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and then comes back to later when discussing the jaron lanier s book you are not a gadget it reminded me of my friend felix s great idea a few years back now of messy tuesdays inspired by the ways in which some knitting and cooking bloggers seemed to be self consciously styling their domestic lives to look like a glossy lifestyle magazine felix wrote up a manifesto currently offline you are not your flawless surfaces you are not your orderly laundry pile you are not the seamlessness of your finished objects you are not your risen cakes you are not your sewn in ends as another blogger lara put it as someone who spent her teenager years wrapped in teenage angst about not being clever enough pretty enough or thin enough the idea that my home won t be beautiful enough my craft not so well executed or my knitting up to speed has been at times quite tough they confidently posted about the less tidied up bits of their lives celebrating the beauty and reality of the mess that surrounds us all i sometimes think we should bring that back messytues has something on a twitter meme about it no i also think there s potential for some research here john law is good on this topic as a post on the serendipity engine reminded me recently although i ve just quoted a couple of knit bloggers i think this idea of the reality necessity and even beauty of mess has something to say about the way we tell science stories too as the reference to law may signal the point that most interested me about this book however was the way that gauntlett as a professor of media studies is interested in people making media and mediating making it s all very popular culture orientated with some nods to domestic life the hand crafting of pharmaceuticals for example doesn t get much of a look in i wondered if this would have brought something else to the debate that s one of the reasons why i referred to nasa trek there are many other better works on fanfiction e g but i think penley s discussion of something as intrinsically big science as the space race says something about the social arrangement of makers in late modern society there is a danger that by focusing on the ways people make and remake some objects we further black box others for example i learnt how to knit from reading knit blogs i can make a jumper i can also blog about this on the super clever iphone i carry around with me i don t know how to make an iphone though or even spin my own wool to make that jumper from the latter is largely a matter of choice i do at least know some blogs that d teach me to spin and even what plants to grow to make my own dyes from as well as a few people who have access to sheep for wool or possibly even a llama for the former though i have no clue where to even start teaching myself even if i did the manufacture of an iphone is not exactly opensource most of the time i m ok with that cluelessness it frees me up to be knowledgeable about other things but it does also disempower me there are key ways in which most of us do not have the means to media production from our inability to understand how to do anything but use as in use as a consumer the shiny computers so many of us carry around in our pockets to more economic or legal issues like the one martin robbins recently flagged up on his post about web hosts as the achilles heel of online journalism none of that is necessarily a criticism of the book we all have to focus somewhere and gauntlett does touch on these issues a bit in his final chapter web 2 0 not all rosy still i was surprised not to see more on the sociologies of work expertise and technology and finished the book wanting to hear more about anti social aspects of diy culture i also suspect gauntlett would get an intellectual kick out of the various aesthetics of steampunk maker culture old post i wrote on an exhibition of such work to conclude i do want to stress that making is connecting is a lovely book not least because of gauntlett realistically optimistic approach though he ll happily call rubbish his 10 things wrong with the media effects model is justifiably a classic he doesn t wear an ability to be critical like it s some sort of pin badge to show membership of the very clever thinkers club academics should be able to say they like things and i like this book i ll end on a positive note an honest one and say if you are a maker of any sort i can wholehearted recommend making is connecting it ll give you a chance to think about the history and philosophies of crafting cultures it ll lift you out of your own maker microculture to help you ponder your wider context it inspired me to make this post and others and to think more about my making so do read it even if it does take you a few months to get around to finishing it because you keep putting it down to do something else instead posted by alice at 8 53 pm 166 comments tuesday may 17 2011 science and craft post on the guardian this is cross posted from my work blog apologies to the few weirdos who read both there seems to be more and more events happening which i can only describe as science craft i thought i d write about it and did a post for the guardian science blog there are overlaps here with sci art projects just as there are overlaps sometimes problematic ones between arts and crafts more generally however i think science craft events have the potential to involve new and different communities which sci art doesn t necessary reach and to be more participatory in their whole project set up too there is the question of what you participate for exactly what are you making at danger of repeating myself science communication isn t all about baking a cake shaped like a neuron in particular i worry that the fluffier ends of sci craft might act as a distraction from the production of more politically controversial outcomes still we shouldn t loose sight of the use of these more playful products too or rather we shouldn t ignore the power of the social interactions which surround their production my knitting friends often laugh at me for being a process knitter i ll happily take a piece apart and re knit it several times finishing is nice but for me the fun s in the doing similarly i suspect much of the worth of public engagement happens in the process rather than the outcome the various collaborative processes often involved in crafting can provide a space for people to talk through and think through ideas together as i end the piece for the guardian at a knitting evening held at hunterian museum a few years back i ended up sitting next to a homeopath as well as swapping tips on the best way to bind off for socks we discussed our own research projects including the ways in which they might be seen to clash and some of the items of the history of surgery that surrounded us other people listened and joined in before we all moved on to complaining about estate agents it was polite humorous and thoughtful it was also pleasingly mundane something that we d all do well to remember a lot of science is to give another example i spotted this video of a neuroscientist zarinah agnew making a giant sandcastle she told me she wants to do it again but as a workshop rather than a film i like this idea because the time spent making the sandcastle allows space for social interaction which simply watching the film might inspire but won t necessarily do in itself not all public engagement can or should have an obvious political