Author: Ellen Campbell

Fair Isle Mittens – by Jane Henderson

Student Jane Henderson knitted these Fair Isle mittens and created a mind map for Rebecca Johnson’s Business Associations class. In a guide to the project, Henderson explains the design of the mittens to mirror themes she learned in the course. Henderson describes the left mitten, which covers the entire hand, as the “unseen hand of the market,” and the right hand, which leaves the fingertips exposed, as a more vulnerable but also not entirely separate project from the right hand, as the representation of Take Back the Economy‘s (one of the assigned textbook’s) approach to business.

Henderson explains the choice of knitting for the project through an overview of the importance of knitting to her family tree, which she maps out in her outline of the project, and an analysis of knitting’s cultural and personal importance: it is a metaphorical representation of interconnection, it has substantial rules that need to be followed (and that can be broken), it also represents political struggles in its branding as feminized labour, its necessity for many populations, and its importance in the fashion industry.

The complex patterns on the mittens are also representative of different elements: alternating patterns representing the 9 to 5 lifestyle; cookie-cutter patterns to represent societal moulds created to make workers; hour-glass patterns to represent supply chains and products; blank space to represent the corporate veil and the distance of the corporate entity from those controlling it; alternating red and light blue patterns to represent the words, the tragedy of the commons; coffee patterns to represent the fair trade coffee industry’s initiatives to “take back the economy”; bread to represent the bottom line for a lot of people (feeding themselves); a DNA pattern to represent what is left out in business associations.