter-culture vibe.

Vancouver never had the garment district of Toronto, where “Uniform Measure/Stack" (1997), designed by Stephen Cruise (stephencruise.ca), monumentalizes objects of the trade, originally with painted path of yellow measuring tape.

I am with my people here: the grandmothers who sew Christmas-gift pajamas, the goths, the quilters, the film and theatre set designers, the dance-gymnastics girls, the fashion-school students, and more recently, Pride paraders, Halloween costumers and cosplayers. Moving through those jammed aisles of colour and pattern revitalizes the brain, especially in our soggy, dark mid-winters.

I have a long history of ruining homemade garments made from my purchases at Dressew. I blame this on the tedious, mandatory Grade 8 girls’ sewing class designed to turn us into skilled workers or housewives. So when my community-college-student budget demanded I make my own nightclubbing “look” and wedding-guest frocks, I took an improv approach, using the cheapest $2/yard “100% unknown fibers” fabrics that smelled as flammable as they looked. I was lured by the big books of “Make it tonight!” Butterick, Style and Simplicity patterns and when this timeline proved unlikely, I’d game the instructions by swapping, say, a long back zipper with self-adhesive Velcro, or cramming in some thick shoulder pads to try to give shape to my latest sagging acetate atrocity. I don’t have photographic evidence of the voluminous emerald taffeta dress with the watermelon-sized sleeves that I wore to a cousin’s wedding but I can see in the snapshot of the baby-blue Cinderella-style dress at another wedding that I didn’t see ‘fit’ as an area of concern.

Nevertheless I persisted! I dreamed big, undeterred by minimal skill and patience or my wonky sewing machine that I dropped on the floor more than once. These projects were doomed to fail, like the grey pin-striped double-breasted suit for my university boyfriend who actually wore the blazer for a while but who was also likely relieved that the trousers never materialized. And I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those unwilling children in my life who endured the double humiliation of being gifted one of my hand-sewn polar-fleece hats and posing for a photo in it for their mother’s thank-you note.

Evidence of ill-fitting, over-padded and plain cruel past projects.

The magic of that store is in the endless possibilities and I always left with hope in my heart that this time I will read the directions. I will take breaks. I will use pins. I will find scissors that don’t chew the fabric. I will not view interfacing as optional.
I eventually redeemed myself as the family-and-friends’ Halloween costume-maker, taking the bus downtown with one kid or another while conferring over their concept drawing that I assigned to weed out the uncommitted. They also had to help cut, sew, glue and paint as required, so I wouldn’t take all the blame for shoddy workmanship.

Learning to sew is more fun when it’s a costume.

I also got pretty good at reupholstering because I had the good sense to take some continuing-ed classes on the subject as a young adult (rather than a self-conscious, hormonal 13-year-old) led by a retired skilled professional. Still on a tight budget, I learned to revamp found vintage armchairs with Dressew’s bargain upholstery fabrics but moved over to making crib quilts for all the new babies. Eventually I got serious about fibre art and went to art school. When the pandemic lockdown hit I re-focused my plans for my stash of quilting cotton and sewed up three-layer cotton masks — so many masks — to fill the early gap in the supply chain. Elastic was a scarce commodity and that’s where the owner at Dressew stepped up, delivering yardage of elastic to me from the shuttered store’s back alley door, like a dealer doing a drop.

So many Covid masks, made possible during lockdown by Dressew.

The imminent demise leaves me — us — in the lurch. Shopping by the hand-feel (and smell) of fabrics, yarn, fun fur, trims, felt, wigs, and all the strange liquidation items is an in-person experience in the energizing milieu of other creatives. So now what? Will next year’s Halloween costume missions now take place around the ol’ iPhone peering at fabric images on Amazon, not really knowing what will show up as we hit ‘Add to cart’?
That’s a hard no. Sorry kids.

Needling at patriotism and protest

7/7/2024

The American penchant for patriotic treats is impressive, from jelly shots to meat trays. (Instagram collage)

We all sort of forgot about celebrating Canada Day last weekend, up north, on a farm. No fireworks, no flags, no impressive array of themed party foods in the American way. That doesn't make us UnCanadian, a term that doesn't have any of the gravitas of UnAmerican. We may stand down from celebrations while remaining upstanding.

I feel a complicated gratitude about my Canadian citizenship, what with my settler-ancestors basically occupying traditional Indigenous territories. An inordinate number of maple leaf flags on a vehicle or house feels a bit aggressive and any big show of patriotism makes me itchy.

