Editor: Neil of Uknitted Kingdom
What is Blocked, and does it interest you? You've not seen this magazine in bookstores or wool shops, so I probably need to introduce the whole zine...
Right. Once upon a time, Ravelry.com was the knitting site. I visited a few times, downloaded a few free patterns, appreciated that favorite patterns from some favorite designers' books were there, and then made little time to visit Ravelry. I don't usually knit while online, unless the connection is down. And I've never felt a need to join a knitting circle, either. Many knitters do; knitting can be done as meditation to help give the verbal part of the brain a rest, or as an anchor to keep us awake while the verbal brain is reading or listening or watching something else, and some knitters prefer that that "something else" be someone who can help them figure out when they've made mistakes. I never formed the habit of talking about my knitting and have to prod myself even to mention it online, having figured out that, without good quality photos, it's unlikely to sell online.
But I was not pleased by recent news from that site. Knitting is one of the things that can serve the purpose, for women, that spectator sports serve for men: giving almost any two women a common interest they can discuss, regardless of age, background, politics, religion, nationality, even language. Well, it can. We all know how men can be sitting around, commuting, waiting for things, not very happy about being where they are, and a "good," clean, close game comes on the radio or TV. Instantly they forget that they're not friends and not happy about being where they are, and start cheering, joking, slapping fives. If they do happen to favor the same team, and that team wins, a whole train lights up like a fireplace! How'bout them Dawgs! Women could use knitting to fill that same social need...
...But at Ravelry they didn't. Someone whose knitting was acceptable was blocked for posting pro-Trump comments. Well, a lot of knitters did really like Hillary Rodham Clinton. I liked her, myself--not enough actually to vote for her, because no matter how iconic she is her politics do not represent mine, but enough not to pick fights with her fanatical fans; enough to respect the fact that many knitting circles are Hillary fan clubs. But of course I don't hate Trump either. I dislike him, as most Washingtonians did when he was a Democrat and was merely a tacky new neighbor spoiling favorite views with ugly new buildings, but I do recognize that he's a human being who's done bad things and good things like everyone else. Some knitters appear to be unable to break out of that mindset of judging and hating other women who are different from themselves. I find that very sad.
So the pro-Trump knitters stormed away from Ravelry and swirled around various social media sites during the more-than-a-year when "reliable Internet access" was an oxymoron in my town. When I came back, most of those sites were dead or dying. There was a handcrafts site devoted specifically to craft items with Religious Right motifs, as having been down-rated at Etsy, and there was a social forum for knitters. I joined the forum. One of its active members was Cezanne Pellett, who tipped me off to Blocked.com, an edgy knitting zine that's for all sorts of people who have been treated like outsiders, at Ravelry or wherever else.
Compared with Knitty, Blocked is...new. Raw. It reminded me, first, of some of those pulp-paper crafts magazines that lasted a year or less. On closer consideration, and in view of the fact that Blocked has already outlasted the pulp-paper mags, it reminds me more of those rare collectible early issues of Knitter's Magazine. Knitter's would soon become the leader of its field, but it too went through a raw, new, obscure stage when, although each project was professionally photographed, it still printed rather too high a proportion of articles to projects.
It's a zine not a mag. Projects are credited by screen names rather than real names. Despite several nice, normal ads for yarns and shops, which make it free to read if you print it yourself, there are still appeals for donations. Content is on the edges of several people's boundaries--not so much pro-Religious-Right as anti-censorship, generally, with awareness that the people being censored these days often are Religious Right.
Issue #6 is Christmasy, with the crocheted Santa Claus hat on the cover and a half-dozen Christmas-themed coasters to knit inside. Projects are small and simple. If you download it today, you can knit or crochet something cute before Christmas morning. In addition to the hat and coasters, other projects are also easy to knit, in Christmas colors, all-winter-long colors, or whatever colors you like. There's a bulky cowl, a pair of long slouchy socks to knit in thicker than usual sock yarn, a scarf and two shawls to crochet, an historic hat design (as easy to knit as crochet, but it may work better in crochet), and stash-busting coffee mug holders (I would only ever knit a coffee mug holder in brown). One article offers the helpful suggestion that knitting or crocheting super-bulky projects will help make the stash of leftover yarn disappear faster. Another rants about a less than satisfactory online store; another rants about COVID vaccines. Another article discusses the "Brexit" controversy and the current state of British import and export taxes. There are helpful directories of pattern testers and craft videos, and an obnoxious cartoon featuring bare navels and decapitation. There is NOT ONE SINGLE SWEATER PATTERN IN THE MAGAZINE! That's the way today's young and cheeky knitters knit. Only cute little accessories! They're still moving too fast to feel cold!
There's a claim that someone has whined that Blocked is racist. That one invites a whole paragraph of elaboration on the general theme of "Bah humbug." Knitting is not racist, exactly--it has North African roots, and is practiced on every continent--but the revival of knitting as a craft and fashion, in the 1980s, was indeed a rich White arty liberal baby-boomer thing. Diversity meant that an occasional older or younger knitter (Elizabeth Zimmerman, Lily Chin) or a man ("gay" like Fassett or Xenakis, or knitting in solidarity with a wife and/or daughters like Huber, Jones, Rutt, Bourgeois, et al.) slipped in, and er um yes "Chin" is a Chinese name and, oh, er, wait, the Bourgeois were Canadian weren't they? So knitting was international, right? The knitting universe wanted diversity, but it was well into the 1990s when Melanie Falick's Knitting in America irked me by featuring exactly two older women in the crowd of rich White arty liberal baby-boomer women. "I want to write a big glossy coffee-table book," I growled, "about Shirley Paden and the Hubers and Elaine Rowley and all the other knitters who do not fit into Falick's little mold!" But at Stitches Fair we just didn't meet enough of them. Knitter's was actively working to help the knitting universe diversify, bringing in visiting knitters from different countries...but they were all fairly rich, even if some of them had quaint exotic accents, and the ones who really became known in the US and UK had to stay, at least no further away than Canada. Too bad. But let's be very clear: Nobody discriminated against Shirley Paden, or Lily Chin, or Kaffe Fassett. Far from it. The knitting universe saw their first few brilliant designs and bowed at their feet. Most knitters are still rich White arty liberal baby-boomer women but they love the fact that knitting, itself, is global and cross-pollinates itself continually by bringing in fresh influences from faraway places. When African or South American knitters have brought in their wares, what happens is that they tend to sell out fast and go home, rather than stay and try to sell another big glossy coffee-table book of knitting patterns that will probably lose money.
Oh, well. Nobody bought Knitter's for the articles, clever and informative though some of those were. What made Knitter's were the patterns, and Blocked offers some good patterns for the whimsical little projects the young are knitting and crocheting today. If you want to be a trendy knitter, read it. If you want to be a Real Liberal, send the Free Speech Union some money.
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