More Tunisian, art theory, and notes from an immigrant

I'm glad the Tunisian crochet was interesting, and I thought you'd like to see a few samples I made when I was learning. The simple stitch you saw yesterday makes a warm sturdy fabric, great for winter gloves, but there are other fancier ones, too.

There's knit and purl, and things like

Top, smock stitch, next honeycomb, next simple, and, at the bottom, feather and fan regular crochet. Feather and fan is really better knitted, I decided.

Anyway if you already knit or crochet, you might want to try it. Very small items can be worked on a regular crochet hook, so you don't need to buy a Tunisian hook, which is much bigger to allow for the buildup of stitches on the hook.

There was talk about immigrants on Mary's blog and I remembered I was one. When Handsome Partner was 29 and I was 24, we sailed out of Liverpool in late December 1963, with one trunk of books and two suitcases, bound for New York, having sold everything we could,  to put together the cost of the one way sailing tickets. We knew nobody and had no family at our destination.

From there we made our way to Wisconsin where HP was to do postdoctoral work, by invitation. One of my NJ Indian friends used to say we were the only people she knew who'd been invited!

That was post Sputnik and the US was in search of people like him, atom scientists, and people like me, modern language people, to add to the numbers.

When people point out that "but you spoke the language", well, yes, I thought that at first. But after the hundredth shout of "I can't understand a word you say, talk English!" Wisconsin folk being loud and blunt to our Brit ears, we realized that mime was going to be useful. 

And the daily struggle to learn new cultural unwritten expectations, everything different, was really tiring, despite all our energy and goodwill. 

One day, after a difficult time all day at my temp job, I was working from day two of arriving, I got home, went to switch on the light, and it wouldn't. I'd forgotten the US switch was opposite to the Brit one. I burst into tears, probably the only time it was just one thing too many, couldn't even switch the light on right!

It did get better. We made friends, enjoyed a lot of our discoveries, and never regretted the move.

I've been able to do work I'd never have had the chance of in the UK, we left for good reasons. Although we had not counted on pushback from the community who were very much against immigrants, even when we were bringing value, we learned to navigate it and seize the day.  

And I continue to navigate the othering which still persists. Just a couple of weeks ago a new member of the knitting group asked me "Where are you from, you talk with an accent! I mean where are you from really?"  Blessedly she didn't imitate me or ask questions about the UK as if I had arrived last week.  That still happens too, a regular reminder that to some people I really don't belong. But to me, I do. It's fine. And we all talk with an accent.

Menbers of both sides of my family have been living in the US since the 1850s, and that confuses the heck out of the otherers. 

I never thought anything of the emigration from the UK where we had few opportunities, because it was common among people who got good degrees and couldn't get jobs. 

Then I was asked about it by American friends who couldn't imagine doing it, alone, so young. We thought we were pretty grown up, though looking back I guess we were too young to be scared!

And your art notes for the day, if you wondered about portrait, vertical presentation and landscape, horizontal presentation, Moose Allain explains it all

Why I'm not planning on sitting on the patio just yet

And a lovely encouragement about the example set by Ukraine

Later today knitting group and Misfits. That's all, folks!

Happy day, everyone!