I started school in the U.S. All I remember about Kindergarten was learning to pledge allegiance to the flag while facing said flag, hand on heart, and also learning America the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner. Then going home. I'm sure there were crafts but I'm thinking they were about all that too. Our rented house had American-eagle emblem wallpaper in the dining room and a flag mount at the front door. To Canadians, that's a lot of patriotism.

Instead of wringing my hands I start needling at local and global issues.

Starting back in my East Vancouver elementary school, I was far more interested in singing “God save our gracious Queen” to that portrait of the bosomy, bejewelled young Elizabeth that hung in every classroom and in the auditorium. There was O Canada too, and the Lord’s Prayer for a while. These days it's just the anthem and mostly for sporty public events but ask anyone around here and it’s a good bet they will not know the updated lyrics. (As if we need a daily reminder of the anthem, the first four notes of O Canada are blasted from a horn heard all over the city centre every day at noon.)

But what’s going on down south of this border has got my rapt attention and I’m not the only one. "Two-thirds of Canadians think the American democracy will not be able to survive another four years of Trump at the helm,” according to a January 2024 poll by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute. Further, “a Trump victory has many predicting dire consequences for both sides of the 49th parallel” with half of Canadians polled reporting they worry that the U.S. “could be on the way to becoming an authoritarian state."

I am compelled to work out these big-picture worries in a joyful kind of making. These days the source of the most relentless anxieties is the fear-mongering that stokes disinformation, anti-immigration, genderism — all the human-rights-violating -tions and -isms. Currently I'm needling at it, layering up those worries through trending heavy hashtags in a weighted blanket, part of an ongoing series of Discomforters.

But it's not all solo projects. In 2019 I joined a needling army of joyful resistors to the Trump presidency, in the Tiny Pricks Project (@tinypricksproject), curated and created by a maker in my corner of the world, Diana Weymar. Her invitation via social media to contribute to the public-engagement project resulted in a tsunami of more than 5,000 stitched sentiments. Galleries on both sides of the border were filled with Trump's angry tweets and comments rendered impotent in stitches and embellishments.

From left: A Trump quote surrounding Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the @tinypricksproject, 2019. (Carlyn Yandle); detail of a gallery installation.

Being a part of that and other public craftivist projects started, for me, while living in central Mexico in the weeks leading up to the largest one-day march in American history on Washington. A grassroots social-media campaign had people all over the world taking up needles and hooks and stitching up pink pussy-hats, in comedic reference to the rape-y comments of the President-to-be. The pink sea of 2.6 million marchers on the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 remains an iconic image. It is yet to be seen which hat will be more enduring: the for-profit, mass-manufactured MAGA hat that his son-in-law claimed raised $80,000 a day during the 2016 campaign? Or the hand-stitched pussy-hats made singularly or in groups, and worn or gifted to marchers around the world?

That depends on who writes the history, and who owns the media.

My needling starts with a need to build community

11/10/2018

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The other day I did this because it really needed to happen. All that gleaming new-campus architecture, surrounded by other gleaming buildings and gleaming buildings yet-to-come was begging for a little fuzzying up.

I did my undergrad at the old Emily Carr University of Art and Design campus which was decidedly less smooth and metallic and more crafty, situated as it was in the Granville Island artisan mecca on the ocean's edge. I liked running my hand along the old wooden posts carved with decades of scrawled text, and all the wiring and ductwork that in the last few years looked like a set out of Brazil. I miss the giant murals on the cement factory silos next door and the funky houseboats and the food stalls in the public market and Opus Art Supplies 30 feet away from the front entrance.

The new serene, clean Emily Carr building is surrounded by new and planned condos that most students could never afford, high-tech companies and, soon, an elevated rapid transit rail line. As much as I wanted to return for graduate studies, I was not convinced that I would be a good fit here, so asking for permission and access to the sign was a bit of a trial balloon for me. I got quick and full support for the idea and its installation, and now see this new white space as a blank canvas, ready for the next era of student artistic expression.

This is my first solo yarn-bombing foray. A bunch of us attacked the old school back in the day for a textile-themed student show but I have yet to meet my people here. So the Emily Carr Cozy is not just a balloon, it's a flare. Is there anybody out there?

As I busied my freezing fingers with the stringy stuff (in hard hat, on the Skyjack operated by design tech services maestro Brian) I kept an ear out for reaction. And it was good. Sharing the fuzzy intervention on social media (#craftivism, #subversivestitch etc.) reminds me that I am not alone in my need for needling authority. Indeed, this public performance includes behind-the-scenes connecting with my community of makers to collect their leftover yarn and thrift-store finds even before the main act. (You know who you are.)

