Learning – Part 1

Adam (00:12): Hello and welcome to the Yarn Library podcast where craft, knitting and all else fitting. Come to ponder and laugh. My name is Adam Cleevely.

Georgia (00:19): And I'm Georgia Denham. You can find us both on Instagram, where I'm Tulipurl. And Adam is Cleevely Knits. So welcome back!

Adam (00:26): Hooray!

Georgia (00:26): Yay!

Adam (00:27): It's welcome back. It's time for season two.

Georgia (00:30): Yes. So today we're talking about learning in craft and learning and knitting. That could be how we first learn to knit, in the earliest instances- maybe in childhood, maybe not in childhood- and then how we learn on a daily basis and how that learning continues through life. We're gonna share some different stories of our own and then have some discussions. I'm gonna introduce some ideas and I mean, it kind of goes back to the original way that the way that we got to know each other by doing the. Ethnographic study. Mm. Um, because I was so interested and fascinated by actually how Adam learns to knit,

Adam (01:06): Because it's so completely unusual. I'm like, that psychological case, that's such an outlier. Like what a peculiar person.

Georgia (01:13): Well, it wasn't even that so much. It's just like... it was obvious that from where you'd first started knitting, you made such quick progress. Mm. Relative to maybe, how I'd seen myself knitting or other people. And I thought, what is going on here? What is the secret sauce? So maybe you could talk a bit about that, but, yeah, I mean, first housekeeping.

Adam (01:34): Housekeeping. Well,

Georgia (01:35): Do we have any housekeeping?

Adam (01:36): Well, I think we should talk just very briefly, Georgia mm-hmm. About, making of this podcast and just I, people will notice a few different things about this podcast. For one, anyone that's watching on YouTube, which I think is about half our audience will see that we have different microphones.

Georgia (01:53): Yes.

Adam (01:54): The balls of yarn are gone. And I know some people will be heartbroken to see that. Um, it may be a temporary thing, but we have entirely switched platforms.

Georgia (02:03): Yes.

Adam (02:03): And as part of switching platforms, we have also changed the audio setup. There was nothing wrong with the... well, I dunno, you

Georgia (02:11): Right there, there was a lot of audio bleed between the mics we used before. And so that made editing really challenging. Um, so we're taking a different approach. We're also going to try and be more prepared for our conversations.

Adam (02:25): And the other thing that everyone. We got lots of comments on like people couldn't believe that we went roughly from two hours of recording down to about an hour of podcasting.

Georgia (02:33): Yeah.

Adam (02:33): But our ambition was always to create a podcast that was round about that 45 minute mark.

Georgia (02:38): Yeah.

Adam (02:38): That's what we enjoy ourselves.

Georgia (02:40): Yeah.

Adam (02:41): And when we sat down to record, we would record these long conversations, but what was really difficult is that we tried to address all of the points in that TV show and that just took us a long time because we ram we rambled a lot. our intention this time, and I'm saying this at the beginning of the episode, we can hold ourselves to account at the end, our ambition is to provide a 45 minute episode.

Georgia (03:01): Yeah.

Adam (03:01): Within an hour of recording.

Georgia (03:02): We're thinking like sweet spots, somewhere between like 38 minutes to like 49 minutes, but don't wanna go over the 50 mark. You know, that kind of thing because the problem was that, as we went through Game of Wool. Are we not allowed to call it Game of Wool? Are we calling it that program? Um, is that why, because you said 'that program'? As we were going through Game of Wool, it was, frustrating for us 'cause we wanted to talk about lots of other things and once we stopped having the two episodes a week, it meant that we didn't necessarily have an outlet for that, so it all got put piled into one episode.

Adam (03:30): Yeah.

Georgia (03:30): And then when you're editing down, it was a funny thing where if we go through and sequentially talk about all the contestants or all of the challenges, if we were editing sections out, it would literally be like, okay, let's cut this person and just not talk about them the whole week. So it meant that editing ended up becoming really finicky and detailed because I was trying to make sure that we covered all ground.

Adam (03:51): Mm.

Georgia (03:52): But just slimmed it all down.

Adam (03:54): Well, and one of the other things you were saying was really difficult is where. I in particular, was making reference to different parts of our conversation throughout a podcast.

Georgia (04:02): Yeah.

Adam (04:03): And therefore it made it like. It was very difficult to cut me out.

Georgia (04:06): Yeah.

Adam (04:06): Talk or to cut those chunks out because my referencing then didn't work properly.

Georgia (04:10): Like in episode 10. There was, the last one that went out before, before now, there was the bit where we had the wonderful joke about the be-nippled needles.

Adam (04:21): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (04:21): But if I were to cut the whole section about me being in Hungary and my, niece and nephew jumping on my needles on the sofa, which wasn't really that relevant, but it was a funny story, a funny anecdote. Ideally would've liked to cut that, but um, then we wouldn't have gotten... Uh, the teets um, we wouldn't have got Adam's teets.

Adam (04:41): So what we are saying, I think Georgia, the conclusion we're coming to is that it's quite hard to edit down to say, 43 minutes of great

Georgia (04:48): From two hours of content. Yeah.

Adam (04:50): Great content.

Georgia (04:51): The good thing is now we don't have the, restrictions of that program.

