Parentheses include......

Another stitch in the Found Poetry of Knitting Stitches is Parenthetical Rib.  This is a stitch that has never really spoken to me at all.  So now I have to take a really close look at it and try to relate it to real life through some of my photography.

Here is the stitch from the Barbara Walker site.  Parentheses highlight ideas. They either include "things" - ( ) or exclude "things"  ) (   So maybe I have to look at it more as an inclusive "thing" - mainly because I dislike exclusion.  To me the stitch is busy and maybe looks like streetscapes where a road goes down the middle, bracketed by homes, or shops on either side.

Street in old Quebec

The street, though, must include the activity of the neighbourhood or it becomes very vacant - think of vast stretches of suburbia with strip mall development - places where people rarely walk and the car is the only real life - people, bracketted inside a vehicle - hardly interacting with the environment unless it's a "drive thru."

So what happens when you add a place for people to be included in the street.  Maybe they walk there, or live there, or eat there. Maybe you limit cars and put in benches and planters and activities for people to interact with other people. I see all of these things included in the stitch.

I am starting to warm up to parenthetical rib a little more. I can see the stitch interspersed with other interesting stitches and maybe expanding the rib or omitting parts of it to create "scapes."  This could be a challenge.

Here is a street in old Quebec taken at night. The awnings like parentheses include the people.

My last picture is of two streets in Barcelona.  People actually live in the thin strip of a building bracketed by the two streets - a close knit community.

Streets in Barcelona old town

Have an inclusive day.