The joys of a Blogger

Last week I spent 7 blessed days (thanks to the only so-so weather at the cottage) with my nose in one book or another. I had brought 3 books, the 1969 Time magazine retrospective and 7 Canadian Geographic magazines, not to mention the 200 page NY Times Crossword puzzle book.

By Tuesday afternoon I was going a little stir crazy so I made the big trip into the nearest city (pop. 9 000) and found myself in WalMart where I had to check out the books. I picked up a copy of the latest hit to be made into a Hollywood movie: Julie and Julia. This memoir takes us through a year in the life of Julie Powell who, approaching the age of 30, decides that it's important to make some kind of a statement with her life and thereby chooses to prepare all 500+ recipes from the Julia Child "Mastering the Art of French Cooking - vol 1" within 365 days.

This amazing challenge may or may not have died a premature death but for Julie's introduction to the world of blogging. Having announced to the on-line world that she was taking on this challenge, she seemed incapable of backing out of the proposition.

(I'm including the pictures above left to show the magic that Hollywood can perform. Turning Amy Adams (bottom left) into Julie Powell was no challenge at all. But Meryl Streep into Julia Child!!?? -

I believe that Meryl deserves some kind of Oscar for Character Jumping: sexy mother in Mama Mia, staunch and terrifying Mother Superior in Doubt, and now 6'2" Julia Child. Amazing! And all in the space of a year.)

Okay, so what does this fun little romp through my reading preferences have to do with knitting??? Well actually, not much. Except that having read all of the Yarn Harlot's books, I was amazed at the similarities between Stephanie's view of the world in relation to Julie's: they both have a wonderful ability to maintain a tremendous sense of self discipline while being able to pull back and laugh at themselves and what they see as their foibles. And they are both VERY FUNNY ladies (although be warned: Julie is a self proclaimed "sailor mouth". This is not a PG13 book for language.)

I too, have had some fun with my on-line relationships lately. Lynne from the North of England is a regular receiver of our monthly e-newsletter and very kindly emailed me this weekend to let me know how much she appreciated receiving it, having been directed to the site by her Canadian cousin. I love it. How fun.

"I Made It Myself"

"Labor is not just a meaningful experience – it’s also a marketable one. When instant cake mixes were introduced, in the 1950s, housewives were initially resistant: The mixes were too easy, suggesting that their labor was undervalued. When manufacturers changed the recipe to require the addition of an egg, adoption rose dramatically. Ironically, increasing the labor involved – making the task more arduous – led to greater liking. "

So begins the article by Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School. This reality, how we are sometimes fond beyond the value of an end product when our labour is involved in production, is known as the "Ikea Effect". So named, it explains how generations of Ikea shoppers are still so proud of the slightly wobbly book cases that they assembled then moved around with them since graduation 20 years ago, or the pot rack painstakingly hung from the ceiling of a first home, or the kid's bed knocked together with such pride to mark the passage beyond toddlerhood.


I understand this phenomenon and see it alive in the dish cloth that my 9 year old knit for my mother over a decade ago, which still comes out every Christmas. There is no question that we are unusually proud of our accomplishments, no matter their aesthetic appeal to the rest of the world, but I'm getting a little sick of the tone of the non-DIYs of the world. Their beliefs insinuate that we who are willing to take a chance on our skills and our ability to learn and express ourselves creatively are to be looked down upon as not sophisticated enough to accomplish something that can be valued by others.


In the days when goalie, Jacques Plante, helped his mother by knitting socks, mitts and long johns for his younger siblings, crafting wasn't chic, it was a necessity to acquire the things one needed to keep warm in the winter. But even in our grandmother's day, who can tell me that women spent countless hours knitting fashionable 3 piece suits or "twin sets" of the finest fingering yarn for the savings they would achieve. I believe that many of these people were driven to express themselves and often produced garments that were beyond anything available in stores.



For the ultimate book dedicated to encouraging the hidden artists within each of us, read Julia Cameron's book: The Artist's Way. You'll never be critical of "homemade" attempts at creativity again.
By the way, here's the link to the full article on the Ikea Effect.

http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/web/2009/hbr-list/ikea-effect-when-labor-leads-to-love

Knitting in Living Art Project.

