Happy WIP Wednesday! I always have multiple projects in progress, but today I’m talking about the Thonnan Top by Katt Weaver, published in Yarn – The Journal of Scottish Yarns #3.
Let me tell you I near broke the mousepad on my laptop clicking on this pattern when I first saw it. Then I looked at Katt Weaver’s other patterns and saw that she’s a fellow D&D player (several of her designs names are references to the game or even accessories for dice). So obviously I was locked in.
This top-down garment has a feather-and-fan motif yoke that stripes down into the main color, mimicking breaking waves. If you like texture, that marine vibe can be amplified with a frothy alpaca laceweight, which I’ve opted to use. I can’t wait to finish this project and be orbited by something something so decadent and lofty.
I found this pattern because I’m desperately trying to use up stash yarns, so I had set a number of filters on the Ravelry search to find designs that use 3 or fewer skeins of DK weight yarn. Using a mohair or alpaca laceweight wasn’t even on my mind while I was scouring the Ravelry for a pattern, but I happened to have two skeins of the Tatreez colorway from Fruitful Fusion, a fundraising colorway to support victims of the genocide in Gaza, and this felt like a perfect pattern to showcase it this yarn front and center.
Tatreez is the style and motifs of Palestinian embroiderers. Practiced and passed down from expert to student, usually between female family members, throughout the diaspora. Probably the most recognizable example is the embroidered thobe, which I’ve often seen as a black garment embroidered with red, green, and purple thread. Tatreez is an intangible cultural marker of Palestinian identity and history.
Because I am American, it’s crucial for me to talk about the US-backed destruction of Gaza and the murder of Palestinian people. Colonial violence has been implemented in Palestine for over a century with the British Mandate starting in 1922, and the Nakba of 1948.
I think, I hope, that anyone who loves any handicraft understands the power of how familial teaching preserves art like tatreez, and what the world loses when its artists are imperiled and killed. To learn more about the history and preservation of tatreez, please check out Tatreez and Tea. This project was started by Wafa Ghnaim to preserve examples of tatreez, research its history, and teach it to new practitioners.
What I’m reading
I got Shotgun Seamstress: The Complete Zine Collection from my library this week. Osa Atoe is a musician and artist who created Shotgun Seamstress to document “the experience of being the only Black kid at the punk show”, connect and amplify other Black punk and DIY artists and musicians. Within Shotgun Seamstress‘s seven issues is Atoe’s and her collaborators’ deep knowledge of music and cultural history, a profound respect for the people who made and make the music and art that they loved. And yet, there is also the philosophy that as an artist, you can simply do whatever you want. You don’t have to wait for anyone to teach you, you don’t have to wait until you “do it right”, you don’t need the best equipment, and you don’t have to sound or, in the case of the punk scenes in majority-white cities like Portland, look like anyone else to make something.
What I’m watching
The newest season of Gamechanger just began on Dropout TV, which is my favorite streaming service. If you haven’t heard of it, I suggest checking them out on Youtube and then subscribing post-haste. It’s all original comedy programming with extremely talented people, and if Whose Line Is It Anyway left a hole in your heart when it went off air, then you’ll love Make Some Noise.
Gamechanger is a game show where the game changes every time. The season 7 premiere stars Jacob Wysocki, Vic Michaelis, and Lou Wilson, and I don’t think I’ve laughed so loud in months.
To fully appreciate this episode though, it would behoove you to watch an episode from the previous season, “Sam Says 3”, which features the same contestants.
That’s all for this Wip Wednesday
Smitty is Knitting 
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