The Plight of the Acrylic

You can tell by my silence that I've been a very busy woman - I don't need to tell you that Gingerbread Ladies have to work flat-out in the Christmas season. But because we are encouraged to think of others at this time of year, I would once again like to indulge in some seasonal do-goodery and prick your moral conscience on a topic close to my gingerbread heart: The Plight of the Acrylic.

So grab your tissues and be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster. This post is especially for Susie from Useless Beauty, who is equally unafraid to tackle hard-hitting craft-related issues.

Once upon a time, there was no more common sight in Merry Olde Englande of the 1960s than the pastoral idyll of the Acryllic Shepherdess. These ladies - dressed impractically in poufy hoop skirts and big bonnets - kept a loving eye on the baby acryllics as they frolicked around the pastures and meadows of England's green countryside, occasionally sticking to trees in an excess of static electricity or burning to a small puddle of plastic when struck by lightning.

 The yarn spun from these little creatures was highly desirable: in fact, entire generations were clothed from and comforted by it. It was a desirable alternative to the scratchy wool favoured in the past: it didn't felt when washed inappropriately and, more importantly, the wearer didn't smell of wet dog when it got damp (and, frankly, if you lived in the British Isles, woolly socks and jumpers got damp a lot.)

But in the past decade or so, something has changed. Other yarns - fancier yarns with artisan titles - became more popular. In fact, slapped with adjectives like "sumptuous" or "luxurious" or "decadent", yarn became sexy:

And with it came a nasty wave of anti-acrylic sentiment, leading to some very regrettable bullying:

While I appreciate the value and craftmanship of some of our finer yarns, and have even blogged in a similarly-passionate fashion about the exploitation of mermaids, I would urge you, the crafter, to be gentle in your assessment of the role of the little acrylic. It has a place in our crafting world and we should not look down our noses at it.

In fact, if I may leave you with a final thought: if and when there should be a zombie apocalypse, my gut feeling is that the only things that will survive are cockroaches, granny square blankets and those tough little acrylics. So choose your side carefully before you disparage or condemn this yarn.

Skylight: The Yarnpire Chronicles II

You remember this post, in which the epic love story of the Misunderstood Loser and her Paranormal Paramour unfolded. Well, as it's Hallowe'en, I thought it was time for the second installment. Be warned, though, it is Hallowe'en, so you might find this post particularly spooky...

Okay, so Nellie our heroine, like, totally hooked up with Viktor, the hunky exchange student from Transylvania. The first few months progressed as one could expect: a lot of teenage angst about piddling trifles, pointless misunderstandings based on their crippling inability to communicate in words, as well as much soul-searching, scenery-chewing and other compound nouns. Because I've now watched True Blood, I'd like you to imagine that there were also a perplexing number of encounters with Faeries, werewolves and a homesick yeti. Anyways, let's skip over all of that and go straight to the obligatory montage of romantic moments. Cue soppy music:

Moonlit walks on deserted beaches.

Joyride on the bow of doomed ocean liner.

Cutesy moment involving spaghetti.

Then, one night, Nellie decides to pay Viktor a spontaneous visit:

No answer. She lets herself in - and finds, to her horror, that Viktor has succumbed to his base yarnpiric instincts. Gasp!

Is there any hope for their relationship???
You'll have to wait on tenterhooks till the next installment, dear readers.

What's mermaid bumfluff? Oh dear. I think you should have a look at this.

The Yarnpire Chronicles

Being a blogger with her finger on the cultural pulse, I thought it time that I jump on the Bandwagon of the Undead. It seems like every other book on Amazon is about vampires and werewolves and all manner of surprisingly salacious entities. Who would have thought that so many female readers would become all a-quiver at the thought of a snog with some sneery-lipped badly-coiffed young fella? There you go. I mean, today's popular culture gets it all wrong - no comfy naps in coffins. No bats. No swishy cloaks. And none of the vampires delight in counting, which - as every child who watched Sesame Street knows - is the first thing you learn in Vampires 101.