Adam (04:55): Well, I hope, I hope the irony is not lost on you, Georgia, that we've struggled to contain our two, just two hours of story into 43 minutes.

Georgia (05:03): But now at least, because it's just on a topic, we could always break it down into smaller episodes, which is kind of nice. Um, the other thing is quick turnaround. Like, the episode came out and then it was like right bam, into the next one. Uh, now having had a bit of time to breathe and actually look up like how people actually make podcasts, they actually, believe it or not, they do a little forward preparation. they have a little, little scripts and,

Adam (05:25): I don't believe in preparation. Preparation is,

Georgia (05:27): Well we both know that's not true. Um, so. Alas! We are here today.

Adam (05:32): Is that all our housekeeping done? Yeah, there's probably some other bits and bobs, but we'll probably let's remember them.

Georgia (05:38): Future, future episodes. Um, we've had lots of lovely emails. That's been wonderful. Yeah, lots of lovely reviews

Adam (05:44): And we're about to address the only negative reviews we've had, I think, because the only negative ones were 'you talk too much about that TV show'.

Georgia (05:50): Yes, yes.

Adam (05:51): And as of now, we're not talking about it because we've got a whole new series to record.

Georgia (05:56): We've had so many lovely, like five star reviews and that's been so nice, like on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, which all helps spread the word.

Adam (06:03): Mm.

Georgia (06:03): I sound like a, a, a person who has a podcast. that's all been really lovely. But the, there was one, there was one review on a Apple podcast that was like. Nothing about what they say in the, they said something about like, 'oh, it's not what, it's in the description. They just talk about this TV program and I've listened to x number of hours and they're still just talking about the TV program'. But I thought that we had discussed and made it clear to our audience that the reason we had, we had stopped doing the other alternate episodes is because of workload and, that we were going to go back to doing something else. If you would like to help our overall rating increase on average. I feel like I should have asked this at the end once we've delivered the goods, but um, yeah, maybe it will help our own feelings of self-esteem and disappointment that we got trolled. I think that the person's username did have like a fairly scathing username, something like exterminator something or other. So, yeah,

Adam (07:05): Not, not fuzzy, cozy, warm, supportive.

Georgia (07:07): Yeah. It wasn't like cozy yarn 1, 2, 3. It was, it was like exterminator. Um, so there we go. Anyway...

Adam (07:16): Well, apol- apologies to that person that thought they'd be getting a whole series on something other than Game of Wool. Whi I thought we said. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's the last of it. That's the last bit.

Georgia (07:24): Well, we've got your series is here, exterminator 1, 2, 3.

Adam (07:28): Come back and listen.

Georgia (07:29): So learning.

Adam (07:31): Learning

Georgia (07:32): Learning.

Adam (07:33): Where are we starting? Are we starting with us learning?

Georgia (07:35): So, let's start at the beginning, Adam. So the, I mean, I want this conversation to be not just about knitting. It is a broader craft conversation, broader life conversation, really about learning and how we learn.

Adam (07:46): Mm.

Georgia (07:46): We first got to know each other through knitting, and we've had this conversation before, and I love your story about this.

Georgia (07:52): I'd love to start with how, how you learned to knit. And that, I know that's like a two-pronged story - so yeah. Adam, how, tell me about how you learned to knit.

Adam (08:03): I mean, there's two memories that come to mind when I think about how I learned to knit, because there's both learning as a child, which was one style of knitting, and then there's learning as an adult, which is, which is more what people know as knitting as a child. I was shown finger knitting by my cousin. I'd gone to stay with him in London at the weekend. I was probably 8 or 9-years-old, something like that. And I was, shown how to finger knit, that basically you know, you loop this yarn around your fingers and then you just sort of are folding and you are turning loops over loops and so on. And you generate. What I now know is basically a long i-cord. I just obviously was immediately physically addicted to doing it. And I think physical yarn, addiction's a thing, don't laugh at it. Uh, and then I, my auntie then took me. Took us, we went out to a shop, we went yarn shopping. Like I didn't know that was a thing, but really I was introduced at a very young age by my pusher aunt.

Georgia (09:04): It's all making sense.

Adam (09:07): And I chose this green ball of yarn, and it must have been, I mean, I'm, I'm guessing now based on the feel of my 8 or 9-year-old hands, that it was an aran weight, it was. Um, maybe it was a worsted weight. Maybe that's why I love worsted weight yarns now? but I played with it endlessly and we watched, I remember that weekend, I, we watched films till late at night and I would just rework this, I chord I'd make the whole thing, and once it was done, I would unravel it. It was a toy, and I would unravel the whole ball of yarn and I would do it again. And I'd, I'd, just. Be doing it again and again and again. And then sometimes what I would do is, once I had this chord is I'd experiment with, 'well, what happens if you make an i-cord out of an i-cord?' Uh, so it turns out you make a really fat, ball of yarn.

Georgia (09:58): Fat i-cord.

Adam (09:59): But it was terribly sati. It was terribly satisfying unraveling it again.

Georgia (10:03): Yeah.

Adam (10:03): Um. And I just, I just loved that process. And I remember, I mean, as a child, you never know as a childhood memory whether that was something that I did actually about four times across two weekends, or whether it really was something that I did week after week and month after month. You know, watching when I was watching cartoons at the, on a Saturday morning or whatever. Um, but that was. Then that sort of stopped and it went away and I never thought about it again.

