A Knitting Academic

Reading lots of memoirs by incredible people like Stacey Abrams, Cecile Richards and Shawn Askinosie has worn me out a bit. They have grit and created successful movements and organizations and wrote books to help others. Their works are inspiring, and I may never achieve anything similar. So, I picked up my first fiction novel by the popular Fredrik Backman. He's well-loved for his book, A Man Called Over, which was also made into a well-loved film. His works have a reputation for being elegant, focusing on the spectrum of humanity, and still remain perhaps a bit heartwarming. "Us Against You" was published in 2018, and gives me a chance to vote for it in the upcoming Goodreads books of the year standings. I really want to be able to vote and choose between nominees this year, so I started reading the book on Scribd without knowing what it was about and ignoring that it's a sequel to a book that I haven't read. Since I didn't know before starting, the st...

Since reading " Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion " by Elizabeth Cline , I've had a new-found need to make my wardrobe more sustainable. I applied Marie Kondo 's method to identify which items I wanted to keep and which I needed to thank for their service and give away or recycle or turn into rags. I made the vow to buy clothes to replace when necessary, and not to fulfill a shopping desire or urge. I also made the vow to source all new clothing more responsibly. That means features like: Organic cotton GOTS Certified Fair Trade Recycled materials   Some of this effort has gone pretty well. I bought a clearance organic cotton dress from Pact to wear as a night dress along with 95% organic cotton panties. Many of these items are fair trade and GOTS certified. I also got a regular cotton dress from Passion Lillie that is fair trade and dyed in a supposedly more environmentally friendly process. Unfortunately, I've had a number of p...

When my partner asked for a traditional gansey sweater, I immediately wanted to try one of the more sustainable yarn options on the market. Peace Fleece came to mind because the Fall 2018 issue of Interweave Knits had an article on their relationship with the Navajo Nation. According to the article, the Navajo reservation ranchers had a lot of Churro and other sheep whose wool sold for very low prices at a local trading post. A member organized a wool buy day and soon Peace Fleece started buying the wool at almost 10x what was previously being paid by the trading post. Peace Fleece started in 1985 buying wool from the Soviet Union in an effort to create economic ties and promote peace and understanding. They have a lot of information on their website about the farmers and ranchers who provide the fleece . What's especially nice about Peace Fleece is that they have navy wool. It's surprisingly hard to find that color. Patience Blue Peace Fleece and Beth Brown-Reinsel...

On December 4th, 2018, I shared my footprint results from a few calculators. I wanted to see how the estimates changed now that I live in a house and have a more demanding job. I'm sure the calculators and their assumptions have changed too. Essentially, my footprint hasn't changed a lot. I've reduced in some areas (shopping) and increased in others (transport and housing). Although I buy more organic, I eat a lot more dairy. Check it out and let me know: what's your footprint?   Redefining Progress My 2018 results are here . If everyone were to live like me, we would need 4.7 earths. That's 0.3 more than in 2008. Surprisingly little change despite having a whole house and flying internationally more often. My global acres footprint increased by 10 acres. My pastureland proportion increased significantly. I suspect a lot of the results changed due to increases in quality and availability of data over the past ten years. The Global Footprint Network and Ear...

Knitting and math are obvious best buds. Sara-Marie Belcastro's article, Adventures in Mathematical Knitting published in American Scientist (Vol. 101, N. 2, March-April 2013, also online ) has a lot of great examples. But it seems like knitting, because it has often been performed by women, has not always been seen as a technical or mathematical endeavor. Men, having generally had a monopoly on creating the studies of intelligence and aptitude, have generally also had a monopoly on deciding what is and isn't technical. Here's a quote from a lecture by Richard Feynman, presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, 1966 in New York City. "I would like to report other evidence that mathematics is only patterns. When I was at Cornell, I was rather fascinated by the student body, which seems to me was a dilute mixture of some sensible people in a big mass of dumb people studying home economics, etc. including lots of girls....