Thus I seek to redress the balance with this, my opus:

Skylight: The Yarnpire Chronicles

A story about a clumsy, awkward teenager called Nellie, a student at a typical American highschool, where the Cool Kids wear uniforms of various sporting ranks and the Uncool (as well as the Undead) skulk along the corridors and hide in their lockers. All cheerleaders are wicked, anyone who plays American football is thick and all they ever talk about is the prom.*

* NB: I didn't actually go to an American highschool, so I'm basing this on films like Grease and Mean Girls - so it has to be right. Right?

 

But one day, a new student arrives at the school. Oh, the mystery! 

 

 

to be continued ... 

Phew.

Exciting stuff, eh? 


PART TWO HERE!

Proud to Be Murkan

I was listening to an interesting documentary on the radio the other night about how island life is dying out on some of the smaller islands around Ireland's coast. Many of the islanders have had to move to the mainland in search of work, and restrictions put in place by the EU have negatively affected the lives of the fishermen and their families. All very serious stuff. The documentary maker interviewed a range of people on this island off Ireland's northwest coast, including some of  the island's teens. And then, once again, I found myself Gripped By Rage. Because while the rest of the islanders spoke with the lovely, melodic, instantly-identifiable tones of County Donegal, the Youth of the Island had a bizarre, distinctly American twang - the accent I like to call 'Murkan': it's not American, no, it's not. No matter how hard you try.

You see, the Youth of Ireland have been hit by a virus: the Murkan Accent. Fighting my way through a flock of schoolchildren in Dublin, I was surprised at the number of young American teens dressed in Irish school uniforms. Double check: they weren't American, they were Irish - imitating a weird kind of American accent. Because, like, it's, like, so kewl and awesome to, like, talk, like, like this. This rendered even more bizarre because none of the Americans I know (and I know a few) speak like this. And any I have heard speak like this were featured in "reality shows" (whose reality is this?) on MTV.

So what's going on here? Obviously, it's far cooler to be from, say, New York than Termonfeckin, Co. Louth. But there's nothing wrong with being from Termonfeckin, Co. Louth (have never been there, but with a name like that, it's on my To Do list). And there's nothing wrong with sounding like you come from Termonfeckin, Co. Louth - as long as other people understand you. Pretending to be from Manhattan when you're actually from Termonfeckin, Co. Louth, leads me to wonder if you just don't like who you are and where you're from ... and that makes me a bit sad.

In any case, many teens don't like who they are and where they're from - that's what you learn on the first day of How To Be A Teenager, isn't it? The ironic thing is that the small towns of South Dakota and Wisconsin and Iowa and Tennessee are probably chock-full of bored teenagers who would give their eye-teeth to be from somewhere as glamorous and exotic as Termonfeckin, Co. Louth, and they all probably speak the same way Irish teenagers are trying to (not sure about Tennessee - I haven't yet heard a teenage Paddy try to ape a Nashville accent. Yet.)

Sadly, though, Murkanism is spreading upwards and now I hear an increasing number of portly, middle-aged Irish people developing a strong, misplaced Murkan accent. As a result, I have put together a short guide for Irish readers. This is a set of guidelines, not rules, and they do not apply to American readers - you might be able get away with it. We can't. Therefore I would strongly recommend that after the age of 16, my fellow Irish people cease and desist using any of the following:

Wordless Anecdotes

Use your words. In your indoor vioce. Find a few choice verbs, stir in a couple of pronouns and sprinkle liberally with adjectives. Season with adverbs and recount to your friends.

Oh-Em-Gees

Please do not flap your hands à la a Miss Universe pageant queen, while breathlessly crying, "Oh! Emm! Geee!" If moved thusly, I am sure the Almighty will not smite you for taking his name in vain, but do this all too often and He might fling a bolt of lightning at you in temper.
Or maybe I will in His stead.
You have been warned.

Excessive Intonation

I once read that this bizarre trend originated in popular Aussie soap operas. I don't want to point the finger unjustly at our Antipodean friends, but if this is the case - could you swig by and take this back, please? I'm used to identifying questions by a slick combination of auxilliary verbs (do and did are among my favourites) and a nifty little thing called rising intonation at the end of the sentence. Now that it has become so cool to intonate every statement like a question, I am left quite bewildered when someone says, "I'm hungry? I think I'll eat something?" because I don't know whether they know if they're hungry or whether they're asking me if they are. It's very tiresome. Please stop it.

