Thanks for the comments everybody - I appreciate everyone of them. To froukje: Yay! It's a deal!
To Lori: I so appreciate you taking the time to comment. See the beneath as me taking your comment seriously. I try to make my views more clear to you - not to convince you, but simply to make you see how I feel about this. 1. My reaction to the email is mainly one of setting a misunderstanding right, since the email is phrased as if the view on knitting for and by soldiers is the mainstream, normal one. There is simply nothing in the mail that shows that there might be people not agreeing with this view. I am ok with somebody writing about knitting by and for soldiers, but I am not ok that the email implies that every knitter can comply with this view. I know a lot of knitters that do not. I just want people to see that there are different views possible. That has nothing to do with hatred. I do not hate the sender of the mail, nor major Laura, I just do not agree with them. A mail was send to me assuming I agreed on the views expressed in it. I set it right by reacting - the sender of the mail assumed wrongly. By doing this I hope we can obtain interpersonal understanding (without necessarily agreeing) 2. I agree you can see knitting for soldiers as somebody who does a nice thing for another human being. But! There are two ways in which you can be knitting for a soldier. You may be knitting for somebody who is close to you and happens to be a soldier. Your son, daughter, cousin, you name it. In that case, I see the knitting as the one you describe: one person doing something nice for another person, because that person is far a way and having a hard time. In this case, you do not necessarily support this person being a soldier. You're knitting because they are your son, cousin, daughter etc, not because they are soldiers. The soldierness of the person is not necessarily relevant. You would knit for them as well if they were working in a refugee camp in a warzone. In this case, I think the phrase 'knitting for soldiers' is actually not the right one. The other way in which can knit for soldiers is by producing knitted items that people are using in their being a soldier. A good example are helmet liners, but also socks, hats, earwarmers etc. are being called for. This is the actual knitting for soldiers that I think supports warfare: your producing something that is used
for the actions of soldiers. If nobody knit these things, the military had to choose either to obtain them from elsewhere, which would cost money, or to not have them, which would mean that soldiers in some situations would not be able to perform (as well) because they were freezing. For me, it would not be much different from knitting bullets, grenades, tanks, guns - were that possible. And it would be much different from knitting, say, a lace bookmark or a nice handbag that the person (who happened to be a soldier) used in their spare time - items that supposedly do not play a role in the functions of a soldier (but who knows...).
The knitting of helmet liners etc., furthermore, is often done for people that are not necessarily known to the knitter. They are collected and then handed out to whichever soldier needs a helmet liner at that point. In this way, the knitter does not knit for a loved one who happens to be a soldier, the knitter knits for
soldiers, as a category. The knitter may or may not have loved ones in the army, that's irrelevant. It is this kind of knitting for soldiers that I think supports warfare.
3. You phrase it as if these people
happen to be in a difficult situation. However, they chose to become soldiers, and in that they are soldiers they contribute to the situation being difficult. I know that the choice between becoming a soldier or not is not always a clear choice (see Holly's comment) but it is still a choice - you can choose not to be a soldier. Although I have never been in the situation that I
had to choose, I firmly believe the world is a better place without soldiers. Some people find this naive. Sometimes the simple solutions are the better ones.
Now there's one
noticeable absence as we call it in conversation analysis: no reply from knitting daily to my email!
And now to something completely different:
I guess you see the stripes. The stripes are there because there is not enough grey yarn for the whole sweater. The plan is to dye the sweater as soon as I am done in order to (almost) rule out the stripes. Do you think this would work? Which colour would you recommend (I am as a rule not fond on browns, oranges and yellows)?
And yes , I should have purled instead of knitted the first row after the k1p1. Bugger. Am I going to rip? Certainly not! I am not a perfectionist (at least not with the knitting and a couple of other things).
Labels: brug dit garnlager, knitting-nature, politics and knitting, yarn
