IN THIS VAPID Articles Why I Make Do and Mend Mingled Yarns Decking the Halls in Abergavenny Confessions of a Lazy Crafter
Photo Essay My Shop
Creative writing Diane Knit One, Purl two They Make Music Martin
EDITORS’ LETTER
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here does one start with an editors’ letter? “Thank you for choosing to pick up this ‘zine and open
buy it so that we can afford to pay the printer? And if you’re not intending to buy it, but
t’Yorkshire, where she has been hanging out with her cats and pet chicken, trying to learn to knit, and making up excuses to get back to Manchester as much as possible. She’s going travelling soon and will continue to be involved in VK, thanks to the invention of the internet. We are still drinking copious cups of tea.
careful not to bend the pages” Probably, we should start by introducing ourselves. Our names and Betsy and Anna and we graduated with BA (hons) in Design and Art Direction from Manchester Metropolitan University in June, full of dreams and hopes and desires to make lots of lovely work and the need to drink copious cups of tea. Anna is still living in Manchester working hard on her MA, designing things, working on this, doing that being broke and working freelance thing. Betsy, meanwhile, moved back home
And so, to Vapid Kitten, where did it come from? What does ‘Vapid Kitten’ mean? Did you say ‘rapid’? To answer those questions in order: The concept of VK was born in a tutorial session at university, where Betsy desperately needed a new project in order not to fail her degree. Since she’d based her dissertation on women’s magazines, and the love/hate relationship she has with them, it was suggested that she design her own magazine.
The name ‘Vapid Kitten’ came in two parts. The first was born, when trying to describe her exasperation with mainstream women’s magazines; Betsy said, “…they’re just nothing. I mean, it’s all so… vapid”. While the second, was a conversation that Betsy had with a designer where he described her portfolio as a kitten, “… but its an ugly kitten, and so if someone has to choose between an ugly kitten and a cute kitten, they’re always going to choose the cute one, aren’t they?”. She’s still not entirely sure what he meant. So that’s how the name came about, a couple of spur of the moment comments and a desperate mind.
Oh, and no, we don’t mean ‘Rapid Kitten’. That would just be silly. So that’s brings us up to date with the history of VK. After graduation Anna suggested that the magazine be reborn, as a joint project, which you now hold in your hands (or if you are technological, you may be reading it on a screen of some sort). If you like it, or if you hate it, or if you’d like to submit just drop us an email, or find our facebook page or blog. Enjoy! Anna&Betsy XOXO
CONTRIBU Articles
Photo Essay
Georgia Bosson
Alison Buckley
www.georgiabosson.com
http://alisonbuckley.blogspot.com
Georgia recently graduated from Manchester Metropolitan Unbiversity with a BA (hons) in Embroidery. She lives and works in London as a textile designer.
Alison is also a recent graduate from Manchester Metropolitan Univeristy, and now lives and works in Manchester. She works with ideas of reality and identity as well as creating visual narratives.
Cath Barton cath.barton@virgin.net Cath is a singer, writer and photographer who likes to have a go at all sorts of arts and crafts. She lives in Abergavenny with her husband Oliver and cat Eggy. Kate Dunstone www.katedunstone.co.uk Kate is a recent graduate from Nottingham Trent University, and has been drawing, knitting and writing for many years. She now hopes to go pro in at least one of these areas. In the meantime she works at a cinema and considers her options. Crystal Spencer cryss_spencer@yahoo.co.uk Cryss Spencer is a reformed Yorkshire lass and a perpetual student of Literature. She resides in Manchester. Cryss enjoys proper beer and biscuits; preferably together.
TORS Creative Writing Maude Larke
Katie Slade
Maude has come back to her own writing after years in universities, analyzing others’ work; and to classical music as an ardent amateur after fifteen years of piano and voice in her youth. Publications include Naugatuck River Review, Cyclamens and Swords, and Sketchbook.
