captain america

The US Army is scheduled to introduce retro-style service uniforms with an initial issue of some two hundred of the World War II era service dress first to military recruiters before general distribution.
Presently, in all settings outside of formal social events, the standard attire is camouflaged fatigues and combat boots (previously here and here), drawing some derision in non-combat situations and the “Greens” would be worn in the office and during conferences. Soldier reception to the new professional look is reportedly positive but at the same time were not eager to add more to their service wardrobe.

7x7

suburbia: Eliza Gosse paints Australian Mid-Century modern homes

emancipation of the dissonance: economist and performer Merle Hazard delivers an atonal tune

threadstories: crocheted masks and headdresses examine our online avatars and personæ

autoglyphs: Michael Light takes an aerial survey of the arid American west

forget about it: a versatile Italian word to know

needs more salt: a seasonings purveyor and a tech company collaborate to optimise spicing up your recipes

byggeskikk: a photographer becomes quite taken with a picturesque cabin 

lozenge moquette

Thanks to City Lab, we are invited to revisit the plush and pile of mass-transit upholstery through the industrial textile designs of Enid Marx and other samples archived by the London Transportation Museum. By turns both extravagant and practical, both overlooked and omnipresent, the exhibit offers a retrospective look at the power of the intentionality in design, underscored perfectly by something that often retreats into the background yet (if not itself the subject of passing derision) so much part of a shared ridership experience.

bahn-verspätungsschal

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake with a bit of an update from Colossal, we learn about a loyal but frustrated rail commuter who, much like Andean quipu or the zealous knitter who got carried away with the Doctor’s scarf, documented delays experienced in coloured wool bands during her daily trip (two a day—round-trip, hin- und züruck) between Moosburg an der Isar and München, which should take approximately thirty minutes on regional trains—once infrastructure repairs and diverting to buses meant that long interruptions became the norm.
Her one hundred-twenty centimetre long handiwork (reminiscent of a DNA test result in the rawest form) garnered a lot of attention after her daughter, a prominent journalist and news editor, posted it on social media. The knitter decided the auction off the “train-delay-scarf” for the charity Bahnhofs Mission, an outreach and assistance programme for the homeless, transient and precarious based in train stations, raising several thousand euro. Claudia Weber, the creator, is working on a new shawl for 2019.

thread and transistor

As a heuristic exhibition to explore the shifting definition and value of craft in modern society and commerce, Dezeen highlights some of the best instalations during the Istanbul Design Biennial that employed stitching and weaving recontextualised in electronics and as a store of value, as in an heirloom quilt to hand down from one generation to the next.
Looms themselves prefiguring mechanical computational relays, we really enjoyed discovering the functional universal computer whose circuitry was embroidered out of gold and the yarn spindle whose spooling action can actually save a spoken yarn as an audio recording. I wonder if future electronic devices will be decentralised and once again a cottage industry. Moreover, given the value assigned to block-chain cryptography—secure and sturdy though mathematically also relatively simple, it struck us as particularly delectable that there is one gaming circle that calls for players to produce their own knitcoin to advance. Check out the link above to learn more about the individual works from Ebru Kurbak and others.

selbuvotter

Often interpreted as a snowflake instead of a flower and universally as shorthand for all things wholesomely wintry and Scandinavian, the knit pattern selburose is an ancient symbol and predates its 1857 appearance on a pair of mittens (vott) that had the whole congregation of the town of Selbu quite smitten with the design.

The popularity of the pattern (selbumønster, which also sparked a whole cottage industry and helped women become more economically independent) coincided with the Norwegian independence movement from Sweden and became somewhat of a bold fashion statement as something distinctly Norsk despite the mixed pedigree. Read more on the origins and spread of this icon at The Atlantic and find similar stories about the familiar and everyday syndicated at Object Lessons.

purl 2.0

We were delighted to discover that among the wide array of peripheral devices and accessories (previously) for Nintendo’s range of video game consoles included a full-sized, functioning sewing machine, manufactured by the company Jaguar and licensed by Singer, that plugged into the Game Boy Colour handheld and could be programmed to produce elaborate stitches and embroidery—as well as learning a practical skill.
It would have been pretty keen to monogram all one’s clothes. There’s a really in depth and well-researched video documentary of the sewing machine’s history, available in Japanese, European and America markets back in 2001. A fitting sort of homage to the fact that the first punch card readers were used in industrial looms to produce increasingly sophisticated textiles and patterns, there was also a video game (apparently only for domestic markets) called Mishin Sashi Senyou (みしん さし せにょう, Let’s have a Seat!) Soft: Mario Family that was a sewing sampler challenge of Mario Brothers goodies and baddies.

