Hard And Fast Rules

There are times when rules set in stone work out well, but mostly I find that rules without reason can lead to stupid decisions, such as examples of political correctness gone wild.

Nappy Headed Ho's
The recent kerfluffle about Imus, the radio show host, calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball team a bunch of "nappy headed ho's" is a perfect example of how it doesn't always work to apply rules without at least looking at the intent of the rules first.

Before saying anything else, I have to say, I don't listen to Imus, I don't care what happens to Imus, and I have no idea of the context of what Imus said on his show, except what I have seen excerpted on various news shows.

The two sides of the argument seem to be:

1. His words were hateful, he should be fired.
2. His words were stupid, but intended no animus, and he should just apologize.

To bring this issue closer to home for me, I compare Imus' comments to Anne Coulter's calling John Edwards a faggot.

Here are my thoughts on both situations. Whether Imus had hate in his heart when he said what he did, or whether Anne Coulter was only making a joke, I think it's still necessary to look at the circumstances surrounding their comments. Are either of them able to ignore the fact that there comments are heard by millions of people? Do they not realize that even without a hateful intent, that they give creedence to hateful words? Can they not understand that their words give permission to every bigot that hears even a snippet of their comments, the right to use them in a hateful way. Have they no grasp of how insulting and demeaning their words are to the folks that the words were aimed at?

I think they both do, and I also think Imus should be fired for his comments, and Coulter should be dis-invited to any public speaking engagements (unless the radio stations or forums that would invite Imus or Coulter want to let it be known they support ignorant, hateful speech and folks can decide on whether they care to listen). I say if they can't use their public platforms responsibly, they should be taken away, or at least limited to audiences that want to hear that kind of speech.

Current Knitting
I've barely started on the first sleeve of the colorblock cardigan. Which could be considered decent progress, because I had to do all the calculations for how many stitches in the cuff and the rate of increases.

I'll post a picture in the next post.

Current Spinning
First of all, I wanted to show you the knitted swatch that I used to compare the four different color-plies of the multi-colored merino.



From left to right, it's just the multicolored merino, the multicolored merino plied with bright, cherry red, plied with bright pine green and plied with deep plum.

As you recall, I decided to ply all of it with the deep plum, and I was able to finish the second hank of yarn.



I have one more hank of yarn to ply up before I can get to work on Mel's roving from Madelyn, the alpaca.

Also on the spinning front, I finally got this back from Fingerlakes Woolen Mills.



First of all this is a LOT of fleece. I put the colorblock cardigan in the background to give a little perspective. Second of all, this was from the fleece I bought last year at Rhinebeck, and it's been so long, I don't even remember what breed of sheep it came from. I'll have to go back in archives and see if I documented it. This should keep me busy for a good long time.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding the Fair Isle sampler picture in the last blog entry, Lynne E. asks, " Is this the sort of thing that is supposed to show that you have no color sense?" and Angie Cox, who requested the picture writes, "...it's the one top left of the three. It is really beautiful"

This goes all the more to demonstrate my point to Sofi, that color-sense and beauty is subjective, and not necessary learnable in a color theory class. I originally posted that picture to demonstrate what I consider to be an ugly sweater. I'm not a fan of multi-color sweaters with a white backgrounds and I found this one to be way too busy from a pattern perspective. While I would enjoy the challenge of knitting something like this sweater, I don't find it at all aesthetically pleasing.

Regarding the colorblock cardigan, Anonymous asks, "WIll the sleeves also be in blocks of colors? Are will they be a solid color so the completed garment looks like a vest over a solid colored sweater? Or maybe stripes of the block colors?"

They will be colorblocked exactly like the body of the sweater. I considered doing something different with the sleeves, but none of the options you mentioned seemed like they would look very good, so I went with the safe route.

Janet writes, "Would you think of not doing the sleeves for the colour block sweater? I think it would look good as a waistcoat."

I agree that it would make a lovely waistcoat, but I don't look very good in waistcoats, and I have more of a need for a cardigan. Even if I did want to make it a waistcoat, I would have had to make the armhole much deeper, otherwise, I'd look like I was wearing wings.

Julie writes, "Love the sweaters--the colors are gorgeous. And is that Kafka in the background?"

Yes, Kafka's portrait is a painting by a local artist in Lambertville, NJ, named Paul Matthews. It's one of my favorite art pieces in our house.