Katie is an MA student on Manchester Metropolitan University’s Creative Writing course, having already achieved a first in her BA in English and Creative Writing at the same intitution. Ruth sabath Rosenthal www.ruthsabathrosenthal.moonfruit.com Ruth is a New York poet. Her poems have been published in dozens of literary journals and poetry anthologies throughout the U.S. and abroad. In 2006, her poem “on yet another birthday” was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Laura Lucas Laura has been writing since the age of eight and wrote her first poem at thirteen. Born and raised in New York State’s Hudson River Valley, she moved to Seattle in 2007 seeking a change of scene - and has made her home there ever since. Her poetry has also appeared in Line Zero.
WHY I MAKE DO AND MEND
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started knitting as a hobby five or six years ago purely for my own enjoyment, without really analysing why I enjoyed it so much. While researching and writing my dissertation on knitting and craft, I became more aware of the issues and attitudes around knitting and crafting in general my interest. I discovered the sense of community and camaraderie between crafters, craft’s potential to confront and comment on contemporary life, its spirit of independence, and discovered some inspirational figures working within each of these areas. NB. As a knitter and embroiderer, it is generally other knitters’ and embroiderers’ work I am inspired by. There are, of course, amazing, inspiring people working in every area of craft.
Craft is community. In the past knitting was thought of as a solitary, domestic activity, but today’s knitters are a far more social, look at the popularity of Debbie Stoller’s ‘Stitch n’ Bitch’ books; the draw of local knitting groups; or the rise of hundreds of knitting websites, forums and message boards which knitters use to organise meetings and share information. Knitting groups provide knitters with a place to take it easy, to learn and enhance their skills and probably eat some cake, and online communities function in much the same way with tutorials, forums and articles offering an escape from the relentless negativity on the rest of the internet. See: www.ravelry.com www.knitty.com www.craftster.org
Craft is comforting. Anyone who has ever worn a hand knitted jumper knows how comforting it is to know another person cares enough to spend time creating a garment especially for them. This element of comfort has been used throughout the history of craft to provide comfort to those most in need, like sending hand knitted scarves and other items to soldiers at the front during the war. Today’s crafters use similar tactics to provide comfort to the most vulnerable members of
society, many knitting charities in particular work to provide hats, shawls and blankets to premature and impoverished babies, or people living in war torn areas. The slow repeated actions of many crafts can provide comfort for the crafters themselves, and crafts such as knitting have been used to help people recovering from eating disorders and drug addiction. See: www.projectthrive.org Mencap’s Make with Me event (www.mencap.org.uk)
in independent crafty businesses. From earning pocket money selling at craft fairs to full blown indie-businesses, such as Sublime Stitching, craft gives the opportunity for people to create a new vision of business, that promotes a close relationship with consumers and fair business practises. See: www.etsy.com; www.folksy.com; your local craft fair
Craft is heritage. Craft is confrontational. Craft, with its connotations of Grannies and domesticity, is prime for subversion, and many contemporary crafters use their work to comment on war, politics, big business and human relationships in a variety of ways, from knitted graffiti to aggressively political knitwear. Knitted graffiti (a.k.a. yarn bombing) generally involves using knitted squares to decorate trees, lampposts and other items in public spaces. These human interferences in industrial landscapes remind people of their relationship with their surroundings and the effect they can exert on them. Knitter Lisa Anne Auerbach uses jumpers, mittens and other classic knitwear in a more aggressive way to comment on war and politics, what could send a clearer message than a knitted jumper featuring the slogan ‘Dick Cheney Before He Dicks You’? See: www.castoff.info; www.microrevolt.org; www.craftivism.com
Craft is independent. Craft has increasingly come to represent a rejection of corporate culture, and while craft is obviously big business for yarn and craft supplies companies (angora yarn for £14 anyone?), there has been a mini-boom
Knitting has always been big in my family, and stories about my Granddad’s badly knitted scarves and Great-Granddad knitting his own socks abound. It’s my Grandma’s knitting that has had the most influence on me though, from matching jumpers for my sister and I, to dresses and cardigans for our dolls. Years of wearing hand knitted jumpers and cardigans made me aware of the love and care that goes into each handmade garment, and whenever I pick up my needles and yarn it’s this love and care that inspires me most of all. See: your grandparents; parents; friends...