Georgia (10:28): And that was all the finger knitting. So you never actually got the needles in there?

Adam (10:33): No, that was entirely, it was entirely finger knitting. It was, and it was only ever that, basically that ball of yarn. I remember then being a little bit fascinated with, with knots when I had a friend at university that. Was really good at knots as it turned out. He showed me them, and I was able to pick those up really quickly. I was able to understand where yarn went, essentially.

Georgia (10:58): What were you studying at university again, Adam?

Adam (11:00): Engineering, economics and Management, Georgia

Georgia (11:03): Engineering. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Adam (11:06): And then, that's another example of where I think there was a, like, as a strong memory. 'Cause again, there was a really com, a really complex knot, called a monkey fist. Um, (Georgia scoffs with laughter) Calm yourself down.,

Georgia (11:22): I'm not saying anything.

Adam (11:24): And that's a, like, that's a complicated not to work. But again, I was fascinated by it and I loved it. Um, it's a very satisfying ball to make it makes this big monkey fist and it's a very satisfying ball to have.

Georgia (11:37): Okay.

Adam (11:37): We're just gonna gloss over it. Uh, I'm trying to keep a straight face and then, I was, what, how long ago was it? Is it 40 years ago now? 40 years. 40, four years later. Four years ago, God, I'm getting old. that I learned to knit properly with needles. I say properly as needles. That's derogatory of me on other forms of knitting, But,

Georgia (11:58): 40 years ago you,

Adam (11:59): No, four years ago when I was 40. That's what I'm confused about, so...

Georgia (12:02): Just to clarify, 'cause I was like, it sounded like you said yes. It's been 44 years since I learned to knit with needles and I thought that's not. That's, that's not adding up.

Adam (12:09): I know people are gonna look at me and think he's only 70. I can't believe he's any older than that.

Georgia (12:13): It's all the Botox.

Adam (12:14): I'm in my mid- i'm in my early forties

Georgia (12:17): Retinols.

Adam (12:17): Early forties.

Georgia (12:19): Okay, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Carry on.

Adam (12:20): So well that's part of my origin story.

Georgia (12:23): Mm-hmm.

Adam (12:23): Then I've got the, this sort of second, second coming, which was when I was having this random chat with someone. Basically the office or it wasn't, we were, it was in COVID, so it was on, zoom.

Georgia (12:34): This was like 2021 maybe, was it?

Adam (12:36): Yeah.

Georgia (12:36): Yeah.

Adam (12:37): 2021, 2022. We were just talking about news resolutions and she said, Maddie said to me, don't laugh at me about my news resolution. Um, and she was really embarrassed to admit it, and she said, I'm gonna learn to knit, and I just said.

That's a really good idea. And, but it just clicked with me.

Georgia (12:56): Mm-hmm.

Adam (12:57): I was like, that's, that's it. I'm gonna learn to knit.

Georgia (12:59): That's a nice New Year's resolution. I always try and avoid having New Year's resolutions where they're like a bit too harsh on yourself that it's actually something positive, additive.

Adam (13:06): I hate New Year's resolutions.

Georgia (13:08): Mm.

Adam (13:08): I don't make them, I firmly believe like if you want to change something, you wanna do something, why are you waiting until a new year to do it?

Georgia (13:16): Yeah.

Adam (13:16): Like if, if it's important to you and you want to do it, just pick a moment in time and just do it.

Georgia (13:20): Yeah.

Adam (13:20): I have this real problem with any round numbers, frankly, and like, like why does it have to be the 1st of January?

Georgia (13:27): Mm-hmm.

Adam (13:27): Also, 1st of January, for most people, the most common kinds of New Year's resolution is gonna be, 'I'm gonna stop drinking, I'm gonna stop eating unhealthy'. All the rest of it.

Georgia (13:34): Yeah.

Adam (13:35): I dunno about anyone else, but I really have a hangover on the 1st of January. That's not the time I'm gonna make that resolution. But, the second or third week of January thinking, why don't I try something new and, I'll, I'll steal someone else's New Year's resolution and learn to knit.

Georgia (13:49): In a weird way, I suppose. I had a similar thing of it being a New Year's resolution in that I started at the beginning of my PhD at the beginning of the academic year. Um, and it was a, a similar kind of conscious "No, I'm, I'm, I'm going to learn to knit". It was a very, it was a very decided moment. I want to circle back to you because you, so Maddie, your colleague had said, "oh, don't laugh at me. I'm gonna learn to knit", but then please carry on...

Adam (14:14): We both then started learning to knit. One of the things that unlocked me very early on was that I could just knit in an office environment when we went back into the office in our one-to-ones, part of our one-to-one was, what are you knitting at the moment?

Georgia (14:30): Mm-hmm.

