The Curl in the Heat Wave

Until yesterday it was too hot to knit. At least for me.

I have at least as many WIP's as the average person. And some of them have begun to pout because they have been set aside for so long. But my lap and wool just don't get along when it is over 100 degrees.

Yesterday, though, it rained. And rained long enough to actually be part of a cool front. So this evening it is down to 85 (almost 9 pm).

I got excited about one of the yarn combos from my last stash addition venture. The swatched combo wasn't as thrilling as I wanted it to be, so I rummaged around amongst earlier acquired balls and skeins. Nobody NEEDS a scarf in August in Texas. But making one for December is another story.

Lesson?
When it doesn't feel like the right time to do something, you can count on a right time coming around soon enough. (When it arrives, do not procrastinate!)

Having a little extra something for a rainy day can make life a lot more fun.

Snobby, Snobbier, Snobbiest

In my work as a life coach, I rarely come across people call themselves snobs.
I bet my fifth grade social studies teacher would say that true Americans are not snobbish, because after all, it's right in the Declaration of Independence that all men (sic!!) are created equal. And then there was the "melting pot" in the Land of Opportunity. I even remember her trying to convince us that the concept of "class" didn't apply to the United States. That I did not believe. Even back then. If snobs know anything, it is that not everyone or everything is created equal.

As a knitter, I bet you've run into a Yarn Snob or two. You know there's bulky yarn and lace weight yarn. There's acrylic, eyelash, wool and alpaca. There's hand spun, hand dyed and hand plied. There's cheap and there's outrageous. They just aren't equal. Some people discriminate to such extremes that they refuse to work with whole categories of fiber.


It's my view that there's no BAD yarn. O, there's wrong yarn, to be sure. The wrong yarn for the project, for the knitter, for the season, for the needles or for the wallet. Whether my yarn is better than yours, is only a matter of my (extremely) subjective criteria and judgment. It might not even have any basis in experience.

I've knit my share of acrylic baby items. I like that they are soft, washable and virtually indestructible. I know a Red-heart baby-blanket that had a very happy 25 year life!

I've knit with Debbie Bliss's CashmerinoAran, too. The finished sweater is soft, handwashable, and cost me so much that I think I scared the recipient out of ever wearing it.



One of my nearest and dearest recently confessed to being a "craft snob." She was sucked into a rather powerful vortex of scrapbookers who were en masse at a Convention. It may even have been a trade show. In my experience, scrapbookers tend to be suburban moms, and they tend to like things that are "cute." People at tradeshows can be pretty intense, too. Focused or manic? You decide. Ms. Near and Dear is an independent urbanite with no kids. She ditched "cute" about the same time she realized that neither Barbie nor any of the American Girls had 401K's.



One of the problems with "crafts" is that they are sometimes mixed up with "art." That stuff you did at summer camp was "arts and crafts," right? And some of us gained a reputation for being "artsy crafts" or if we were really into it we were "artsy fartsy." Guilty on all counts. Without doing lots of research, I think "art" is about expressing an individual's unique experience of the world in a creative way. Sometimes our life is our art. Othertimes our art is poetry, or painting, or parenting. Craft or crafts is about doing something useful in an elegant or beautiful way. There can definitely be creativity and expression, but crafts should evidence craftsmanship. I am not a snob when it comes to well-crafted crafts, whether it be a quilt, a birdhouse, a mosaic coaster, or a scrapbook. Whether it is snobbishness or thrift or preference, I don't have much use for projects of any kind that were done sloppily, or unconsciously. But when art or craft comes from the heart, snobbishness is best set aside. How snobby are you?

Set your TIVO

Somebody's got to do it.My DH tells me that The Discovery Channel is taking on the challenge of Shearing Alpacas this week. I wouldn't have thought it would be part of the series The Dirtiest Jobs. Tuesday night or Friday. Check your local listings and thank your lucky stars for your LYS or Web Shop!

Folk ARE rather amazing when you think about it.

I snagged Folk Shawls in pristine, awesome condition at Half-Price Books this afternoon.
I'd seen it many times in many places and had been in too much of a rush to really look at it. The author looked at lots of shawls from lots of places and de-constructed them (she's got LOTS of degrees in lots of things, so I am quite sure that deconstruction is an appropriate word!) for the rest of us. Faroe shawls, Irish shawls, a silk Japanese tea shawl, a Tibetan prayer shawl. At least half of them have lace work and her inclusion of charts AND descriptions look like they will be helpful.

But I was really thinking about the just plain folk who made these in the first place. They had time and materials and the desire to improve ever so slightly on what their mothers or grandmothers had done. And then some industry or something wiped out the need for this, that or the other. Some would surely include knitted lace in the "nonessential" category! I wish I'd known my great Aunt well enough to improve on her pie pastry. Ha! Not likely.

My point is, even if you think you "just" scrap book, or "just" tinker with a banana bread recipe, know that you are part of folk craft, folk art and the thread that links craftswomen and craftsmen together; continent to continent, religion to religion, hemisphere to hemisphere.

Knitted Nefertiti?

I just got home from a VERY successful book buying adventure at Half Price Books.

Now don't get me wrong, I love this book, and am excited about reading it closely and maybe even trying some of the patterns. The author, Jan Messent, has invested thousands of hours, I'm sure, in making padded dolls with armatures and then clothing them in well-researched, knitted replicas of historical costumes.

Knitted Nefertiti and her escort?
Elizabeth I?
Hester Prynne?
Mozart or his cousin?
King Henry VII?
A Gibson girl?
They are all here. Knitted knickers and all.

But what did I already learn?
There's always SOMEBODY curiouser than me. And that's saying something!
It also means that if I'm interested in something, there's probably somebody else who cares, too. It's nice to have company!!

Oh, and she wrote Knit the Christmas Story, Knit an Enchanted Castle Knitted Garden too. And in her book there's also a promo for The Knitted Farmyard.

Sometimes doing what you "usually" do is the wrong solution.

I can't believe I got burned out. My knitting needles and numerous Works In Progress lacked all appeal. No matter how many times I looked at them, or at the pattern books, or even at the list of things-to-be-completed before December.

It might be the 100+ tempertures (or evening temperatures in the low 80's.)
Too hot to knit. Cranky. Even with lovely synthetic ribbon yarn or light lace weight alpaca.

So I put away the WIP's and got out my needle felting barbs.
Jab jab jab.
Stab Stab Stab.
Being calm and meditative couldn't hold a candle to fibrous hostility.

I'm molding a small polar bear. No, I won't be able to "wear him in the winter" or show him off at a wedding shower.
But I will have my sanity. That's a good thing.

Sometimes it pays to change pace.