These are just a few aspects of contemporary craft that inspire me, and I know every crafter reading this will have their own inspirations and attitudes towards crafting. Although it can seem a little overly analytical, defining what it is you love about crafting can lead to new discoveries, new ideas and new friends. So consider what it is that motivates you to pick up your needles or glue gun, and make some inspirational craft of your own!
- Kate Dunstone
DIANE D
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- Maude Larke
MIN G L E D YARNS
I remember the nighttime drop-offs. A bin bag bundled into the hands of someone else’s mother, containing knitted toys, hats, gloves, crocheted doilies, pin-cushions and patchworks. The culmination of weeks spent listening to my mother’s clacking needles, preparing for some fête or fair. All the women of my family are prolific knitters, crotchetiers and seamstresses. I used to be ashamed of their hell-bent stuff-making. Let’s face it, no pernickety preteen wishes to wear the same cardigan as their gormless brother. And in my hometown it was an embarrassment to have a swimming bag distinctly lacking in Adidas stripes (mine was more Julie-Andrewsloves-curtains than kappa-slapper-kissesschool-heartthrob). Eventually, self-consciousness became snobbishness. I decided that knitting choice craft of my Mother, Aunties and Grandmas - was non-artistic, formulaic: ‘K1. K2tog.’ looked more like a+b=c than the golden ratio. Also, I just couldn’t bloody do it. Despite my ineptitude with them, I have always been haunted by clacking needles. After a spate of recession flavoured make-your-own articles last year,
Germaine Greer responded with ‘Who says knitting is easy? One of my bedsocks is bigger than the other’ (Guardian, 2009), which made me feel a little better about my uselessness. However this did not: cursorily Greer noted ‘no feminist can disparage women’s web-weaving in principle’. Off went those clacking fracking needles. I’m a feminist! Aren’t I? So… here is a defence of my misplaced heritage: ‘women’s web weaving’, chiefly designed to quell that needling noise in my head and reprove my youthful dismissal of this craft. When people talk of art, there is a danger of picturing tapestries preserved like pickles at the correct temperature in museums, but craft art should always be part of our day-to-day existence, not removed from it. Artists often refer to their working method as their ‘craft’ but the final entity is something ‘other’. The weaver or knitter produces something we might recognise and/or use. Their craft relates to the way we actually live our lives, not to some transcendental purpose. Some old bloke wrote ‘the web of our life is of a mingled yarn’ and I think he was onto something!
The Whitworth Art Gallery’s recent textiles exhibition displayed skirts, banners, rugs and hangings predominantly made by women - behind glass. Contained and clinically viewed, these pieces seemed sapped of life. Craft is art; art which improves our lives by becoming part of its matter. Since the 1990s businesses like Hobbycraft and the touch-too-twee brand Cath Kidston have been turning the aesthetics of handmade craft into a commercial success. Both retail a range of products such as starter-kits and books written and designed to teach the next generation the crafts which thousands of teens - like myself - rejected. I rejected my family’s craft due to felt connotations of subjugation and enforced domesticity. A weaving woman conjured up those famous evocations of ‘The Lady of Shallot’ by Holman Hunt and Waterhouse, with the eponymous heroine prettily painted in verdant colours and bound by the threads of her loom to remain imprisoned. Ha, I knew that weaving was a method of gender oppression! Nope. Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shallot’ is cursed to remain in her tower, but weaving is no agent of that curse. It is both a relief from her lonely internment and her only dialogue with the outside world. Her ‘magic web of colors gay’ is her ‘delight’; nowadays it could also provide an income too!