Adam (14:30): Let me see what you're doing. And we talked about it... and I don't think that it detracted at all from the amount of work we had to do or our working relationship in any way. And in fact, there was a significant amount of time where I think it was really useful because when you're knitting, that's when I found that by knitting, it kind of unlocks different parts of your brain to be able to engage in different sorts of conversations. And so that then enabled me very quickly to be comfortable with, 'well, do you know what? I'm gonna knit it in other meetings and see what happens'. And so that was, it was, it was this, it was, it was a sort of powerful extra tool for me in terms of what else I do in the workplace. And yeah, I mean, I don't work in an office routinely now like I, like I did then. Uh, but I still use that as a tool and I'll still knit in meetings. Partly as a like way of helping me stay focused on some things, but also as a way of, in a way, disarming other people or, or creating more, ease in a meeting. It, and it works, it works superly well, but

Georgia (15:31): It's kind of an icebreaker. I know we've had this conversation at various points and it's definitely something that I'd want to talk more about. It's this whole like knitting in public or knitting, knitting at work. Um, Okay. So what were the first few things that you knitted?

Adam (15:44): Well, so the first thing that I knitted, which, some people are surprised by is a, reversible cabled scarf. So, because the thing that I wanted was texture.

Georgia (15:58): Yeah.

Adam (15:58): That's what I, that's what I crave in my knitting, that's what I started out wanting and that's what I still want.. And so I wanted to know how to cable.

Georgia (16:05): Yeah.

Adam (16:06): The first thing I did was research what a cable is, how do you make it? And once I understood that, I was like, well, I, okay, well, cables, you can't see them on the back. Well, that's useless for a scarf. Surely there's a way to make a reversible cable, which lo and behold, if you make it with a rib in it is reversible.

Georgia (16:20): Yeah.

Adam (16:21): And then so I just is, I designed a get, I didn't know anything about patterns- why would you? Like that wasn't how I was learning to knit. I was learning to knit on the basis that if you want something, you visualize it, you manufacture it.

Georgia (16:33): Yeah.

Adam (16:34): And therefore I made this, simple one by one rib or two by two rib, then with a cable up the middle of it, chunky scarf. That was the first thing I knit. And then I knit a matching hat, which is horrible. It's got full of holes, but it is the first thing I knit and I'm not throwing it away.

Georgia (16:50): Summer Lee the, designer, she's got another book coming out soon. She does amazing sock patterns. Also great YouTube channel and she's also got background in photography, so it's just like on point. She has this lovely story about how the first sock that she knitted, now she's like "queen of socks". I mean, she might not describe herself as that, but I'm, I'm calling her the "queen of socks". She says that the first sock that she knitted, she threw away and she wishes she kept it and she wishes she could have it, like in a frame on the wall.

Adam (17:21): Yeah.

Georgia (17:21): And knowing now all that she's, she's done and she's got her second book. So yeah, returning back to those like early projects- do you still have have them, presumably?

Adam (17:28): I absolutely have them. Yeah.

Georgia (17:29): Yay.

Adam (17:30): And I get, from time to time, they make it out onto my Instagram, 'cause I feel like it's an important thing to show people and I don't show really the scarf and talk much about that because that's, in a way, I think it's too much of an unusual first project.

Georgia (17:45): Yeah.

Adam (17:46): So I don't, I don't think it serves any use to anyone else to see it. The hat though is brilliant because the holes and the, it has it has real problems in tension around the decreases. And it is, it is awful, and it has this horrible point to it. It's so badly shaped and that's what I love about it because I loved it at the time and it was important to me at the time, and it will always be important to me because it was the first hat that I made.

Georgia (18:14): Yeah.

Adam (18:15): But now as a knitter who's more accomplished, I could, anyone can see flaws in it, and that's what I want, that's what I like to use it for, is to point out flaws.

Georgia (18:24): Mm-hmm.

Adam (18:24): Because I think that's so important. Like you say on, on Instagram, on social media. There is so much of, that in order to gain traction, in order to gain presence in an audience, part of what you have to do is fill this beautiful, idea of what knitting is and the photography's important, the beautiful finishings all important. Uh, and I feel like that leads you down one particular path. I don't feel like it's helpful for people learning.

Georgia (18:53): Yeah.

Adam (18:54): And that's. You know that, I think that's where my heart is

Georgia (18:57): Mm-hmm.

Adam (18:57): I like helping people learn, so... how did you learn Georgia? I mean, it's a, it's a totally random question to ask you, but

Georgia (19:03): I just first wanted to congratulate you on your, your wanting wanting people to learn. It's very fitting for the subject of our podcast today. Um, what we like, so sorry, Adam, I believe you're, you're about to...

Adam (19:14): Yeah. I was gonna ask you a question about, about how you learned to knit.

Georgia (19:17): Ah, well, well, so. Similarly to you, there, there was a, a two-pronged situation. So I first learned to knit when I was a little girl. I was maybe like six or seven, and it was my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, my dad's mum. And she taught me to knit with these big, chunky, wasn't chunky. I think it was probably like a, a worsted kind of situation. Um, or maybe aran and, these big thick needles. They were wooden and I remember weirdly like one of the little nobbles on the end, it would come off and I kept licking it and it tasted of like weird, weird glue that was probably totally not safe for me to put my mouth, but I'm still here

Adam (19:58): Not the normal glue that you lick.

Georgia (20:00): Yeah, it was just like, I dunno, it just, it tasted tangy.

Adam (20:03): What's really strange is that, as you said, that word tangy, I absolutely had the taste of a tangy glue in my mouth. I dunno how I know, but obviously as a child I must have licked the same sort of glue.

Georgia (20:16): Yeah. Well, in my childhood reminiscence, I didn't expect the tangy glue to be the first thing that came out. I've certainly not told you that part before. But alas, I was really close to my grandparents...

