Crisis at Banner HQ

Hey fellas, nice to see you again.

So the general consensus on Facebook was that the banner should be LONG, as originally planned, which I was pleased about, because I agreed. So I've sewn it all together now and it is bundled in a corner of my living room awaiting its debut.

HOWEVER

there is a bit of a spanner in the works here, in that I don't know how to construct a poley-carrying-structure for it, in fact I apparently don't even know what that is called :( I am going to appeal for help in a minute, but first I will describe my cack-handed attempts so far.

I'm illustrating this on MS Paint because I haven't taken any photos of anything and I love MS Paint.

Okay so first of all I went to B&Q with no idea what I was going to get. I thought I'd just mosey around and see what looked useful. So mosey I did, and eventually I decided on a structure somewhat like this.

After an appropriate amount of moseying, I decided to get some wooden dowel and some T-joints and elbow-joints that plumbers use, they're copper. You've seen them. I actually got 15mm square cut pinewood, instead of circular dowel, because it was cheaper and I doubted it would make any difference. My plan was to wedge the ends of the wood in the joints like this.

Bob's yer uncle. When I got home, I realised that the wood didn't fit in the ends of the joints, so I shaved a bit off one end with a Stanley knife (by now you are seeing what my DIY efforts are generally like).

The wood now jammed quite solidly in the joint, but I was suddenly struck that we would be carrying this around a lot, it might be jostled and stuff, and basically this was not very secure and quite rubbish. Also, a piece of wood 15mm wide and 2.3m long is quite bendy and I think they will snap if it's a bit windy or anything, really.

REJECT

Okay so THEN I sat around and tried to think outside the box and I thought, tent poles are long and strong and flexible and can be dismantled and mantled (?) with ease (oh yeah. it needs to be dismantlable because I have to get it on the tram and I doubt the other passengers would take kindly to a 7m stick taking up the whole carriage).

Off I went to Go Outdoors (other camping shops are available), and lo and behold, a tent pole repair kit with 11 sections which add up to exactly 7m. Excellent. I bought one.

Now I still don't know how to attach the vertical bits to the horizontal bit. I thought I could still use some of the wood I bought earlier for the upright carrying poles, but ARGH

So I traipsed off to Wilkinsons (other shops which sell everything in the world are available). I wandered round the DIY section for a bit and eventually came away with these.

And this was how I envisaged it all working:

the superglue is for emergencies.

Anyway, that hasn't worked either, because the hose clamps won't tighten to the width of the tent pole and the plastic clippy things are too wide for the wood. so fuck it.

CAN ANYONE HELP ME??? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. WE HAVE TWO WEEKS. IF YOU HELP, I WILL COOK FOR YOU.

sorry for shouting but I'm fed up now. Please pass it around: I need someone to help me with the banner poles. thank you guys, I love you xxxx

how to be feminine

okay so I said to Jenny that I'd write a little bit about the crafty aspect of the Stature project: obviously I am a crafter, it's my medium, and I'm also a feminist so naturally I'm intrigued to learn and share how craft has contributed to women's history.

I'm in the middle of reading The Subversive Stitch by Rozsika Parker which is frankly fascinating. I know there was a conference at the V&A last year called The Subversive Stitch Revisited, exploring the legacy of the book 20 years after its first publication. I didn't go because I hadn't read the book then and didn't know it was on, but I know some people who went and I'm going to do some secondhand research involving them at some point. The book largely covers the craft of embroidery from Victorian times and links it with the false notion of femininity, and how this relates to class and women's roles within and outside the home.

from thetextileblog.blogspot.com

So embroidery was at one time an upper class ladies' pursuit and kept them occupied for no real reason other than to give them something to do all day. It was considered a proper ladies' activity, and was practised by young girls who wanted to be 'good' and feminine even though some of them hated it. It was more or less considered to be an art like any other. Then the Renaissance came along and the idea of the artist as a 'divine, inspired individual' was big, so copying patterns designed by someone else, no matter how accomplished, started to look a bit shit next to these wonderful conceptual oil painters who just happened to be mostly men.

This division between fine art and craft went on for ages and still continues to this day to an extent. Craft is still mostly practised by women and tends to serve a more functional, domestic purpose. The Arts and Crafts movement went some way to uphold the value of a well-made object, though, so props to them. Nowadays the likes of Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin mix fine art and craft in their work and seem to do quite well out of it.

High Priestess Cape by Grayson Perry

Crochet has a slightly different history it seems. Developed from a type of embroidery called 'tambour' it was practised by poor Irish women during the potato famine, who used it as a cheap way to make lace to sell abroad. It was deemed a bit common until Queen Victoria got into it and then it became all the rage. Here she is look:

taken from love-crochet.com

Jump forward a few years and here we are today. Crafts got left behind slightly in the 80s when people started buying cheap factory-made items and handmade wasn't very cool. Now we are in a recession, or were, or something, and a big crafts revival has taken place (actually it started way before the recession but whatevs). Funnily a lot of the stuff people make nowadays doesn't seem to have much function; yarn, especially wool, is expensive, and people still buy cheap goods from abroad, even more than ever, so it doesn't really have much correlation. But it's super cool to crochet.

So the issue of femininity. I would say, from my travels on Etsy and the like, that being cute and childlike is kind of a big trend in handmade items. People favour woodland creatures and kittens and cupcakes, crochet food, doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not knocking it because it obviously makes people happy and they like making it and buying it so who am I to judge. I'm as guilty as anyone else to be fair. But when you look at those women from Victorian times, embroidering flowers on everything in the house (for a while, the word 'flowering' was synonymous with embroidering) and women now, crocheting teddy bear cupcakes: the styles have obviously changed, and women (presumably) are making things of their own free will these days; but what it means to be feminine is more or less the same. Soft, unobtrusive, child-like. As Rozsika Parker says: 'there is no hint of the determination, application, ambition and education demanded by [these works]'

cupcake bears by Amigurumi Kingdom/from DIYlife.com

Our very own Elizabeth Gaskell saw the limiting social structures held in place by embroidery. In Wives and Daughters, 1866, she depicts her heroines using the craft to intimidate others, throwing their reels around, and to seduce men by being ever so feminine. The woman without needle skills is hopeless at attracting men. Parker notes that she 'relied on [her] readers' familiarity with the art', sympathising with the heroines' lack of real power but allowing them to win their own small victories using their only weapon: embroidery.

More on this another time. Maybe when I have actually read a book and am not just making it up in my head.

xx