ouch, plus - knit hat sweatshops?

[verbminx]

Terrible, terrible cramps today. I've slept a lot. B-cat wants to sleep on my heating pad whenever I vacate it.
I am devoid of energy or ambition; will probably go watch the Emmy Awards, as there is nothing else on.

Now, if Eugenia Kim doesn't know how to knit, why is she designing knit hats? (There's a big issue there; you need to know how different gauges and stitches work together, what pulls in and how much, etc.) And why would someone who'd only been knitting for seven months take a job knitting hats - for 1/10 their sale value, no less? I really don't feel sorry for the girl who wrote this article, like she should feel OK having a beef with the Hat People because she couldn't knit properly, but it seems like the Hat People didn't really know what they were doing either.

Comments

[esk.livejournal.com]

yeah, both parties in that article sounded like they had their heads up their asses...but the author, sheesh. she'd been purling wrong, and made her hats too small 'cause she wouldn't check gauge? "professional knitter" my butt.

(anyway, what is "targa"? did she mean "intarsia"?)

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

you know, i hadn't even thought of that. it probably did, and probably has something to do with the hat that has the sunglasses on the front. i have heard the word "targa" before, though I'm not sure in what context (i think it was some kind of garment or accessory), so I think I just let that pass, thinking it was like, some kind of norwegian term for colorwork that i'd never heard before.

but the idea that this girl was a "professional knitter" was a joke. if you don't purl properly, can't do intarsia and stranded colorwork, don't know from circular needles, and think needles are "where the real money goes" in knitting, you're not ready to knit much of anything. the colorwork can come later, but the rest of it is so elementary. (see, Lisa, the thing is, with the $10 needles? You get to use them over and over for years. Unlike the $160 of yarn that's going into a single sweater.) gah, by the end of the article I wanted to slap her and say, "shut your trap, missy!"

[esk.livejournal.com]

heh, i've only heard the word "targa" in reference to a kind of graphic file format (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/graphics/fileformats-faq/part3/section-146.html). i'm not an advanced knitter by any measure, so it could be some obscure term, but it did sound like intarsia to me.

and yeah, totally with you on the needles/yarn thing. the more i look at that article the more i want to commence with the slapping. like her breezy complaint that "this must be what it's like working in a sweatshop"? er, yeah, it does suck to be doing underpaid piecework, and to deal with flaky, clueless employers. but i don't think it's quite "sweatshop labor" when you're sitting around knitting in the comfort of your own home, all the while engaging in angsty internal debates over whether it's time to quit slumming and get back to your "real" job search.

...ok, time to read something less annoying.

I know I can't knit properly

[eunice-branca.livejournal.com]

I knitted a winter hat last year and this woman in one of the shops in Chinatown wanted me to make some for her shop. Amused me because it wasn't that well-made and took too long to knit (I think I had knitted and unravelled the one hat 7 times). There's no way I would have made any money between the yarn cost and my time.

I'm addicted to trying to make hats though. I taught myself to crochet yesterday so I can work on some hats after seeing all of the ones ana voog has been making.