Adam (20:25): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (20:25): When I was little. So I used to go to stay with them every weekend, on a, a Saturday night. So they'd pick me up on Saturday morning and I'd spend the weekend with them or the rest of the weekend, and I'd come back on Sunday. And so, I would see her on a weekly basis. She didn't teach me to cast on, she just like cast on for me and then showed me how to do the knit stitch. And so it was just going back and forth. Um, knit stitch both sides. it Didn't know how to any increases, it decreases anything. But what would happen was I'd go away for the week, I'd knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, and maybe drop a bunch of stitches or do whatever, and then turn back up the next weekend and then be like, "look, Grandma! Look what I did!" And then she'd, she'd have to like do the corrections or change bits and bobs.

Adam (21:04): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (21:04): That went on for a couple of weeks, or you know, like you were saying- was this a couple of weeks? Was it longer? I dunno. But I was absolutely obsessed. You know, I'd come back and I'd, have done this like huge, huge stretch of this knitting. And then, I think we had some like, wear a tie to work, to school day or something. So I decided to knit a tie.

Adam (21:23): Amazing.

Georgia (21:24): But it was in this big chunky yarn and, then I think I hadn't realized that you could do decreases to go to a point, and so I thought that they would have to... That I'd have to do increases to then fold it over and sew it. So I ended up having this weird conversation with my grandma and ended up with this like scarf, which like flailed out the bottom end. And I think it was just miscommunication, basically between my, me and my grandma. So I ended up with what it was effectively... it should have been a tie length, but it ended up being a scarf, because I had just been so into it and had knit so, so much. I won a prize at school for like having knit this, this little tie scarf and that explained that the end was, had to sew it on in the right way. And then this girl at school for years. Uh, used to call me "Scarfy scarf" and said, I cheated.

Adam (22:09): What?

Georgia (22:10): Because it was a tie competition. Like, you had to wear like a...

Adam (22:13): Oh my goodness.

Georgia (22:14): ... A tie. And it just like, it always upset me, 'cause I was like, "but I made it with my grandma and it was a tie! It was supposed to be a tie, but I just messed- I just got confused about the end and it went out instead of in". Anyway, so that was all early on.

Georgia (22:26): And then I kind of had this moment of discouragement. And this comes on to the whole thing about learning, about like how you... How you learn, where, who teaches you and what that environment is like and creating a supportive environment for something. So, so much love for my grandma, like she taught me to do so many things make, to bake, to measure ingredients, to make scones. So, I think about her every day in that respect. Um, she taught me to knit as well. But, when I really wanted to knit something and I didn't have her on hand to cast on for me, I set up some knitting by basically, "I thought, well, I've got to knit into these little loops", so I tied together these like little bits of yarn. And it wasn't actually yarn that was appropriate for the size of the needles that I had. It was like super thin yarn that I think must have been kicking about the house or I'd seen at a charity shop or something. And so I tied together all these little tiny knots...

Adam (23:19): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (23:20): ...That weren't connected to each other. So it was just like, like curtain rails or something like, like curtain.. What would you call it? Like curtains...

Adam (23:28): Loops?

Georgia (23:28): Yeah. It's little tiny loops. And I just knit into that and then it went back to her, and I was so excited and proud that I'd knit and

Adam (23:35): That's ingenious. That's really ingenious.

Georgia (23:36): Thank you. Thank you. Um, Cambridge.

Adam (23:38): Did, did you do engineering?

Georgia (23:42): So I did this like thing and then I knit into it with these big... so effectively it kind of looked like lace in a way. I'm not supposing to say that I did lace, but in the sense that if you knit with really big needles on thin, thin yarn

Adam (23:53): Yeah.

Georgia (23:54): Then it's gonna be...

Adam (23:55): Lacy.

Georgia (23:55): It's lacy. It looks lacy.

Adam (23:57): Yeah.

Georgia (23:58): Went back to my grandma and, rather than being like, wow, this is so ingenious and bless her, she's been really interested in doing this, she really wanted to do it. I got basically chastised for, well, "I don't understand why, why? What you've done this for? We can't do anything with this. We're just gonna have to unravel it. You should have waited." And I was so disappointed and so like sad and ashamed. My grandma's not with us anymore, which is part of the story as it goes on, but...

Adam (24:24): So that's why you are happy to just diss her publicly, internationally. (well...)

Adam (24:30): She can't fight back.

Georgia (24:31): Well it...

Adam (24:32): Do you want me to...

Georgia (24:32): Could have been a different scenario, 'cos...

Adam (24:34): ... to take the position of your grandma, I'm sorry, Georgia, but you absolutely did the wrong thing and why the hell didn't you put the effort in properly or wait for her?

Georgia (24:43): But this is the crazy thing It's just like... I think about, because I do so much stuff about skills and learning, I'm writing a chapter now on skills and learning. Um, hence probably why I reached for this topic suggestion. But I, that was such a moment where I could have been encouraged a different way. And in that story, I feel like

Adam (25:02): Encouraged a different way, or encouraged, as we know.

Georgia (25:04): Yeah, just encouraged. and so in that story, I kind of see the mechanisms of when learning can go south or where someone can get this interested or have like a, a passion kind of stifled, so I basically don't really remember knitting after that, like at all.