Textile interventions in the public sphere have a way of provoking polarizing responses. Some love the often-chaotic hand-wrapping of colourful fiber; others view the crafty messing with architecture with disdain of all things cozy and crafty and engendered female. I liked the idea of having to wear a hard hat and working for four hours in a Skyjack, in the mode of construction workers in the immediate vicinity of my rapidly changing hometown, to complete my knitting job.

The reverse side of the Emily Carr Cozy, seen only from the interior of the school, is like the work behind the scenes in my making: chaotic, improvisational and maybe more interesting than the public side. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

A visual of the process, below. (All photos by Caitlin Eakins)

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Packing it all in for the Toronto design fest

12/5/2014

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It's getting close to a decade since I packed it all in: my needles and wool, my sewing machine and fabrics, my mid-level-management career. There was more to explore.

I've been mixing it up with a wide range of materials (and makers) ever since but even I'm surprised to find that my latest tools of choice for bushwacking new routes of making are the ol' crochet hooks, knitting needles, rug hooks and embroidery needles.

The line on the paper has always been too limiting to me; I need to pick up that line, play with it in my hands, turn it into area, then volume. I remain entranced by the possibilities of connecting something created by a silkworm or an industrial manufacturing plant to a mathematical model or a wearable with uncomfortable connotations.

The beauty of fiber is in its physical and metaphorical ability to connect the Art side to the Design side (not to mention the science side), weaving the two together until it's clear that playing with ideas cannot be put into separate boxes.

'Spore' (2011) serves as promo visual for the Vancouver design group.

Except if we're talking shipping boxes, for the Toronto Design Offsite (TO DO) Festival next month.

A few object-experiments from my ongoing Fuzzy Logic series will be packed in there, as part of the Vancouver group of makers, selected by the Dear Human creative studio.

It's all part of the ‘Outside the Box’ exhibits featuring works from three selected Canadian cities — Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver — and five from the U.S.: New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.

It's a fine way to mine local design ideas and visions through an unexpected selection of objects that are shared in various locations via specific-sized shipping boxes.

The Vancouver contribution includes nine individuals and teams who live, design and make in the greater Vancouver area. The connecting thread is a pursuit of a design practice through material exploration, according to Dear Human. "Whether through common applications of unusual materials or transcending common materials through unusual applications, exploration is evident in each of the included objects."

Rounding out the Vancouver Outside the Box contingent are: Cathy Terepocki, Dahlhaus, Dina Gonzalez Mascaro, Hinterland Designs, Laura McKibbon, Rachael Ashe, and Studio Bup.

Playing with fiber optics (Photo by Carlyn Yandle)

Vancouver Outside the Box will take over the windows at 1082 Queen Street West, Toronto, from January 19-25, 2015.

TO DO is an annual city-wide not-for-profit week-long festival that celebrates and showcases the nation's design scene, providing exposure and cross-pollination of ideas and techniques. There are too many exhibits, installations, talks, parties and films to list here, so check out the full (and growing) schedule here as well as the fun promo video.

Detail of Fiber Optics (Photo by Carlyn Yandle)

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Weaving through weighty material

11/16/2012

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I needed to shed my years of sewing and knitting and general crafting so I went to art school. No more crochet hooks and embroidery hoops; I wanted to do Real Important Art.

But it was only after I could finally separate out all the crocheted pot-holders and felted figurines from the lump of Fibre Arts that I could see that this is a medium that offers endless innovation beyond what I wanted to do in paint or metal or wood.

Fibre arts has a global and historical connectedness but it's the culture embedded in those fibres that really carries weight. A doily is not just knotted cotton thread but a slightly-disdained symbol of women of a certain generation; a cheap polyester shirt can refer to class or sweatshops. Fibre is rarely neutral, but hot with connotations. It can be at once attractive and repulsive, modest and monumental. It can reveal the artist's intimate passion for the material or method and evoke ideas of global exploitation or environmental degradation — often in the same piece.

Vancouver sculptor and educator Liz Magor capitalizes on the cultural weight of fibre in her new show at the Catriona Jeffries gallery in Vancouver (through Dec. 22). It's impossible to feel nothing when confronted with revealed box after box of familiar yet altered, oddly-accessorized garments. They almost demand the viewer to connect the gaudy contents, construct a narrative, create a character. There's a lot of chatter in that quiet space.