‘woven and interwoven’ connections informing its shape. The novel is constructed with carefully entangled story threads, displaying a democratic even-handedness to obstruct any singular reading. Eliot’s work shows us that all weaving requires a level of dualism; an ability to see things from several perspectives. This is the communion between weaving and dialogue. Webweaving requires a method of thought integral to feminist arguments. Weaving articulates the need for fairness, for the consideration of all options before deciding upon a single end. No matter how coarse your tea-pot cosy is, no matter how snug your snood, it has come about through a controlled examination of a culmination of variables: of warp and weft, tone, tension and texture. My Grandma spent last summer updating a 1950s knitting pattern to fit my (frankly uncorsetable) frame. This was not a formulaic or artistically impoverished process. The resulting canary-yellow cardigan is beautiful, useful and unusual. Its design is no less imaginative than Heaney’s Beowulf translation. And I can wear it! Lesson learnt. Cheers Greer.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) describes a ‘particular web’ and the - Crystal Spencer
KNIT ONE, PURL TWO My life sweater for all weather meant never to be taken off I knit I purl I watch the shrug grow to fit my frame my metal needles slick click clack their way through skeins of yarn & reinforce my seamless knack for keeping nitwits only in stitches & the clever mindful ever-pained that I’ve yet to master the craft of knitting a fitting-life sweater
- Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
MY SHOP Each shop front has a story to tell, a narrative that conveys to the passer by not just what is inside the shop, but who is inside it. What the frontage lacks in glossy sophisticated branding, designed to entice the passer by, it makes up for in expression. Each of the signs lets you know that this is their shop and their craft- without frills they exclaim their purpose and emanate a sense of individualism. - Alison Buckley
D ECKING THE HALLS IN ABERGAVENNY
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bergavenny is a small town on the edge of the Brecon Beacons in South Wales. Our annual Food Festival, held over the third weekend in September, has grown in scope and popularity every year since it began in 1999; this year, the Festival attracted 37,000 visitors. However, it is only a very few people, mostly locals, who attend the Festival Fanfare Feast. The Festival Fanfare Feast, held the Thursday before the Food Festival begins, marks the unveiling of the new Town Hall decorations, which are created for the hall afresh each year, and is the only chance to see them specially illuminated. The decorations are made over three short weeks by a team of volunteer artists and crafters under the inspiring leadership of Bettina Reeves, who undertakes this project while on holiday from her day job as Senior Lecturer in Theatre Design at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. The scale and ambition of Bettina’s design ideas for
the project has grown each year – from the batik hangings of the early years to the sky-full of bees and flowers of the most recent Festival, via the full Welsh breakfast, fish, flying chefs, chickens and sheep! The themes are always food-related. Bettina says that she tries to relate them to topical concerns: “The chickens were in response to a year of TV chefs voicing concern over the treatment of battery hens. The bees and flowers acknowledged the plight of our bees due to a virus which is causing the collapse of colonies.” I think that what we volunteers produce is a miracle. Some of us are professional artists; others doubt their ability to use a sewing needle when they come along and surprise themselves with what they achieve. Bettina lets people get on with things on their own but always keeps a watchful eye – the best leadership.
The work is totally involving and if you have worries elsewhere in your life you forget them when you arrive at Arts Alive Wales HQ, and get stuck into the work – sometimes literally! Bettina never knows how many of us will turn up. Some days there will be 20 people working and others only six or seven. Over 50 different volunteers were involved in 2010. Somehow we always get it all done, on time and to a remarkably high standard, being in good company helps, as do the delicious lunches and cakes and endless cups of tea and coffee we share. We have enormous fun. As well as painting, sticking and stitching, we get a chance to learn techniques we might not have tried before: making the chefs involved papier maché; the chickens’ wings were made with withy (willow) sculpture supports; the sheep’s fleeces were made by rag-rugging and the lambs had crocheted coats.