Adam (25:20): Yeah. That's so sad though, because

Georgia (25:22): I know.

Adam (25:22): But, but I think that's a, that's also a generational thing. That's, that's very much changed over time.

Georgia (25:27): Yeah.

Adam (25:28): How you give feedback to children because, my piano teacher was again, the, so she's probably the person that taught me the most about something creative or artistic because, I played the piano, but she taught me from when I was five to basically 20 and she was my grandmother's kind of age, but the highest level of praise that I could get from her was, "that's not bad".

Georgia (25:52): Yeah.

Adam (25:53): You know, a small sort of like, "uh, not bad". Yeah, that was, that was the most I could ever hope for from her. I didn't know at the time, but I learned so many Dutch swear words... (scoffs) when I would say these words, and I couldn't think anything of them 'cause my piano would say them all the time. I was a six or 7-year-old that knew the worst words in Dutch.

Georgia (26:12): This podcast has to be clean, Adam.

Adam (26:14): I'm not gonna say them

Georgia (26:16): "Later, you can tell me all about your Dutch swear words and then..." (dutch accent)

Adam (26:19): Ahh, we got Georgia's impression.

Georgia (26:21): Wait,

Adam (26:22): So we got to the point where you were criticized for, discouraged...

Georgia (26:25): Discouraged, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam (26:26): Using the wrong size needles and yarn together.

Georgia (26:28): So from there, was definitely poking around sewing patterns and making clothes and stuff. That was a very natural part because I was in a family where women in my family sewed. I had to do all my scout badges and stuff and sewed all of those on. So I was always doing stuff with textiles.

Adam (26:45): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (26:45): And I think also, 'cause I was very tall, I had to, adjust a lot of clothes and make a lot of clothes. So that was always very normal for me. So going back to this conversation he had about Holger and some people saying, oh, no, no, there's no transferable skills. But actually, like you said, you never really thought of doing patterns or how things were constructed in a way. I didn't necessarily think about, oh, you have to have a pattern, but I had this sort of contextual knowledge from mucking about, with a sewing machine and mucking about, with some embroidery or mending things, letting the hem down on a skirt or a dress or something. So that was all kind of contextual. But didn't knit. Like absolutely didn't knit. And I think it just passed me by for quite a long time and then I was about... it would've been 2022, a year after you, I was starting my PhD and there were two, two events that were sort of triggered it. I saw a family friend, lovely lady called Ione, who knew me very well when I was little, and she's got grownup children who we all grew up together. One of those older children, Charlotte, who I called "Lartotte" um, when I was little.

Adam (27:48): That's a cute name.

Georgia (27:49): Yeah. Um, so Lartotte has her own children now, which is wonderful. And when she had her babies, Ione knitted these gorgeous things for them. And there was something that like triggered in the back of my brain because that summer that was the last time I saw my grandmother where I could kind of have a conversation with her 'cause she had dementia.

Adam (28:10): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (28:10): And so from there it was just kind of a, a really sad, slow decline. And we didn't talk about knitting at all then or anything like that, but I had this sense of, I was going through all these family photos with her and trying to figure out who was who and things. It was just before I was kind, of settling down in Cambridge, to do the PhD. And I had this sense of like, 'huh, Ione knitted this thing for her grandchild. My grandmother taught me to knit. And then once my grandmother isn't here anymore and once she forgets, this skill is gonna die in our family and I want to be able to knit things for my children. I want to be able to knit things for my grandchildren, and I want to be able to teach them to knit in the same way that my grandmother did. And so I had this very like conscious moment of " I want to learn to knit now, so I'm not rushing it" when I'm a couple years down the line and I'm like, "Hmm, I'm broody" and I want to make blankets and things. I didn't want my grandma's passing and she passed away last year in the spring, and I didn't want when she left us, to not have that memory intact and have that knowledge that thing that she taught me all those years ago.

Georgia (29:17): Unfortunately, I decided to do this when I was recovering from a surgery, an abdominal surgery, when I totally shouldn't have been cycling to Hobby Craft. but, I became overwhelmed with this. Like, "no, I've, I need to learn to knit." And the funny thing is, after I'd had this surgery, it was, for my endometriosis. The thing is, they said, get back to your normal, your normal everyday activities. My normal everyday activities as a former rower was like

Adam (29:46): Yeah

Georgia (29:46): 10 sessions of training a week. So I was like, oh yeah, "I'm alright to cycle to Hobby Craft". And I got there and I thought this was a terrible mistake, like really bad.

Adam (29:56): How, how many days after surgery are we talking?

Georgia (29:58): Seven.

Adam (29:59): Okay.

Georgia (29:59): And like to the hour and I thought, "well, it's been a week now I can cycle to Hobby Craft", and I had these like three great holes in my stomach.

Adam (30:06): They said one week it has been one week I am going.

Georgia (30:09): I will return to my normal duties of rogue impromptu trips to Hobby Craft. So I turned up and I bought the yarn that actually became this jumper.

Adam (30:16): Oh, amazing.

Georgia (30:16): Yeah. And, some different needles. I bought this book about like sustainable knitting, which was weird because even though it was sustainable knitting, it just told you yarn you had to buy, rather than like using what you had, which I was like,

Adam (30:27): Which was printed on bleached inorganic paper

Georgia (30:30): Probably yeah. So started figuring out how to knit from that.