topic thread

Hat-tip once again to Kottke’s Quick Links for directing our attention to Crazy Walls, a blog obsessed with the appearance of forensics walls in film and television that attempt to connect and solve mysteries by linking maps and newspaper clippings through red yarn.
Following the principle of conservation of detail, the method called concept mapping can be used to filter out red herrings when the investigator does not know what easily overlooked detail might lead to a break-through and looking for relevance in every detail can drive one to distraction or worse. Though sometimes in earnest or sometimes meta-critical like this cameo of X-Files’ David Duchovny (previously) on Full-Frontal with Samantha Bee—bringing us back around to the matter of Puerto Rico whose underreported casualties might have been shoved out of the news cycle in part by amplifying and hijacking the host’s own monologue, most often the trope is used to lampoon conspiracy theorists.

view of the world from ninth avenue

The always inspiring Nag on the Lake, through the lens of a special textile exhibit hosted at the visitor’s centre of a historic mill located between Glasgow and Edinburgh helps us to place a name and personality to a diverse portfolio of work by an artist arguably best known for his political cartoons, Saul Steinberg. Though commercial work was not his favourite engagement, Steinberg looked as if he took no mean measure of joy in creating textiles and pattern-work, his ornate design The Wedding pictured, and in the 1950s, being able to cotton onto any medium was definitely to the artist’s advantage.
As a young man in Romania, his caricatures documented and lampooned the rise of fascism under conditions made it intolerable and he fled across the Atlantic and was granted asylum by the Dominican Republic in 1941. While he waited for his immigration application to the United States to be approved, Steinberg carried on a lively correspondence in cartoons with The New Yorker (previously), and this epistolary relationship informed a career that lasted for nearly six decades.

autograph hound

Public Domain Review informs of the unique, multi-year project of a rather star-struck seventeen-year old quilter from Rhode Island.
From 1856 to 1863, Adeline Harris solicited by post the autographs of leaders and luminaries of her day and received back not only the signatures on little silk squares as requested but was rather overwhelmed with some households sending other historic artefacts to incorporate into the quilt—three hundred and sixty autographs, many personalised with a short epigram. This is far better than a selfie with a celebrity or a vaunted re-tweet or mention, we think. Contributors included Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Grimm, Charles Dickens, Alexander von Humboldt and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Be sure to visit Public Domain Review at the link up top to learn more about the project’s signatories and its creator.

war & pieced

Hyperallergic features a fascinating and therapeutic exhibit of quilts created by convalescing soldiers, put together mostly from remnants of their uniforms. Redeploying service members from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries British military adventures were encouraged to take to crafting rather than resorting to other, less healthy means of coping. Finished examples are exceedingly rare, but several samples have been brought together and put on display in the American Folk Art Museum in New York. 

exemplum

Treating the needlework sampler as the record of a life overlooked, the Fitzwilliam Museum of the University of Cambridge has curated a collection of over one hundred of these crafty examples (both words have the same Latin root) from the sixteen hundreds up until modern times—often with the morose realisation that these creations made to demonstrate literacy, stitching skills as a future home-maker and cottage-industry entrepreneur are the only trace of their existence remaining. The exhibition also explores how symbolism and subject shifts with time and how in depth research centred around these artefacts—which also were the makers’ creative outlet—can reveal further details about the fortune and circumstance of the individuals and their families.

7x7

microcosm: an annual photography competition invites us to explore the world around us just below the threshold of the naked eye

the luwians and the trojan war: the intriguing tale behind the lost frieze that may document the collapse of the Bronze Age

point and shoot: using algorithmic processes to inform the shutter when a photo-worth opportunity presents itself, one internet and technology giant is offering an automatic camera for home use—relatedly

gastaloops: one hundred day push to create gorgeous, encircling animations—via the Everlasting Blört

high rate of staff turn-over: activities offered at the White House adult day care facility

extinction cos-play: crocheted costumes for the common pigeon to highlight the importance of biodiversity and fighting to protect endangered species—via Nag on the Lake

trek ‘splaining: a visual physics lesson on the problem-fraught workings of as seen on TV teleportation