Yesterday must have been a slow news day, or perhaps the editors at CBC News just felt that we needed something uplifting. Whatever, one of the main news features throughout the day was about Anthony Gormley's art project to put a different Brit atop the 4th "plinth" (who knew what a plinth was before yesterday? I didn't) in Trafalgar Square for an hour of pure, wonderful exhibitionism. The idea was to make art more about the present than the past. Here's a link to the Daily Mail's great article.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197704/Now-theres-poo-Trafalgar-Squares-fourth-plinth.html

Okay, so aside from sharing my discovery of the meaning of "plinth", why am I writing about this in my blog, you might ask. Good question.
The other thing that CBC mentioned in each of these news features was that participants could do anything (legal) for their hour on display, including knitting!
I thought: how wonderful to have the world recognize how the profile of knitters and knitting has changed in the past few years and how wonderfully expressive it can be. I was anxious to get on-line and see pictures of the new face of knitting in Britian atop one of its most memorable sites. As you will see if you click on the Daily Mail article, there are lots of photos of individuals doing intersting things, but I couldn't find the knitter!

Then I found her in this picture. That's right, bless her heart, the lady in black, second from the right.

Okay, so where is Debbie Bliss, Jean Moss, Kaffe Fassett??? The kid down the street who has learned to make knitted hackey sacks? The young mom knitting a beanie in eco cotton for her newborn? The grandmother making rainbow coloured socks for the whole family? Where is anyone who is not dressed from head to toe in black, knitting with white acrylic???

I guess I can console myself with the fact that CBC thought that it was noteworthy enough to mention that there was a knitter among the participants. Perhaps they were just a bit too squeamish to mention the gentleman that the Daily Mail leads off with wearing his excrement costume.
Oh well, we sometimes think that knitting is the just the coolest thing on earth these days, then we do get put back in our place when we realize that 99% of the rest of the world (the non-knitting Muggles, to quote the Harlot) still don't get it. Alas.

A different kind of Girly-Girl.

One of the things that I love to discover as I browse the internet looking for quirky things in the world of fibre arts is how different people see the same world that we all see, but choose to pair different aspects of it in such interesting ways.

This picture is of Theresa Honeywell's 1980 Kawasaki motorcycle cozy (www.theresahoneywell.com) The article on her site explains how her art combines "girly" crafts with macho images like this motorcycle.

If you Google images of Theresa Honeywell, there is a whole array of examples of how she plays with delicate needlecrafts and incorporates them into the world of construction (toolbelt, jackhammer), warfare (a tank cozy and machine gun), and a whole selection of beautiful and delicate tatoo art. Many of you know that I'm a fan of tatoos so that makes me a fan of Theresa who has rigged up her sewing/embroidery machine to produce tatoo art for in embroidery for sale at craft fairs.

"Ukelists" unite on Ravelry

At the store, I hear of people who do get some time to browse on Ravelry for fun. I get to do it as part of my job (how lucky is that?) and am here to share some discoveries with those of you who might just get a few minutes to check out your own site and perhaps a favourite group or two, or those of you who haven't discovered that insanely gigantic community of committed knitting crafters that meets regularly on line.

So in my browse today, I was going through the new groups that have been formed recently and noticed that number 17 down the list was called Ukulele and Ukulele Stringers! and featured this lovely young Hawaiian lady as their mascot (I wonder if she was squished on purpose to make her have more realistic build than we usually see on hula dancers?)

When I went into this group I discovered some interesting things:

-it was only formed 2 days ago and already there are 16 other groups that have been formed since it became part of the Ravelry world.

-in 2 days, 15 people have found it and have signed up as members from the US and the UK. (Does that mean that only people from countries that begin with U are interested in the ukulele?)

-8 people have posted

-from this thread, I was lead to a site http://rockthatuke.com/ that appears to be a documentary subtitled "a peek at human nature through a very tiny sound hole" and has an endorsement from film industry big gun: Ethan Coen, Academy Award-winning writer, director and producer.

-there is a CD of Beatles Music on the ukulele.

In the interest of actually getting something else done today, I finally closed down the Ravelry site that originally led me on this path of ukulele discovery but was amazed to realize that this tiny segment of the of the wider population of knitters has found each other and, for some of them, may have rekindled another creative interest.

I keep hearing about how the Internet is isolating us more and more, but I have to say that I just don't get that.

Maybe I'm just a bit too eclectic in my tastes, but I love to stumble on such fun things as ukulele knitters and learn about what they find important.

the 3/50 Project

This is a difficult post to write.
For a while now I've been wrestling about how I feel when hearing(usually overhearing) so much from so many people about what a great yarn deal they got on-line; or this sock yarn that is to dye (sic) for that just arrived in the mail; or anything from or about Knitpicks or other on-line distributors.
You have to understand that I'm not violently against big-box stores or on-line shopping. I'm glad to send customers to Michaels; we've happily co-existed with them virtually across the street from my store for the past 8 years. The point is that they can afford to stock tons of stuff that I just don't have room or the interest to carry. And many times I've heard that their staff have recommended WOOL-TYME to shoppers when they don't have what the customer needs.
But the reality is that as our economy is changing, if we don't make a true effort to recognize the value of our local bricks and mortar stores that provide attention, expertise, service, and the physical availability of products for customers to touch and relate to, we are going to lose these stores.

The 3/50 project is a grass roots economic stimulus plan of sorts, conceived by Minneapolis based retail consultant, Cinda Baxter and you can link to their website for more information at http://www.the350project.net/ . The idea is to take some time to really reflect on the value of small, local and independant businesses in our own lives, and to start putting our money where our warm feelings are.
The 3 refers to choosing 3 local businesses that you would really miss if they weren't there. (How many people have said to me over the past few weeks how sad that the S&R Dept. store is closing?)

I would really miss the chats that I have with David at Green Door Vitamins on Wellington St. The morning glory muffins at the Sleepless Goat are the best in town. A visit to the Glenburnie Grocery store is almost as good as a trip to the cottage as it reminds me so much of other small grocery stores that I've visited on warm summer weekends away. What would my family have done without Fred's Bread??????? When we got new kitchen cupboards a few years ago, we got more and upgraded products for the same money from a local company than we were quoted by Home Depot. Progress Fitness is the only gym in town that allows me to buy a pass for x# of visits, and no time limit which allows me to visit the gym when I can without feeling that I'm wasting a fortune on a membership; only a locally owned and independant gym has chosen to do that.

The 50 of the 3/50 project refers to encouraging consumers to consciously spend $50 in product and/or services at these businesses each month to show our support for that which they bring to our community.

I personally don't know that such an amount would make sense (I'm not sure that the 2 of us could eat $50 worth of bread from Fred each month,) but I think that important thing is to make us more mindful of where we spend our hard earned money and to consciously choose to visit these 3 businesses at least once a month.

The reason that it's difficult for me to write this post is that I'm a firm believer in balance in everything; I know that I won't forgo my 1/2 hour of rest and relaxation at Starbucks across the street in favor of driving downtown to go to an independant cafe. And I, like most people, love to SHOP while on holidays out of town. But every week I hear out-of-town customers coming to our store, so grateful for an LYS (local yarn store) that is big enough to offer selection and environment; so many of their communities have seen their local craft stores close over the past few decades. We are happy to have them and proud to be carrying on a tradition of service and selection, but I guess I wonder when I hear local customers talking about a colourway that they just had to order from Arizona, or a particular fibre blend that could only be purchased in Colorado, - how much do you really need that ball of yarn, and would those bucks perhaps be better spent at any of the local businesses in Kingston rather than shipping it to communities that have no stake in our homes and lives.

Please don't ever feel uncomfortable in our store, no matter where you spend your knitting dollars, but I personally felt challenged by this 3/50 concept and wanted to share it with you.

Vogue Knitting Magazine

We all have our favourite knitting magazines, but seldom does Vogue Knitting really make a big impact on the knitters that visit our store. We sell a few but mainly to people who "read it for the articles" to quote some Playboy fans. Usually the patterns are a bit too excentric for our knitters, and although it can have beautiful design ideas they aren't all that practical for many of us.

This edition for Spring and Summer 2009 is very nice but I'm not pushing it to sell more copies as we sold out of this one very quickly (I'm sure that Chapters might still have some in.) But I did want to point out the website features that they spoke of in this issue that are really wonderful.

First of all they now offer knitters the option of seeing every one of the patterns featured in their magazine in a video version of a 360 degree view showing the completed project from the front, sides and back. For instance if we look at this magnificent vest on the cover, who would have a clue what the front would look like. And stunning though the back might be, most knitters would like to think that what they are wearing should look good in the front too. Thanks to these videos you get to see the whole shooting match.

Another great feature of their website is called Knitbook where you can create your own personalized pattern book from their archives, or buy single pattern downloads from the hundreds of designs featured in past and sold out issues of Vogue Knitting, the Debbie Bliss Magazine (whose 1st edition completely sold out in a week) and Knit 1 magazine.
http://www.vogueknitting.com/node/585

This picture above is of one of the most popular patterns in that 1st Debbie Bliss Magazine. Isn't it exquisite? How wonderful that we can now access these patterns, even when they're unavailable through the conventional print means.

Finally, the Vogue Knitting Website offers a newsletter that lets you know when they will be hosting a Lunchtime Chat with guest designers and Vogue Knitting staff who will be sharing their insights. Check out http://www.vogueknitting.com/ It really is worth the browse.