A Plethora of Likes

In this harsh economic era, the government of Ireland is struggling to make up the country's enormous budget deficit. I have an idea: simply fine people €1,000 for the misuse of the words like (you can use one per sentence), seriously and literally. Any Irishperson who uses the word awesome, particularly those over the age of 30, will be fined €5,000 on the spot. There are a lot of appropriate adjectives that don't sound silly with a Galway or Offaly accent: brilliant, for example. Wonderful. Great. Terrific. Marvellous. Even the much-maligned nice. At a pinch, you could say something was grand. I'd even accept amazing, but it makes me nervous.

P.S. I know I've used italics a lot in this post - I probably shouldn't get so het up. Sorry.

Craft Ethically: Say 'No' to Mermaid Bumfluff

I'm having a very serious day today, readers.
Hot on the heels of the launch of my crafting campaign against capitalism comes the second installment of same work, a treatise on the necessity of the purchase of yarn from ethical sources.

Now, as we all know, in Ye Olden Days of the 1980s - back in a time when you always had a 10p in your back pocket in case you needed to make an emergency phone call. Yes, youth, those little glass cells are more than just Superman's changing room, you know - knitting in the United Kingdom and Ireland essentially involved DK acrylic. And nothing wrong with that. However, knitting and crochet in the noughties and beyond have become a luxury pastime. Sure, you could continue to buy acrylic yarn, but obviously no one does. (Well, they do, but no one admits to it. You know who you are, missy.) Instead, yarn manufacturers and indie dyers and spinners have started to market yarn using the same thesaurus as chocolate-makers: it's sumptuous! Luscious! Saturated! Decadent! (There are even wool companies that have turned the keystone of economics on its head: Wollmeise here in the south of Germany does not meet demand with supply. They don't supply, and demand grows. You simply can't buy it. It is the El Dorado of yarn.) The prices of these luxury yarns might even make you squawk out loud: "What on earth is this stuff made from? Mermaid bumfluff?"

Indeed. It often is. Some crafters, like my dear reader Quinn, even believe it to be little more than a myth. Oh, I wish.

As the demand for luxury yarns grow, so too does the burden carried by the poor creatures that supply it. Some more than others. This is why I wish to send out a plea here and now to needleworkers of the world: the next time you consider splurging on sinfully expensive yarn, please make sure that it comes from an ethical source.

How To Change The World 

Without Leaving The Comfort Of Your Living Room 

in 20,000 Easy Steps 

(Many of Which Will Involve Handicrafts)

Part 2: Know Your Yarn
Rated: PG13. Some viewers may find the following images disturbing.

Luxury yarns come from four popular sources:

There's also silk, but silkworms aren't very exciting to draw.

While sheep, rabbits and alpacas are not averse to a shearing, mermaids do not take kindly to this. Despite protests by international organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International, fishing trawlers continue to scour the Atlantic coasts, searching out mermaid colonies:

Having no natural enemies except humans and intrepid polar bears, and armed with nothing other than strong language, the mermaid becomes easy prey for the fishermen who supply a voracious yarn industry:

They are removed to the mainland, where their bottoms are sheared for the much-prized mermaid bumfluff, which later becomes the luxury yarn that you, the crafter, crave.

 

While the shearing process is relatively short and painless, mermaids are made to endure endless sea-shanty sing-songs and are seldom offered a cup of tea. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, has gone on record saying that he finds this treatment "appalling". His jumpers are cotton.

Thus, I plead with you, fellow crafters. The next time you pick up a skein of an obscenely expensive fibre folly: is this yarn ethical? Have mermaids been made to suffer through the 23 verses of 'Blow the Man Down' without as much as a cuppa, not to mention a chocolate biscuit? Make sure you choose a yarn that carries the internationally-recognised mermaid-friendly symbol on its label:

Ponder on that, crafters. I hope you have learned your lesson.

In Every Relationship Communication is Key

Socks, My Relationship & My Relationship to Socks

Three days later: