The Year Long Scat

"So what do you call that," I asked Kendal Calquhoun. "A hat-scarf, a harf, a scaharfat, what?"

Kendal shrugged. "A scat I guess."

"Why aren't you wearing it right now?" I asked him.

From behind the counter at Mud Bay Coffee, between drink orders, Kendal patiently answered, "It's ultra warm, it's really heavy and just bulky. It's hard to be doing things while you're wearing it. It's more of a sitting in the cold type of hat."

Kendal knitting his hat at Moon Base about a few
days before completing the project.
photo by: Kaylani, Oct 26, 2011

In October last year, under the instruction of our community's knitting guru Claire, Kendal learned how to knit. His first effort, a small gray test-swatch, is still attached to his key chain as a token of remembrance. After that, he began his hat. One year and nine skeins of yarn later, it is finished. "I wanted a wizard's hat. I wanted it to be a little over the top," says Kendal. "I knew it was done when it was dragging on the ground. It had taken so long I was ready to be finished. I just wanted to wear it."

The red and grey portions of Kendal's hat are knit with an alpaca and wool blend. The green at the end was knit with extremely soft baby alpaca. His yarns were purchased at Canvas Works downtown. "If you're gonna start knitting one, you'd better know your a patient person," Kendal recommends. "I knew I'd be able to finish it... I had an idea how long it would take, I didn't think it would be an entire year."

As a friend of Kendal's, I can confirm the patience he speaks of. I can't say I've encountered more patience in my life. But the man is not a machine. There were times during the project where boredom set in. "I got to the point where I had to take a break. There was a couple of times where I just didn't knit it for like a month." Learning new techniques helped keep the project interesting, though. "There was a lot of experimenting with knit patterns and ways of knitting where I took my rights as the person making it to go ahead and try."

Kendal learned from his experiments, though they didn't always go as planned. "In one of my experiments doing different knit patterns I ended up adding 40-plus stitches," He says. "After I screwed that part up I probably spent a good four hours fixing it."

Kendal also kept busy while he knit, exercising his multitasking muscles. "I listened to music, watched movies, rode in cars, came to Bible Study, sat by the fireplace [at Mud Bay]." When the hat was long enough to wear while knitting, he took full licence to knit wherever he wanted. "I walked around downtown, went to the Co-op, antique shopping."

During his walks downtown, he encountered a couple very curious folks. "I'd have the tail end and yarn in my bag and the part I was working on out in front of me," he explains. "People who didn't necessarily look like they understood I was knitting, but saw I had seven sticks in front of me, would come up like 'Whoa! What are you doing?'"

Next on Kendal's knitting agenda? Mittens. With a twist, of course. "I want the sleeves to be long, long," he says. With one hand outstretched as though a mitten coveres it, he draws his other hand up his arm and out past his head to demonstrate. "I'll have to fold them over my arm in order to wear them."

Occupy Olympia's Tent Community

I've been following stories about the occupy movement, from Wall Street to Oakland to Olympia and everywhere in between. The news coverage, from what I've seen, has been negative. This is likely due in part to the fact that media networks need newsworthy stories. Peace isn't exactly a headline topic. Police brutality, on the other hand, sure grabs viewer attention.

Several weeks ago, Jeremiah and I found ourselves bored and curious. So we headed down to Occupy Olympia with our video camera to ask questions and get informed. I highly recommend that anyone near enough to any occupation makes an effort to do the same (no video camera necessary). We found that the majority of folks we spoke with were well educated, well informed, and well intentioned. We sensed nothing but a deep sense of love and community from Olympia's tent city, and our hopes were lifted for the people involved in the movement.

After multiple conversations, I began to realize that the mass media's portrayal of the movement and the people had given me an inaccurate sense of the cause. At least in the case of Occupy Olympia, which I feel is different from other occupations in some beautiful ways. What struck me is that it's not really a protest, but a demonstration. A protest, to me, just says "you've got it wrong, fix it." Occupy Olympia is saying, "You've got it wrong. Let us show you how to fix it and let us be involved in the process." They've got a community medicine tent, food tent, and supply tent. No one's really in charge and everyone is invited to get involved. It's a demonstration of real democracy (despite the anarchy misconception), where individual voices are heard and community thrives because of it.

We used every interview (except one which we didn't hit record for) we conducted in our video. Due to technical difficulties, more than half our original footage was lost and we were limited to the first five minutes of each interview. We did our best to never misrepresent the occupation or the people involved. Though I am clearly in favor of Occupy Olympia, I made every effort to ensure the video is unbiased and un-manipulated. Regardless, I perceive a positive lean when I watch it. I assure you, had we any negative footage to include we'd have done so. Our desire was to get informed and share information, not to promote the cause.

Give us your feedback, share your thoughts, ask your questions. We're into that sort of thing.

In Solidarity,

Kaylani