or scientific outcome whether you want to open up the governance of science or increase the public understanding of science you are unlikely to get anywhere without quite a bit of cultural change first playing with a bit of yarn might seem unambitious but arguably the social interaction and reflection that comes with it can help us get there or this social interaction might lead us somewhere else entirely posted by alice at 2 08 pm 68 comments labels crochet extra knitular science sunday may 15 2011 more dna knitting i few weeks ago i posted about a dna themed scarf i d knitted for a friend of mine as it was the seventh time i d knitted that scarf i took the opportunity to think less about the yarn and needles but the social relationships the making and sharing the scarves and the pattern reflected here s another different dna themed piece again i want to reflect on the social connections this pattern reflects because i think it s important it s a cardigan for a baby the baby s father is a science writer another one who is especially interested in genetics so i used the cable pattern from june oshiro s famous dna scarf it s a lovely pattern with a lovely story behind it in many ways it inspired both my dna illusion pattern googledoc link and the cosmic radiation scarf i made for my phd supervisor i ve thought about knitting oshiro s pattern many times but just never got around to it the crafting of this cardigan reflects my friendship with the new baby s parents but it also reflects a sort of parasocial relationship with oshiro as in i ve never met her and doubt she knows who i am but i feel as if i know her as i know odd bits about her life through her blog beyond that it reflects the relationship oshiro had with a colleague who challenged her to design that scarf over a decade ago now indeed it reflects decades and decades of scientists connections with each other and broader popular culture in many ways the image of the double helix has become part of popular culture or at least parts of public culture that s one of the reasons so many people knit it the book behind the cardigan in the photo is about this issue and i guess my desire to knit the image reflects the fact i ve studied this as a sociology undergraduate i used to work in the science museum and would walk past the 1953 watson and crick model they have on display there a couple of time a day so i have an odd set of personal and professional relationships with it too ones that are different from the relationship a geneticist would have and have seen people from all over the world stop and think through their relationships with the icon of the double helix as they stop by the exhibit too back to that baby cardigan it s actually a mash up of two patterns as i also used elizabeth zimmerman s february baby cardigan as the basic garment thus it reflecting an older and broader set of connections to knitting communities as well as more personally a connection to my friend kirsty who gave me a book of zimmerman patterns for my birthday a few years ago in terms of my use of both patterns crafting this piece also reflects various other social connections of varying degrees of tangibility throughout the online knitting community as i ve tracked other uses of these two patterns now i m sharing it with you and on ravelry it reflects another set of connections and opens itself to further possible ones too posted by alice at 4 42 pm 49 comments labels baby garments cardigan extra knitular fos science zimmerman monday april 25 2011 what am i knitting where am i knitting my latest work in progress can you guess what it is yet it s going to be a scarf based on the step up afghan from woolly thoughts the pattern is the sort of super logical and efficient as possible one i love there s lots of picking up stitches knitting one shape into another and rules like all triangles are stocking stitch or vertical parallelograms have garter stitch light coloured stripes i m still getting to grips with these rules but am getting there rather than what am i knitting a better question might be where am i knitting it ignore the old bag from a conference in florence that s a red herring if you can t quite work out that white fuzzy dome in the background here s a better shot stepping out from the macro a bit i m in dc for a couple of months visiting faculty at american university school of communication i ll also be spending a bit of time in new york philadelphia chicago toronto and ottawa while i m here any don t miss knitting things to do people to see yarn to squeeze don t think i can make maryland sheep and wool i just managed to catch the last day of the crochet reef display at the smithsonian museum of natural history on it s last day best two overheards there it s not coral it s made of sweater stuff but in a tone of and omg that is awesome and it wasn t just one person you know it was loads of people it s a community project again clearly the speaker thought this was the best bit i agree posted by alice at 2 03 am 36 comments labels crochet illusion knitting in public scarves stripes wips wool thursday march 24 2011 on the social nature of knitting here s a picture of my friend ed wearing a dna illusion scarf i ve just knitted him ed s a prolific and highly respected science writer he blogs at not exactly rocket science he recently included me on a list of top science bloggers and i joked that if he wanted me to knit him a scarf he only need ask i was serious too though i appreciate the work ed does but i get to read it for free though he does get paid for much of his writing he also puts a crazy amount of hours in knitting him a scarf was a way of saying thank you illusion knitting is notoriously hard to photograph so you might have to have a look at the video in this post to really get how the trick really works as i ve said before dna and illusion knitting seemed to be made for one another the ladders of the striping pattern twist round those of the helix as purls and knit stitches collect to display a regular shape i also like that you have know how to look at the scarf to really see the pattern there s an oh moment when you spot it symbolic of the science it reflects the pattern isn t self evident presenting ed with the scarf in the pub last night it was great watching other people respond to it too and holding it up to the eyes to spot the illusion i think this dna illusion pattern is the knitting project i m most proud of it s not so much the product though i do like the way it looks or the process of knitting it though i do enjoy illusion knitting rather it s the social connections that making this scarf has either reflected or helped create i m currently reading a new book about the social dimension of craft making is connecting so i guess this is on my mind at the moment the first one i made was for an ex geneticist friend as leaving present for work i d only recently learned to knit flatmate kirsty had adapted the alien illusion scarf for her brother with a picture of che guevara i thought i d try something similar and that a design reflecting the iconic double helix would work really well with the illusion pattern then i made another for a scientist knitter friend in new york and wrote up the pattern to share then more started popping up i ve had emails from all over the world about the pattern i ve knitted the design into some socks for a science teacher friend for his birthday then as a baby blanket for a cousin and then again as a...