Adam (30:34): I love that your knitting origin story also includes like, "oh, well, to do this properly, I'm also gonna research about this X, Y, Z". How can I be more Georgia?

Georgia (30:42): Don't at me.

Adam (30:43): It's a good thing. There is, it's just,

Georgia (30:46): It is. It is.

Adam (30:46): It's a very pure expression of you, like both, both the determination, like: right, I've had my time, I've done my recovery, now I'm gonna go and learn to knit, and I'm gonna learn more about doing knitting really well in a really ethical way, because that's what I believe in.

Georgia (31:03): I was talking to a friend about this the other day, prior to me coming to Cambridge, all of that you're describing is like the Georgia, the Georgia vibe. Uh, that did not make me a popular person. Um, I was not, I was not a, a popular, popular gal. And then I came to Cambridge and then suddenly it was like, " oh my God, like what? I'm in the plastics. Like what is this?"

Adam (31:22): That total, that total rejection... (Wait, did you understand that reference?) No, but the, I'm just gonna gloss over it.

Georgia (31:27): It's Mean Girls. It's like Regina George.

Adam (31:29): How did I not get a Mean Girls reference?

Georgia (31:31): Wait, do you know? Do you know Mean Girls?

Adam (31:32): Obvious. I'd say, obviously. I mean, why, why would that be obvious?

Georgia (31:35): Okay. This is, this is giving a new context. Okay.

Adam (31:37): There was a whole series of films around that time from, from Legally Blonde onwards where like,

Georgia (31:42): Legally Blonde (ah)

Adam (31:43): Like that was my, that was my gateway film into that niche.

Georgia (31:48): Got you.

Adam (31:48): I didn't watch, I think, was it Mean Girls 4? I wasn't watching that. That was too much. but

Georgia (31:52): Mean Girls sequels are terrible.

Adam (31:54): They really are. Feel like the first one. I watched it a few times, but I feel like it wasn't as strong, 'cause obviously it's not based on the great literature of Jane Austen and the way that Legally Blonde is but there we go. We digress.

Georgia (32:05): Wait. Legally Blonde is based on the literature of Austen I thought that was

Adam (32:08): Oh sorry, I'm confused

Georgia (32:09): That's Clueless.

Adam (32:10): That's Clueless. I'm mixed up.

Georgia (32:12): Yeah, because I listened to Emma over the holiday and I was thinking, wait, which one's Legally Blonde? I'm pretty sure...

Adam (32:16): You are absolutely right because it's... Elle...

Georgia (32:19): Elle Woods, A Gemini vegetarian.

Adam (32:21): I'm just gonna get myself tied in knots.

Georgia (32:22): My favorite. Have you ever seen them legally on the musical?

Adam (32:24): No.

Georgia (32:24): It's so good.

Adam (32:25): Is it? I bet it's good.

Georgia (32:26): It lives rent free in my head all the time. Like all the time. "Oh my God. Oh my God, you guys. Looks like Elle's gonna win the prize!

Adam (32:35): I think we found our new intro music for the, for the podcast there. That's amazing.

Georgia (32:39): Oh my- it's just so good. It's so good. So good. Whenever it's on, I really try and go.

Adam (32:43): I really thought ammonium thioglycolate was gonna be a bigger thing in my life than it... ("ammonium thioglycolate") ... it was gonna be bigger in my life than it actually turned out to be. What a shame.

Georgia (32:50): Alas,

Adam (32:51): We digress.

Georgia (32:52): We digress. I think that this is a good ending point for...

Adam (32:56): But I wanna know what happened after you...!

Georgia (32:57): Oh right, yeah.

Adam (32:58): You made this jumper. You can't stop there

Georgia (33:00): Okay, so

Adam (33:00): I'm just telling you our digression.

Georgia (33:02): Actually what I did was I bought two different types, weights of yarn: one was DK and one was Aran. And then knitted this stripey thing trying to follow this sustainable knitting pattern thing of like, oh, you cast on X number of stitches, do this in ribbing. So I learnt to purl. And it was weird because the muscle memory or the faint memory of like how I was knitting when I was a child was, it was like, it was there. It was like it was suspended in my hands. Um, which, totally makes sense, but

Adam (33:31): Like riding a bike.

Georgia (33:31): Yeah. And it was there, all those years later. So I learnt to knit in the round and then thought as it was getting close to the top for this what was effectively gonna be like a, a sort of a vest tunic type thing.

Adam (33:45): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (33:47): I thought this is ugly as f%&! and that it needed sleeves and actually, because I'd knitted, not with the suggested cotton of the pattern, 'cause I didn't understand anything about the, "oh yeah, you gotta use this to the..." you know, I wasn't there yet, right. I thought I could put some sleeves on it because I've, I've made all of these garments, I've made all of these tops and adjusted things. It wasn't that freaky to me to think, "oh, well, it's roughly the shape. I could do some decreases, figure out how to do those". And effectively, I know the numbers won't quite add up, but, I'll, I'll just, I'll figure it out.

Adam (34:20): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (34:20): Because I thought I just need another pattern to put arms on it for like a men's jumper and then it will fit Dima.

