I am a woman working in a highly technical field and I deal with stuff like this almost daily. Granted, most of it is not that obvious, but the basic message is always the same: “This is a men’s world, and we want to keep it that way.” What never fails to amaze me is that the men around me apparently expect me to share their views. It is as if to be allowed in this world at all all, I had to become a not-woman, a neuter.

Granted, I’m not very girly to begin with – I prefer jeans, a T-shirt and trekking boots to skirts, shirts and pumps and thankfully I can get away with that in my line of work. But that does not mean that it doesn’t hurt to hear misogynist bullshit, that I don’t feel the sting. I’ve been mulling over how to react all evening, knowing only too well that emails of this kind put me in a no-win situation. If I grit my teeth and join the laughter I’m adding to my own oppression, which I’m not going to do. If I fail to respond I allow myself to be silenced once again. And if I reply I’m one of those humourless feminists that can never take a joke. Or perhaps my reply might garner me that all-time favourite: “But we didn’t mean you, you’re one of us.” - as if in addition to being one of them I’m not also a woman.

My career has actually profited from my neutral status, as it shuts down an approach to questioning my expertise. Up to now I have not suffered the indignity of having my input belittled or ignored because it came from a woman. But I buy being taken seriously in my chosen field by protecting the men around me. Not only do they get away with not giving a damn whether something they say or do hurts women, they also never have to challenge their basic assumptions about what women can or cannot do. I can either be an IT professional or a woman, but in this world I cannot be both.

And in addition to protecting the men around me, I also allow them to define what constitutes a woman. I’ve had men, usually men that were about to lose an argument, tell me to my face that I am not a woman. Not “I don’t consider you a woman.”, not “You’re not my idea of a woman.” but simply “You’re not a woman!” Apparently I’m only a woman if a man agrees, my word on the matter is not good enough.

But lets come back to the email that started all these musings. I know perfectly well that I can’t win, but still there is that burning wish inside to send a “reply to all” with the link to Melissa McEwan’s brilliant post “The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck”, because she says what I feel so much better than I can do myself. Who knows, I might get one of the recipients thinking, and at minimum it will get me off my former coworker’s distribution list, which alone makes it worthwhile. Unfortunately my disgust led me to delete the email as soon as I had seen the attachment. What the heck, I’ll just ask around, I’m pretty sure one of the men around me has saved a copy…

However, I have cast on for a new sweater based on Beth Silverstein’s “Francis Revisited”. The yarn is a lovely black worsted weight pure Alpaca I picked up at Wolland years ago. As the pattern specifies that the yarn should be knit pretty loosely I swatched with 5mm, 5.5mm and 6mm needles and the 5.5mm gave the best result.

Unfortunately the only 5.5mm needles around in this household are 80cm circulars and the sweater is knit top-down, so I am reduced to starting it on two circs. Have I mentioned how much I loathe this technique? I thought so. I already managed to mess up once, when on round 4 I realised that I had twisted the cast on before joining. Or maybe I had managed to twist it during the first round, when yarn and needles were putting up a desperate fight. This has honestly never happened to me on dpns. The second attempt seems to be working now, but I’ll be glad when there are enough stitches on the needles to continue on a single circular.

Yes, I am whining. Why do you ask?

Whatever - in the good old tradition of setting oneself up for failure already in the first days of the new year, here’s my number one resolution for 2010:

Shop the stash first!

Good one, isn’t it? And it holds true for so many aspects of my life, not only the obvious ones like knitting or sewing. If there’s something lacking in my life it’s not things but the ability to enjoy life and making the best of what I have, so I have decided to focus on creativity and thankfulness in 2010.

Don’t know what the fuss is about? Go read it.

Not to be outsmarted, I changed my Amazon delivery address to the local Packstation, only to realise that this has opened a completely new approach for him to screw things up: He can now dump other people’s packages on me without me being able to prevent it, and he immediately seized the opportunity.

and started knitting dishcloths, of all things. And you know what? Considering that most non-knitters would consider this a perfect waste of time, I draw an almost indecent amount of pleasure from it.

Taking a flashlight picture of yourself…:-)
Nevertheless, the Rogue hoodie is coming along nicely, and as I closed the shoulder seams today, I simply had to try it on and take a picture.

• shopped
• took pictures of my latest knitting project
• took pictures of my latest yarn purchase
• posted said pictures on ravelry
• and, as it usually happens when I hit ravelry, spent oodles of time looking at other people’s projects and planning my next endeavours.

Of course, and I should have expected this, by the time I had finished dawdling, the weather had changed. Right now it’s gray and rainy outside, pretty beastly and the perfect excuse for spending the weekend cuddled up on the sofa, knitting away to your heart’s content. Which I plan to do, working on the Rogue hoodie I started last week. So you could argue that, figuratively speaking, I am making hay, only who’s going to finish my chores for the weekend is completely beyond me…

The Jury is still out on whether I will ever wear them, but I think I might muster the courage on October 31st.

Somehow pumpkins seem to be a recurring theme in my life currently. I have been meaning to try my hand at quilting for quite a while, and this week I finally set aside some time to visit the local quilt shop. I went in with visions of tastefully combined, intricately pieced quilt tops in my head, stumbled across this

and instantly fell in love with those silly, smiling pumpkins. I mentioned to the shop owner that I could see this in the centre of a log cabin block and she kindly helped me find some matching fabrics. The end result was a halloweenish colour combination which is about as tasteful as a Jelly Bean counter, but what do I care? Just imagine having this

on your sofa to cuddle up under on a grey winter’s day.

But at least there was something in the kitchen to pick me up after an hour of digging and muttering curses under my breath:

Normally I am not into soft drinks, but this seems to be the exception from the rule. Of course, technically I’m still not into soft drinks because, as the Bionade home page takes care to point out, Bionade is produced by a different process than soft drinks. Anyhow, it was just the thing I could do with.