"My husband complains about the cold," the man said. "Can you teach me a spell to keep him warm?"
"I can teach you to bind hair into a net to catch heat," the wizard said, "using arcane counting and a pair of fine wands."
After a while, the man said "Isn't this knitting?"
"This, too, is magic."
@nuwagaba2
Learning to knit IME requires interest, manual dexterity, patience, practice, and counting.
The thread under the story has a some discussion of fiber arts as a foundational technology, and one that continues to be developed, including early contributions to programming.
Magic is what we don't understand yet.
@nuwagaba2
Crochet and sewing are two of my hobbies. I'm a baby knitter, as I'm enough better at crochet that knitting feels slow, frustrating, and error-prone. Eventually I will have put in enough practice to get past that & produce something respectable, but that's a ways off still. 🧶
You could learn to weave, or knit, or both. From your posts it sounds like gardening and farming are much more important to you, at least currently. Do you grow any fiber crops?
@MicroSFF okay but FR, knitting and textile work in general is magic. arguably the most important technology after fire and language and possibly even before sharp stone. to say that our civilisation is built on fabric is an understatement, because even pre-civilisation societies were built on fabric.
knitting is actual magic.
I could even be argued that all of our current tech is, in one form or another, based on textiles. See the discussion in the attatched vid. The referenced book is interesting, too.
In the book, the author actually references "simple" string bags as being a seminal innovation. (& also a lot more labor intensive than you'd think.)
@hiisikoloart @Yuvalne @MicroSFF
Right?? Textiles > looms > punch cards > computers. It's not even a stretch of any definition.
"All technology, no matter how primitive, is magic when you don't know how it works." - Florence Ambrose
:D
@Thebratdragon Yes, indeed. I am a practitioner of that magic art. (Saw the post earlier, faved & boosted!)
We knitting witches and wizards, you know: we wave our wands, utter arcane incantations, and lo! .... a sweater.
(Actually, though I do have a sweater on the needles, it's a long-term project; otherwise, I'm working on 2 pairs of socks, a pair of fingerless mitts, and a double-walled hat. I've just ordered some more needles for next weekend's project, which is a cowl.)
Reminds me of Ify Nwadiwe on Very Important People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Important_People_(2023_TV_series)
It's a show where comedians are given a costume and have to improvise a talk show interview in character
His costume was an alien and he keeps describing mundane things as alien technology
I'm trying to stay off YouTube today bc #GeneralStrike, so let's see if I can get this to embed properly:
Oh, who the heck is it I saw recently—oh, right: Virginia Postrel's The Fabric of Civilization
Riffing on Clarke's famous dictum: "Any sufficiently common technology is indistinguishable from nature."
Brought to you in a roundabout way by (grossly oversimplified) Hank Green stepping in it wrt knitting on a podcast. Marvelous conversation here:
I think I love you now. 🧶
Joe Fernandez
Micro SF/F by O. Westin
Kelkyag
Nuwagaba Gift
Kibrika
Supermouse The Rodent
Sarah Sammis
Talya (she/her) 🏳️⚧️✡️
BeeCycling
Cavyherd
Hiisikoloart
PermaSolarPotter
Frogie
Billy Smith
Estarriol, Terrorist Dragon
Knitronomicon
George B
Kluthulhu' XOR 1=1--
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Andy is Frazzled (ze/they/she)
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Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder
cpm