Frances Bell :: Blog :: Knitting a Different Convergence

January 09, 2007

Knitting a Different Convergence

Nancy White's posting on mindful convergence set me thinking. Many of us recognise the tyranny of email and try to find our own ways to create relaxing space in our lives.

In the last couple years, I have rediscovered knitting. It is so relaxing and has much to recommend as an alternative to sitting at a keyboard. I find it combines very well - a non-digital convergence- with listening to music and/or looking out of the window at the garden (especially in the sort of weather when gardening is not appealing). It's also a great accompaniment to chatting with friends, especially ones who also knit.

A friend and colleague Alison Adam has always stressed women's use of textile technologies as an example of how women do use technologies, e.g. her inaugural lecture" Desires and Devices: Exploring the Gender-Technology Relation".

I was aware that quite a few knitters blog, see purlsbefore swine part of the ring,

and swap patterns but I was quite surprised today to find how creative knitters (usually but not always women) in their use of web technologies. I was blown away by the idea of knitting a Mobius strip , knitted trees, and knitting life montage.

My idea that knitting was an alternative to surfing has also been challenged - not only do knitters blog about knitting, they also knit whilst reading blogs. and spot their own knitting blogs on others' photos. Last, but by no means least, they also design and knit their own iPod cases.

So we really can knit a different sort of convergence - just as we always have done.

Keywords: blogs, flickr.com, gender, knitting, mobius strip

Posted by Frances Bell

Comments

I love it. The practice, the metaphor, the beauty. I love the whole package. A wonderful reweaving of the ideas!

choconancy on Wednesday, 10 January 2007, 02:21 CET # |
Frances, you asked about how I found your post over in a comment on my blog. I have some persistent searches set up for whenever anyone links to the blog or mentions my name. I use http://www.technorati.com, Google's blog search, Bloglines search and a few others. They each have a RSS feed that I subscribe to in my blog reader (Bloglines). I have grouped them into a tab there and about once a day I check to see who is linking to or talking about what I've written. These are often called vanity seaches - and you can use them that way. But they are also a way to see if a conversation is surfacing. That way I can pay attention and respond where it may be appropriate or useful. Does that make sense?

Nancy White

choconancy on Wednesday, 10 January 2007, 19:18 CET # |
Thanks for that information Nancy. I don't know about vanity search but it was obviously very effective. We are starting new project this month on networking for Women in IT (colleagues' previous research has shown the need for this) and we want to learn everything we can about effective use of Blogs, Wikis and Web 2.0 tools and services.

Frances Bell on Thursday, 11 January 2007, 11:31 CET # |
Hi Frances,

I thought this maybe interesting regarding the reported relaxing places of the women in IT who participated in our research spoke of. We conducted a number of autobiographical interviews with woemn who had left ICT vowing never to return (The Disappearing Women from ICT Project at Salford University) Apart from reporting on their career life histories in ICT, significant events that influenced them into (pulled or pushed) leaving ICT, understanding the processes of leaving their jobs and finding new careers, we also asked the women to sketch a drawing of their lives. The women were a little reluctant at first but we soon had some amazing alternative qualitative data and we have included them in our recent report. From this project and our previous gender research project WINIT (women in IT) we were aware that almost without exception these women all had a creative streak (when time allowed). In the interview process we would always ask about future career and personal plans, their future perceptions of technology and any creative talents they might have. These women were dressmakers, made cards, gardened, painted, embroidered, cooked, wrote and published poetry and yes we had a knitter who had plans to turn her hobby into a business once she recruited a new MD for her recruitment business...selling hand knitted garments and recruiting a team of knitters!!!

Interestingly, one women from the 'disappearing' women project who had become disillusioned with corporate politics and the fact that non technical people just did not understand the elegance involved with mathemetaics, coding and programming in what is often perceived as the 'hard' side of ICT told us this. (we have written permission to use this data)

'Yes but it was like there was this, there was a clear elegance you know what mathematicians get excited about is an elegance, of things and elegance is partly about economy there is nothing wasted in it. But also about, a beauty of something which really does something, you know its just elegance and the technology, the software, the whole thing had this elegance which just wasn’t, people of the marketing side can just,…. they don’t take the time to understand and appreciate they just they’re selling something like they are selling shampoo, and er so you know my disillusionment came in the politics'

These are opinions and concepts that are often left unsaid and silenced in the workplace so here's hoping that a project like KAN will be a good environment tolet those voices be heard!!

MaRie GRifFiths on Wednesday, 07 February 2007, 13:38 CET # |
Thanks for that Marie , readers may like to see more at Disappearing Women: North-West ICT: Stopping the Clock!!.

Frances Bell on Wednesday, 07 February 2007, 15:57 CET # |