Georgia (34:25): So I went to a yarn shop to try and get advice on like, "Hey, so I'm knitting this and I just want to get another men's yarn, another men's pattern, that has some sleeves on it, and then put the sleeves on it. So then the person who was in the yarn shop was like... cut, cut that idea down straight away.

Adam (34:45): Were they dismissive of it as well?

Georgia (34:47): They were very dismissive

Adam (34:48): Just like being with your grandmother again?

Georgia (34:50): Actually, yeah. Yeah. It was very much like: "no, you're a beginner. You shouldn't be doing this. You should start again from scratch. Like, just finish this and it'll be a nice tank top". And I just felt really deflated 'cos I'm like, "Hey, I'm turning up and like this is the first thing I've done. Then I ended up, telling, I didn't leave enough space for the neck, so then I did some steeking.

Adam (35:09): Mm-hmm.

Georgia (35:09): That was fun. For quite a while, I was cutting into my knitting before I mentioned it in a knitting group, and then people went, "what?" So I was doing random stuff, kind of like you're describing, there's an experimentation that was happening in me being separate from the usual roots.

Adam (35:23): I think this is fascinating because what you are describing is very similar as well to my experience where when you are left to your own devices and it is about your personal ambition to create something.

Georgia (35:35): Yeah.

Adam (35:36): Then there is no limit to it, and you can just say, "this is what I want to visualize, this is what I want to do". And left your own devices, you can just go off and do it.

Georgia (35:45): Yeah.

Adam (35:46): If you go into a group of people who have learned in a very structured way where you have to have produced 19,000 yards of stockinette knitting before you can progress onto anything else. There is every chance you're gonna be held back and told, no, this is the sequence in which you want to do it.

Georgia (36:03): Mm-hmm.

Adam (36:04): The number one thing that matters for getting through early knitting projects is passion

Georgia (36:10): Mm.

Adam (36:10): Because that's the only thing you've got. That's the only weapon you've got against the boredom, the frustration, the difficulty is passion. That's the only thing that's gonna carry you through. No one else can tell you, make another stitch, do another row. You have to find that in yourself, and the only place that comes from is "I want to do it". But as a new knitter, you're full of fear as well because it is totally unknown. It's sad, but I completely understand why that your grandmother, in a way stopped you for a while. She didn't defeat that, that was, that wasn't the end of it but it was the same, you had that same experience walking into a shop.

Georgia (36:45): Yeah.

Adam (36:45): And I took that cable scarf back into a shop and I said, "this is what I've knitted, I want to do something else". And I explained the next project I wanted to do, and I cannot tell you how dismissive they were of you know, well, " well done for trying".

Georgia (37:05): Yeah.

Adam (37:05): You know, well,

Georgia (37:07): We need to start at the beginning again.

Adam (37:08): Yeah, start at the beginning again and go buy that big ball of acrylic over there and...

Georgia (37:12): And that's why I was so interested from a PhD perspective, like I was starting my PhD on trying to understand how composers learned things, and I wanted to look at different interdisciplinary approaches. And at first I was thinking of looking more at, like company onboarding and like different training...

Adam (37:26): Mmm.

Georgia (37:27): ...Approaches for different companies. There's a big difference between like creative practices and then corporate practices where they have the infrastructure, the funding, the time to be able to actually train someone... You know, if you, if you start in a company and you have like six weeks of onboarding or learning how to use a system or whatever, that will happen in a way that they know, fingers crossed is gonna work and you're still getting paid whilst you do that training. When you are in a creative situation, when you're freelancing, you're not necessarily getting paid for that time because you've gotta develop the skills yourself to be able to be in a position then to deliver your services as a composer. So I was interested in that kind of conflict and tension. Not at all to say, okay, well now actually composers need to learn in this very structured corporate way, but I wanted to understand more about what was actually going on there.

Adam (38:14): So, Georgia, that makes me think so much about an example that I have from my professional life and I want to talk to you more about that. Should we do it as a part two?

Georgia (38:22): I like this. It's filling me with editing joy because I know that actually it's not gonna be like "oh right, we've got a big long episode that we then have to split in two", but actually rather, we are going to...

Adam (38:33): We're gonna make a two-parter.

Georgia (38:34): We're gonna make a two-parter.

Adam (38:34): We've, we've laid out, I hope, what's an interesting...

Georgia (38:37): We're just so interesting.

Adam (38:37): ... it's an exposition. Well, we'll find out whether we're interesting, won't we?

Georgia (38:41): I like having our origin stories.

Adam (38:43): I think it's important to have them out there.

Georgia (38:45): Yeah. It also really sets the scene for like, going into learning on...

Adam (38:47): But I really want to wrap this episode up now 'cause I need to record episode two, 'cause I need to tell you about why, why that is so important to me.

Georgia (38:54): Fine. Well, thank you for listening to Yarn Library podcast

Adam (38:57): With, with me..?

Georgia (38:58): Oh, wait, no, that's that I, that I, that is actually a recorded outro.

Adam (39:02): Amazing.

Georgia (39:02): Yeah... and there might be different music now as well 'cause...

Adam (39:05): Because you're gonna sing it (Georgia scoffs) . Are we done then?

Georgia (39:07): Yeah.

Adam (39:08): Amazing.

Georgia (39:08): Yay.

Adam (39:10): High five, Georgia.

Georgia (39:11): Woo!