Gimmiepig Bingo

For those times when someone seeks to take advantage of the fact you make awesome things out of yarn as a hobby.



I made this for the Selfish Knitters & Crocheters group over on ravelry. Feel free to share.

Fell off the Sheep

Well that didn't take long.

Whoops.

Yarn and its siren call. I cannot resist. Sigh.

Yarn Diet

I am making a vow: no new yarn purchases until:

• I have finished more projects
  
• Used up more yarn
  
• Used up all the acrylic I have lying around from forever ago
  
• The yarn will once again fit into the designated bins and not in bags and boxes around my bedroom and closet.

I got a very full box from WEBS today that I had ordered at the end of last week, which had culminated in Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. That will be my LAST yarn purchase for a while. I'm going cold sheep.

I've unsubscribed from all yarn store newsletters. I will not go to WEBS, Knitpicks, Yarnia, etc. I will not purchase more yarn from my LYS.

• I will continue going to my LYS for open stitch time as I get a tremendous amount of crocheting done during those hours.
  
• I will shop my (very long) ravelry queue to remind myself of all the wonderful projects that I already have yarn stashed away for.
  
• I will use up the miles of acrylic yarn I had bought on sale, cheap, before I discovered how much I loved luxury fibers. I'm too cheap to just give it away so it must be used.
  
• I will take breaks from crocheting, because I've already had one RSI flare-up this month.

I'm making this public in the hopes it will keep my honest.

Re-recycling

It's a bittersweet moment for me. I'm currently frogging my first ever garment I ever crocheted. It was the Baby-Doll Top from Mary Jane Hall's Crochet That Fits and I made it long before I figured out silly things like yarn weight and correct garment construction and seaming. So I made a pattern that called for fingering weight yarn with DK weight cotton yarn. Fast forward a year and some change later... and it's hanging funny. As in, one side's shoulder strap is shorter than the other, and so the entire bodice is lop-sided, and the cotton has stretched so it's kind of big on me.

So, frogged.

That's the bitter part.

The sweet part is that this shirt was also my first ever project I ever made with recycled yarn -- and that yarn was from my first ever recycled thrift store sweater, to boot. So lots of firsts wrapped up into this orange sparkly not-quite-right top. I feel like it's karmic balance that the shirt made with recycled yarn is being recycled yet again into something (though I'm not quite sure what, yet).

It's fiber samsara. I love it.

I Feel Vindicated

My last post was full of crocheter indignation about craftism in the fiber world.

Well... In your FACE, snobby knitters. We outspend you and outnumber you by a lot.

Listen up, yarn companies. We hookers matter!

Hooker Frustration

I'm a crocheter. I am not a knitter. Knitting makes me want to scream and throw things. I love yarn. I love making things out of yarn. But I'm getting really really tired of feeling like the afterthought red-headed stepchild of the fiber world. Hey, guess what? I have money to spend on yarn and patterns, just like knitters! I have skill and talent and can make things that are pretty, useful, and not just granny squares. So why do I always feel like a second-class citizen in yarn stores?

I know they don't mean it. And my LYS is so crochet-friendly I could live there forever. But despite all the hooks they carry, the carefulness to call it "Open Craft Night" instead of "Open Knit Night", the willingness of the owners to hold crochet classes.... I'm still the only consistent crocheter there. I'm surrounded by knitters. The regulars know me and admire my work. But newcomers will sometimes express disbelief in what I'm making, and how I'm making it.

I don't want to start a knit vs. crochet debate and if one is better than the other, but I have frustration and I need to vent it.

I'm a crocheter and I'm damn proud of it. If you can knit it, I can hook it. So why the hell is it so hard for me to feel accepted? Because, honestly, it's lonely being a crocheter in a sea of knitters. I've never run into the blatant craftism that other crocheters sometimes do -- thankfully, or I may have started screaming at the snobby knitter -- but I still sense that crochet is less accepted, less mainstream, less visible. When people think "crochet", they have visions of granny squares dancing through their head (not that I'm knocking the granny square; I've made gorgeous afghans out of them). So the fact that people are astounded that I'm making sweaters, socks, dresses, skirts, etc. makes me want to beat my head against a wall, sometimes.

I've been thinking of ways to make crochet more prominent in my area. Start a crochet-centric meetup? Get a group together and descend upon a LYS en masse? A Wear Crochet to Work Day? Camp out in front of the hyperbolic crochet coral reef and hold a hook-in? Wear a "Proud to be a Hooker" button?

Book Review: Textual Healing

Title: Textual Healing
Author: Eric Smith
Publisher: Self-published via AuthorHouse
Publication Date: November 2010
Pages: 280
Note: Free review copy received from the author.

The first thing I thought when I read the book description was, "This is going to be hilarious!" And, thankfully, it was. I had entered a giveaway for the book on Goodreads, and the author reached out to me and offered me a review copy. He was nice, and he had a rabbit. Of course I said yes. (For the record, I am a sucker for rabbits - my own two have learned this and do their best to be as adorable as possible so they could one day get away with murder - or at least flooding the kitchen after chewing through the fridge water hose... but that is another story.)

Textual Healing has a plot straight out of a screwball romantic comedy, only I don't think even Hollywood could have come up with some of the supporting characters here, which includes a haiku-spouting ninja flower shop owner, a lesbian romance writer who runs a writers support group, and a rich and famous movie-making best friend. Honestly, Eric Smith had me at "haiku-speaking flower-shop-owning ninja."

The book begins with Andrew Connor, a once-famous author who is suffering from one-hit-wonderdom, not having a very good day. His long-time girlfriend just walked out on him because he hasn't written anything for three years. And instead of being allowed to mope, his employee calls to remind him he had to come open up his money pit of a used bookstore. Not to mention his best-selling book is collecting dust in the clearance section (way way WAY discounted). But then, enters a girl (there's always a girl, isn't there?), Hannah, who doesn't run away screaming from the weirdness or dead-endness (yes, I'm being very eloquent tonight) that is his life.

Oh, and there's an apartment-destroying sugar glider, purchased solely as a ploy to impress said girl.

Textual Healing is laugh-out-loud funny, and a fast read to boot. BUT, (disclaimer: I am a pedant) the book really needed a good edit to fix some grammar and word choice issues, tighten up the language, and some tough love cutting of pop-culture and hipster references.

That said, go out and find a copy of the book and read it. It really is worth a read. I hope Eric writes another one.