So if you visit our town call into the Market Hall and have a look at the decorations – they’re left up for the whole year The next Festival will be held 17-18 September 2011. Full details can be found on the website. www.abergavennyfoodfestival.com Arts Alive Wales provides creative opportunities for people of all ages, whatever their previous experience. They have a strong reputation for their work with young people. The website is www. artsalivewales.org.uk and you can also find them on Facebook.
- Cath Barton
THEY M A K E MUSIC I was surprised when George brought out a guitar from the cluster of cases in the corner, played a gentle rhythm in that mournful tone of those who have little and wish for much. I suddenly recalled my father seated on the edge of the old water bed, hands cradling wood and strings with the case on the floor at his feet. And a man named Paul who came on Fridays to our little nursery school strumming “Free To Be” and “Puff the Magic Dragon” on an old left-handed acoustic. When I saw the gleam by the garbage cans, my heart suddenly started to race potential under my fingertips that I too might someday create. Coming home on Monday evenings, I often found my sweetheart drifting in the center of the room, lost in the execution, ears muffled to all but the sounds he dreamed of bringing forth.
How I loved the tickle of his hands rippling me in unseen thirds. I would kiss the cords of his neck and tell him that I was his favorite instrument.
- Laura Lucas
CONFESSIONS OF A L A Z Y CRAFTER
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raft is suddenly in the public consciousness, celebrities are knitting and all anybody wants for Christmas is a handmade quilt. Techniques and practices that have existed for generations are suddenly cool and her I am, having just graduated with a degree in embroidery. I should be jumping for joy at my new found position at the centre of what is ‘cool’; and yet, when I hear the word craft I want to run and hide. My relationship with the term ‘craft’ has been fraught to say the least: I debated for weeks at college, whether to take the craft or illustration pathways simply because of the word ‘craft’. I knew I wanted to do textiles, and that the textiles pathway came under the umbrella of craft, but the word didn’t describe what I wanted my work to be. Eventually my head won the argument and I chose the craft pathway; and throughout my time at Camberwell I avoided telling others which pathway I was in.
How can this word which is now the coolest thing since sliced bread make me so irrational? I have thought long and hard about my aversion to the term ‘craft’. I know that Embroidery has the stigma of being an ‘easy’ degree, but the truth is I spent three years at university developing my skills and honing my practice, and receiving expert tutoring and advice. It often seems that others think of ‘craft’ as more a hobby than a career, and that I was just messing around at university, which makes me shy away from being labeled a crafter. Instead I’ll call myself a textile designer. There, doesn’t that sound better? Having labeled myself a textile designer I am now pushed into another category: a world of fabric design for interiors and fashion. I don’t sit comfortably here either. When asked I say textile designer and then explain how I often work with wood and am exploring the possibilities of working with metal; the response is usually puzzled eyes and someone
regretting they ever asked. This isn’t an experience reserved for me, my parents often struggle too as the answer isn’t as simple as ‘Law’ or ‘Architecture’. So I shall now invent a new label: I am a ‘design experimenter’, using a mix of traditional and modern techniques, and materials I create designs which work on the smallest of scales or in an architectural environment. When making and considering my work I am fascinated by light and the manipulation of it, be it natural or artificial. I try to use light to emphasise detail within my designs and to create shadows, which encompass the surrounding areas, creating an atmosphere and enveloping the viewer in the work. The techniques I employ include: printing, laser-cutting, appliqué and fabric manipulation techniques such as smocking. All are traditional techniques that have been employed in the craft and design worlds for years; even laser-cutting is simply a new development in traditional cutwork. The history behind these techniques makes the reinvention of them all the more interesting: if you begin to appliqué wood, then suddenly it not only adds decoration but structure and your old dog has new tricks.
which is highlighted by an architect friend of mine: she makes her own clothes and has kitted or made all of her Christmas presents. Whenever I start making something for fun, I think of another idea for my work. I think being an architect and having knitting as hobby must be wonderful, the line between work and leisure is clear, while mine is very blurred. So, am I really a lazy crafter? I don’t easily fit into traditional domestic boundaries, simply because I rarely use my skills in an expected way. However, when it comes to trying to redefine and reimagine crafting techniques I am definitely not lazy. The new found popularity and development of the craft movement is something that I wholeheartedly encourage, especially if it means a move away from a society which thrives on the mass produced and ubiquitous. I remain stubbornly adverse to the term ‘craft’ and will continue to make work avoiding traditional stereotypes. I will, however, endeavour to become a better crafter outside of my practice and learn to knit my own jumpers, because that truly is a skill worth having.