Yet even the most abstracted, distilled fibre arts works have a lot to say. A recent tour of the World of Threads international festival (continuing in Toronto to Dec. 2) revealed conceptual artworks fabricated from everything from brocade to pig intestine. A felted cloth full of gaping holes hangs heavy with dark emotion. An expansive, torqued mandala-like piece of dirt brown sisal and burlap is surprisingly uplifting.

Or maybe it was just being in this gallery, in the company of some engaging examples of fibre artwork, just one of the many venues celebrating conceptual fibre arts during the fest.

It was quite a contrast to the art scene back home; Magor's show is an exception in this photo-conceptual-branded town.

One of Liz Magor's many boxes of garments in the I is Being This show.

Toronto artist Lorena Santin-Andrade's Warm, felted wool

Lisa DiQuinzio's Good Morning, Midnight, 91" diameter

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Maker's mecca in downtown Toronto (for now)

11/9/2012

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A real trip: Toronto's textile-retail district is a visual feast for any kind of maker. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Stephen Cruise's 1997 public artwork at Richmond and Spadina. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Like other Vancouver makers, I mourn the latest closures of stores dedicated to those who work with their hands, hearts and heads, for love or livelihood. Last month it was the needlework shop in my neighbourhood. Dressew is fast becoming the city's last great fabric store standing.

So the first chance I got while in Toronto last week I headed to the mecca for fibre-arts-makers: the Queen/Richmond/Spadina area. This bit of heaven boasts 100-year-old storefronts jam-packed with notions both humble and grand: a button shop — just buttons — next to one devoted to beads or ribbon or wool or shiny embellishments. Across from a luxury textiles boutique is a warehouse crammed with tables heaped with remnants. All in the space of a couple of blocks, and right in the thick of the city.

Yet even Canada's biggest textile retail district appears threatened by encroaching condo towers. (Note the billboard in this photo hawking pre-sale units in the "Fabrik" development on the site of the old King Textiles building.)

Just when you think you're the last fabric-hound standing there's the World of Threads festival to restore the soul. This multi-venue Oakville-Toronto event showcases staggeringly skillful works embedded with rich ideas and spaces to consider, and to transcend. Despite the diversity of media and methods, a thread runs though this fest: in an all-too-consumptive art world these artists are grateful for the chance to show. The value of the work is not foremost in commericial saleability but is in the maker's connection to the material itself, the often transcendent physical experience of the making, and the connectedness to the pattern of art forms that pass down through families and through every culture.

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Putting art value to good use

2/28/2012

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The art world doesn't have much use for "use objects" as art objects. There's really nothing valuable about them beyond their use value. And the fact that they're laboriously handmade doesn't cut it either, I realized several years ago in the middle of a big-box bedding store as I examined the hand-stitching of a $69 queen-sized made-in-China quilt. Much of art value to do with uniqueness and innovation -— stuff that's quite outside the massive production lines that keeps Bed, Bath and Beyond in business.

I've struggled with the uneasy relationship between useful things and art things, and have poked around their parameters through my own practice. And what I've come up with is this: my collection of handmade, spider-web-delicate doilies crocheted by the great-aunts are not considered artworks (yet). But reproducing them in a painting series makes them art (for now). The distinctions often lie in the intended environments for the objects. Doilies, although formerly employed to protect domestic surfaces in order to extend their lifespan, are most likely found in thrift-store bins. Paintings are intended for the walls of public or commercial galleries or upscale living rooms. And therein lies the awful truth about how we value those different spaces. Original art exudes investment value. Use objects are only worth the function they serve.

So what to make of the ceremonial robes on display at the Bill Reid Gallery last year? The "Time Warp" show revealed that the erroneously known ‘blanket’ is far from the household craft the word suggests but a magnificent artwork that honours the wearer and carries culture through its use.

I haven't quite put it all together but there's a hint of where this exploration is going in the Logo Sweater I knit in the weeks leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics. It was in its wearing by a number of people during the Games (to their peril) that contributes to its intrinsic value as an art object. All while its assumed use value works against accepting it as an artwork.

At right: Haida Weaver Tracy Auchter Yahgulanaas with "Graduation Robe" (Ann Seymour photo from Bill Reid Gallery site) Below: Logo Sweater, Carlyn Yandle 2010.

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Fleeting thoughts of granny squares

End of an era for Vancouver makers

Needling at patriotism and protest

My needling starts with a need to build community

Packing it all in for the Toronto design fest

Weaving through weighty material

Maker's mecca in downtown Toronto (for now)

Putting art value to good use

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