show

The Felt Cervix Project will be on display at Femme Cartel, in Oakland in January. The project is ongoing and I will be arranging more shows, both locally and further afield.

cervix quartet

Four cervices in the mail from Chawne. I really love the stripey one. Knit using KnitPicks Telemark.

traveling cervix

The first contribution to the project! A pair of cervices, knit by Kim using Loft from Brooklyn Tweed in the Camper colorway. So lovely and fuzzy.

photo

The amazing Annie Sprinkle with a felt cervix. 

pile

Making piles of to-be-felted cervices. All the different shades of pink.

cervical cancer

A sobering opinion piece by Amanda Robb in Al Jazeera, titled Waiting to die: Cervical cancer in America:

[...] every year 4,000 American women die from the disease, most of them in the South. For instance, a woman in Mississippi is nearly twice as likely to die from cervical cancer as an average American woman. 

Why?

The seemingly obvious answer is that Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, and therefore must have a lot of residents without health insurance. But when Mississippi is compared to a state like California, which has a similar rate of uninsured people, Mississippi's death rate from cervical cancer remains extraordinary: 75 per cent higher than that in California.

In 2012, legislation will be put forward, campaign speeches made, and issues debated, the result of which may very well impact free or low cost screening and examinations. Women need access to healthcare.

links

Historian Jill Lepore was on Fresh Air this week, talking about the history of birth control in the United States, with a focus on Margaret Sanger, who opened the country's first birth control clinic. And since women's reproductive health remains as such a contentious issue, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund rolled out the website, Women are Watching.