My students kindly gave…

My students kindly gave me permission to share these pics with you. In my postcolonial lit. class, we spend a little while talking about industrialization, the shift from home to factory work, and the textile trade between India and Britain. (Drawing primarily on material from Minal Hajratwala's excellent _Leaving India_).

I also teach them to knit or crochet, so they have a sense of what it's like to work with your hands, to be able to have some creative control over the process, to work with friends or family and be able to talk while you labor, the calming nature of handwork, etc. and so on. It's a fun, if chaotic, class, and inevitably, we get one or two newly-obsessed knitters and/or crocheters out of it. (Almost anyone can learn the basics of crochet (enough to make a scarf) in an hour; basic knitting usually take a little longer, although some take to it almost as fast.)

This is the group that lingered after class was over, not wanting to put down their knitting. :-)