My work is other people’s play. A fact
- Georgia Bosson
MA RT I N I
had decided for a very long time that I was going to kill my roommate, Martin. He was ok at first. I mean, that is to say he was a lazy, useless, irritating free-loader who bummed around the flat all day, hanging over my shoulder whenever I was trying to work. But he could also be a laugh – sometimes. Like when he would sing Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ in the shower very loudly at 7am. That was Martin, he was some character alright. I suppose it was my fault that he never developed, never expanded. I knew he couldn’t succeed as he was in the real world but in my adopted role of surrogate parent, I still allowed him his eccentricities. I just let him be. I guess it just never occurred to me to try and change him.
Deep down I knew Laura was right but I had become attached to Martin in a weird sort of way. I had known him when I was in university but back then it was only a vague acquaintanceship. He wasn’t exactly the type of person I would want to get involved with. Then one day, when I was in my thirties, he just appeared – just like that. The next thing I knew, he was moving in with me, toothbrush and all. And then I couldn’t get rid of him. I guess it’s just one of those things. When you stay with someone for a long period of time, you kind of get stuck with them. It was like Stockholm syndrome except I had Martin syndrome. And the longer he was in my life, the more I kept thinking, I can figure this out. I can make this work.
My friend Laura thought I was mad.
“You’re mad,” she’d say. “Why don’t you just get rid of him? Seriously, find someone else. No one else likes him. He’ll only hold you back. He’s a nutter.”
But then, somehow, he got all selfconscious and critical, and started sulking around the place like a teenager. He would get stroppy and throw wild accusations, one being that the fact that he was still single was down to me.
I would shrug and grin at her hopelessly. “The world needs nutters.”
“It’s your fault,” he would say bitterly. “You don’t want me to have a
girlfriend, you’re driving them away.”
I would sigh. “Martin, you do that yourself. No one would stand you for five minutes. It’s a ridiculous idea. Although, I can imagine you doing speed dating or something. That would be quite a funny scene. Or maybe just depressing, I’m not sure.”
His response was to draw a huge penis on my manuscript with a permanent marker while I was in bed. I don’t think he ever did like my writing.
In the end, it was my editor who persuaded me to write him off. He wasn’t sellable; readers wouldn’t warm to him. Who wants an obnoxious, incompetent loser for a protagonist?
Or something to that effect. And he was right. If I had given Martin some redeemable qualities then maybe I could have saved him. But it wasn’t working out. He was never going to change. I needed a fresh start, something different. I looked at the pen in my hand and I knew what I had to do.
- Katie Slade
FUTURE SUBMISSIONS
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ow you’ve read our efforts, and (hopefully) you liked it, perhaps you are thinking “I could do this, for I am an artist/writer/journalist/illustrator/maker/ doer and I would like to contribute to the next issue of VK”, read on… The theme for the next issue will be: analogueVdigital If you would like to submit a piece of creative writing, please attach it as a word file saved as your name and email it to us. Include a short biography about yourself in the email. Please note, the word limit for creative writing pieces is 500 words.
If you have any questions, or a more unusual proposal please feel free to email us. Important points The final submission date for all work is the 31st March All work should be emailed to: wearevapid@gmail.com We will email everyone back, because we hate it when people don’t reply to us.
If you’d like to write us an article please email us with a short outline of what you propose. If you would like to produce some artwork or illustrations, please email us either with examples of what you would like to submit, or a proposal for the work you would like to produce.
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