Angry Olive Hat

The good news is, you, too, can slobber over her work—up close and in person. She’s part of the EAST tour. What’s that you ask? It’s the East Austin Studio Tour, when over a hundred East side artists open their homes and studios so we can check out their habitats and their work and, of course, buy up their stuff. There are no excuses—NONE—not to attend this event. This year it’s running over nine days, from November 14th - 22nd. Next week we’ll be featuring more info and profiles. For now, a little sneak peak via a Q&A I did with Kourtney.

Portrait of the Artist as a Tree Frog

SG: Who are you?
AO: Oh, geeze. I’m still figuring that one out. I think I need a beer before I can even begin to ponder. Let’s just say, for now, I’m reaching the close of my twenties, I’m a mother, an aspiring pilot and obsessed with doing too many things at once and getting overwhelmed. I like to use my hands…a lot.

SG: How'd you get involved in E.A.S.T.?
AO: Since I recently left the domestic life behind, I’ve opened my eyes to a brand new world, a world outside mopping my floors and cleaning the kitchen, and I’m actually getting involved in the arts- something I’ve always wanted to do. My friend Terra Biddleman has never given up on me since we met, and constantly introduces me to amazingly talented people here in Austin. That's how I met the lovely Eya Floyd, who held my hand through the application process.

Angry Olive Hat

SG: I knit, you knit, but not everyone knits-- so tell those us in layperson's terms how your on-the-fly knitting works. (i.e. what's your process from concept to completion?)
AO: Ok, so It depends on what I want to knit. Most of the designs of the creatures or hats I come up with just pop into my head, or they derive from a project gone bad or maybe it’s an extension or mutation of an old design. When it comes to clothing, I have a particular style in mind, but the real fun is when you get to play with stitch patterns and colorwork. On top of that, I like to mix techniques together. For example, if I combine crochet and knitting, sewing, and embroidery, it changes EVERYTHING. Most people I’ve come across who are involved in the fiber arts don’t like to step outside their comfort zone. They either knit or crochet, or sew, or felt, etc. When it comes to combining everything, I eat it up. My least favorite thing to do is the measuring and the calculating of stitches and making it all work for fitting a human. With making toys or pieces to be hung, you don’t have to worry so much about the math and counting stitches and practicality. Also, with many projects, I might have a particular way I want it to turn out, but then halfway through I completely change it, and luckily, it’s always worked out for the best. It’s all about intuition and throwing caution to the wind!

Fox Hoodie

SG: Favorite thing you ever knit?
AO: That’s like asking what my favorite song is! No fair. As for an actual item, I had a really fun time knitting the nevernude. I love, love, love knitting cables, fair isle, and lace is fun when I don’t have to rip it out ten times. But I cannot stress enough that it has almost everything to do with WHAT I knit with. Favorite needles? Turbos and bamboos-- Lantern Moon [brand] if I can splurge. Natural fibers are the best! Acrylic is essentially knitting plastic and I hate it. Anything that’s considered “novelty” yarn I stay away from, because I just don’t like it. Perhaps I’m a purist or a snob. I can accept that fault.

Fake Shit!

SG: Besides E.A.S.T. where/how do you market your stuff?
AO: I’ve been on hiatus for a while. I have an etsy shop that I need to desperately restock. I also had a website, but I can’t really put the time into it to makework. I’m terrible at updating my knitting blog and marketing myself has been the biggest challenge. I suppose it's because I have yet to convince even myself that my creations are that special or good. I just try to keep things simple and fun. Etsy, my (old) website, Ravelry and local fairs are usually what I focus on when I'm in the Angryolive Mode.

SG: Advice to other crafty folks who want to get into the business side of it?
AO: I wish I could tell you, because I could definitely use that advice. I would say if you want to sell patterns, you would probably be in better shape than selling handmade items. I am a one-woman sweatshop and because of that, I developed tendonitis. Keep things simple and less time consuming if you want to make a profit. The best thing I have ever done is put myself out there and MEET PEOPLE. I have noticed that crafty people who constantly update their shops, blogs and participate in fairs, and publish free patterns online seem to get some wonderful breaks.

SG: Current favorite knitted item you've made/are making?
AO: The current favorite would have to be S. Cargo and the Dame Critter Trio or the Owl Vest. There is also a vintage pattern of a nautical blanket that’s burning a hole on my shelf.

SG: Tell me about your "plush life"— What's up with the plushies?
AO: Plushies are typically instant gratification, and when you spend over a month knitting a top, you need to have a quick fix. My quick fixes have turned out to be some of my favorite things to make. In the amount of time it will take me to knit a plush, I can sew 20 from fleece. Instead of running 5 miles a day, I just get liposuction every now and then…

SG: What else do you want to tell me?
AO: I am participating in a play called Love and Chaos that will be a supernatural four act, four location show on November 15, 2009 starting 4:30 at Rio Rita and ending at Shangri La. Not to whore that out or anything, but If you happen to see plush guts fly out of a stomach and an extremely oversized cinnamon roll in the show- I made them! thetinyblackhearts.blogspot.com
Spike Gillespie wishes she could sit in a big pile of plush poo and just knit all day, everyday. She blogs at KnitBuzz and spikeg.com.

Astoria provides the perfect setting for these conflicting goals. It acts as both a Madonna lyric (like a virgin… shiny and new) and a pair of well-worn house shoes (known, reliable, assuredly comfortable). In the Auld Lang Syne department, I get to spend time in what, after four years, is taking on the feel of an old haunt: The Blue Scorcher bakery. With it’s incredible coffee, thrilling cardamom rolls, and contingent of steady customers who are also avid knitters, it presents me endless pig-in-shit-esque moments. I like to go to the Déjà vu thrift store, which used to be my second favorite in the country, until the Silk Purse in Galveston was forever wiped out by Ike, thus making DV my new all time favorite. I also meet up annually with a private yarn dealer, whose stories I delight in at least as much as her wool.

But because I never stay too long, and because the place has been around for a good long time, there is always something new for me to see. And by new I mean old. Very old. Downright historic.

This year, I took in the Flavel House, completed in 1885, the retirement home of Cap’n George Flavel. A massive Victorian with a turret overlooking the mighty Columbia (and, beyond it, the Pacific) the place is captivating. In fact, I find it reminiscent of another seaside home I love, Bishop’s Palace in Galveston.

As I wandered the Flavel Mansion, it occurred to me why I am so drawn to these old places, similar to why I love dollhouses. It all has to do with a sense of control. Though I never had a dollhouse as a child, in my twenties, I used to go to Terra Toys and gape longingly at their collection of miniatures. I think what I loved so much was the idea that, if I were ever going to own a really nice house with really nice furniture, I would only ever be able to afford something very small and unreal.

I also loved the god’s eye view. I could stand back and take in the whole scene, understand the big picture, be omnipresent. Beyond whatever god-fantasies dollhouses fulfilled, there was the simpler matter: As someone with no spatial relations skills and zero sense of direction, being able to see the whole house, all rooms and all dolls in it, suggested a certain comprehension I sometimes lack in real life. (Likely this is also why I use one of those huge, paper, Month-at-a-Glance calendars.)

History, likewise, provides an overview that soothes me. Sure, there is some mystery, some room for speculation. For instance, Cap’n Flavel married his wife, Mary, when she was just fourteen. They had three children—two of them daughters. The girls never married. These facts and, more importantly, the blanks not filled in, lead me to want to know what I can never know—what was it like to be the fourteen year-old wife of a successful, much older sea captain? And were the daughters repressed lesbians—rich enough to travel the world, yet never able to be happy in love due to society’s constraints?

But beyond these little unknown gray areas, we are certain that they lived, they died, and whatever stories they had are done now. There is no uncertainty of future for them. Everything is past. Passed. And so, like dolls in a house, their lives can be seen—beginning, middle, end—as a mostly controllable whole.

I wrote recently about why I love yarn stores and weddings— the common denominator they share of potential. When I perform weddings or think about my next knitting project, my heart swells at the thrill of what might be. Not to overextend a cheesy metaphor too far, but yes, I am aware that some sweaters and some marriages will fail. There will be flaws and dropped stitches and some necessary unraveling to straighten things out. But in the moments of fresh and new—the yarn just gathered or a groom kissing a bride at ceremony’s end—anything is possible.

Somewhere beyond these extremes of history past (with its residual stories manageable and fascinating at once) and a hope-filled future (so fantastical and far reaching that there is no room for moths or divorces) runs the much wider, messier, frayed at the edges swath of day-to-day life. This I know, even if I try to avoid reality sometimes, and hover instead in houses-turned-museums, or doll filled worlds, or the adrenaline of a wedding reception.

Because neat and tidy, in truth, are falsities that only come to pass after much time fades out the narrative’s sharper edges. Water on rock and all that.

Last week, I helped write an obituary. I know it’s “too soon” for me to be reporting the sudden death of yet another friend—wasn’t it just the other day I told you about two friends passing inside of a week? But how can I time these things? Shit happens. And the shit that rained down two weeks ago was this: My friend Ed died suddenly and tragically. He is gone now, though I freely admit I do not believe it and am not sure if I ever will.

Getting to assist in putting meager words to Ed’s indescribable life story was an exercise in surrealism. I could hear him laughing at me—pleasantly, not mean-spiritedly teasing me for the daunting task his absence left me. I chugged away at like the job that it was, something to help keep me busy, a chance to reflect but to do so behind the safety shield of performing a role as opposed to, say, throwing myself to the earth and wailing.

The Flavel House—nay, Astoria as a whole— brought to mind Ed for me. Not just because I realized that it’s going to take at least a couple hundred years before Ed’s tale takes on that false sense of neat and tidy the way George Flavel’s has. But also because I first met Ed in Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, which is where he lived with his family for the last twelve years until they moved back here recently.

Catorce is another one of those little places I have been to many times. Like Astoria, I get this perfect mix of old and new from being there. Old, old—as in the ruins of the silver mining operation long ago shut down. And old, as in now having visited enough times to know the locals by name, and for them to know me. And new, every time, the way that places perched in gorgeous natural settings always are.