cool and calculated

Thanks to the brilliant essay by Margaret Wertheim we’re reminded that not only is non-Euclidean geometry not just some contrarian theory, it’s moreover observable in Nature and we can learn to crotchet with hyperbolic patterns.
By pondering how simple creatures and primitive—even primordial—structures can prefigure the most complex and abstract mathematical concepts that mankind is credited for discovering rather than being informed by a disembodied function, the author explores how we might not have taken the most optimal and encouraging approach to academics and suggests we engage in maths jam-sessions and that virtuosity differs only in instrument. Study and practise aren’t being supplanted by license but rather the notion that our imagination is rather inhibited by convention and we’d be better able to see the next revelatory breakthroughs if calculus was the plaything of all aspirants and not just the few. When first taking a geometry course and being introduced to the different fates of parallel lines, I recall day-dreaming about the architecture and the topologically understanding of birds but didn’t know that these abstract concepts were embodiments of the physical world. There are a lot of thought-provoking avenues to explore in the piece whether or not one believes that honey-bees or nautiluses know what’s best suited to going about their business and the most resonant support for her argument was how mathematicians have time and again have found themselves feeling doubt and disdain for their most transformative theories and nearly didn’t dare share them for fear of rejection—whereas bit of contextualisation and craft might have proved liberating.

prêt-à-porter

Considering that at this juncture concerts and other venues make more money off of t-shirts than album sales and merchandising more than supplements a lot of media properties as well as the messaging and statement that individuals are eager and willing to present, we appreciated and enjoyed indulging in this history of what was originally called the “crew-neck” from its first literary citation to the advent of mass-produced screen-printing that really propelled the shirt has a vehicle for label and personal branding.
That first literary mention was in 1920 with the debut novel of F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise with a mention of the article of clothing among his equipage for university—not that that moment in a book about traumatic emotions cushioned by alcohol and love twisted by status-seeking particularly launched or informs the career of the t-shirt as a mode of expression. Notably, one of the earliest examples of the garment—perhaps some might consider it a uniform and not brandishing a logo—in film comes nineteen years later with the release of The Wizard of Oz, where the attendants of the Wash & Brushup Company of Emerald City sport identical green t-shirts with “Oz” printed on them.

29 dresses or the tele-screens have no off switch

On offer by invitation only, there’s an electronic eye for the wardrobe, changing stalls and locker rooms that will judge your clothes and sense of style, making recommended changes based on one’s existing catalogue of apparel and surely it could direct the individual receiving the dressing-down to a host of places for retail-therapy. It will also offer advice on which of two outfits might be a better fit for a certain occasion, based on algorithms and perhaps consulting with the panopticon of other web cameras to save us the embarrassment of showing up in the same dress as another.

latch and locker

Hyperallergic features a nice appreciation of the overlooked Pop Art artist Dorothy Grebenak, active from 1950 to 1970.
Though she never quite owed up to being attached to that particular genre, Grebenak’s creations were as iconic as those of Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol. Possibly relegated to a secondary status due to her medium of choice—almost exclusively working in hooked rugs meant to be displayed on the wall like a tapestry—Grebenak’s work made it into some prestigious museums but got no further than the gift shops, until being championed by one collector and gallery owner. Find out more about this forgotten artist at the link up top.

tête-à-tête or rumpus room

In the early 1950s, avid gamer (backgammon and bingo) and fashion designer Bettie Murrie, recognising that the poodle skirt was “a conversation circle” thought to marry her interests, as Messy Nessy Chic shares, with a line of parlour game apparel for the fairer-sex. What a bizarre and potentially uncomfortable and trying way to be the centre of attention, surrounded by handsy players and patiently waiting out the rounds. The dresses had specialised patterns for different game boards and pockets to hold the dice and game pieces. It is unclear if plans to tailors skirts for all “intellectual levels”—from checkers to chess—were ever realised.

sweater weather

The fabulous Messy Nessy Chic invites us to peruse the pages of a gem of car-boot sale find in the big book of British knitting patterns called “Wit Knits,” published in 1986. These ugly sweater connoisseurs, including Joanne Lumley (aka, Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous), haven’t even a touch of irony in their enthusiastic modelling.  Be sure to check out the entire rogues gallery (which might even inspire a crafty project) at the link up top.

haberdashery or bodhisat

Since first spying this knitted cap in the style of Buddha’s (note the distinction between Skinny- and Fat-Elvis Buddha) scalp on Everlasting Blört, I’ve been both enamoured and intrigued.
Not that I actually need another hat, though an avid hat-wear am I, since I have many outstanding ones, including animal ones: I got an owl and H got a cute deer which unfortunately bears a strong resemblance to Pedo Bear so that one does not get worn often and a superb one hand-made from a crafty friend from a kit. I do not however have an animal hat made from a kit, like these fun ones courtesy of Nag on the Lake. Wearing the hand-made one always makes me yearn to learn to knit in earnest and start a cottage industry, though the feeling fades once the hat is doffed. I wonder if some clever person might make instructions for this. Meanwhile, if you are confident with placing an order, there’s a website from Japan that sells them featured on Biglobe.