As I like to visit the column commemorating Lewis and Clark, a place that offers a spectacular view across Astoria, so I love hiking the trails of Catorce. This I did with Ed, reaching vistas that let me look down into a bowl full of both history and the moment. Ed was always a rich part of the latter, until, in an instant, he moved to the other side. I will have a hard time ever placing him in the history department, though. I think instead I shall count him as an active ghost, one who might never be captured in some dollhousey museum.

Spike Gillespie blogs at KnitBuzz and spikeg.com. She’s a little tired of the rain and really sick of all the sudden death.

Alex Gilliam

We fail to recognize that many of these assumptions may be indirectly to blame for startling decreases in independent childhood mobility as evidenced by the Sheffield Study that I recounted in the previous Weekly What If and significant increases in related health problems for all ages.

Sure, our increased dependence on cars has played a big role in creating our current conundrum but many of the aforementioned assumptions about play, exercise, etc. that are born out of a relentless push for maximum efficiency and safety are equally at fault. We have removed so much risk from our playgrounds and cities and centralized our activities to such a degree that we have created landscapes of isolation and boredom that bear little resemblance to the wonderful childhood stories that many of you have shared over the past two weeks. With places such as Broward County, Florida banning running on their playgrounds or children’s independent explorations limited to the end of the cul de sac, it’s little wonder that we have ‘lost’ them to much more relatively stimulating endeavors such as watching television or playing video games. Likewise, just as we have made it difficult and unappealing for children to play outdoors, we have made exercise and adventure time consuming, and expensive add-ons to our already overbooked everyday lives.

Play, Exercise and Adventure: Everywhere.

Alex Gilliam

Copy the Malaysians by placing random exercise equipment along sidewalks and at CAP Metro bus stops. Mimic the city of Roubaix in France and narrow many of our overly wide streets to create small areas of easily accessible play or adventure. Make our Park(ing) Day explorations permanent, transforming our errant or excess parking spaces into Maya Lin-esque landscapes or small gardens. Follow China or Berlin’s lead and make walking down our wider sidewalks challenging or whimsical by varying sections of sidewalk surface treatment to improve our joint strength and balance; inserting small boulders for climbing; or locating small in-ground trampolines (pictured) in the sidewalk that make it nearly impossible to resist the occasional ‘bounce’.

Alex Gilliam: (a balance beam merry-go-round and small climbing boulders)

Foster a culture of use by linking the individual insertions as a part of a city wide play and adventure circuit, mimicking vitaparcours, the health insurance company sponsored exercise trails in Switzerland. Adapt and take advantage of new technologies such as the Freikometer, a device that records and then indirectly rewards children who ride their bikes to school in Boulder, Colorado (doubling bicycle ridership) to further change attitudes about play, exercise and mobility. Similarly, create a downloadable app for smart phones that geo-locates a user at a particular adventure and automatically records the amount of time spent at that activity so people can see that even ten minutes spent on a stair climber during a coffee break plus five minutes on a recumbent bicycle bench has benefits to one’s health.

Still skeptical?

Alex Gilliam

Honestly, despite knowing about many of these things well in advance of my visit to Berlin this summer, I too was skeptical. However, throughout my stay and research there I saw the above-mentioned scenes repeated time and time again. So, as exciting as the Freikometer may be as a potential tool for changing the culture of mobility, play and exercise, if we create a physical landscape in which such activities are fun, challenging and readily accessible, we simply may not need technology to save the day. Instead, a
more pressing problem may be how to keep people from continuing to use these devices when they need to be repaired or refurbished but I think that's a worthy trade off for a more mobile and healthy populace.

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Thanks to everyone who shared your great childhood stories of roaming and adventure. By the way, if anyone comes across photographs of Roubaix's sidewalk playgrounds, please let me know. Despite finding numerous references to these playgrounds, I've only be able to find one nearly illegible picture of them. Thanks.

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Want to read more about some of the people, places and ideas discussed in this article?

Elderly playgrounds and outdoor exercise equipment:

A recent Reuters article on elderly playgrounds in Japan (here)

Another article on Japan's elderly playgrounds (here)

A great article on Finnish research on playgrounds for multiple generations (here)

A good article on Beijing's outdoor exercise equipment (here)

A Malaysian company that makes outdoor exercise equipment (here)

Technology encouraging new attitudes towards mobility and exercise:

The Freikometer (here)

Exercise trails:

Vitaparcours (here)

The merits of creating challenging landscapes:

Gins and Arakawa's Life Extending Villa (here)

The benefits of walking on cobblestones (here)

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The Weekly What If is a weekly column by Alex Gilliam. Alex Gilliam is the founder of Public Workshop, an organization dedicated to helping individuals, schools, and communities achieve great things through design. The Weekly What If focuses on re-imagining various aspects of how Austin, as a city, functions and feels. The goal is to foster a larger conversation about the present and future shape of our City.

Do you have a suggestion for something that needs to be re-imagined in Austin? Please email your suggestions to Alex:

alex (at) publicworkshop.us