Hooked for Life (12 page)

T
here are those people, even in the yarn industry, who look down on crochet—they say crocheters are cheap; don’t read, make ugly home decor items and boxy, ill-fitting garments, all of which are made out of granny squares; and are trapped in the outdated past. Some of these thoughts are stereotypes, maybe with a very slight basis in reality, and some are just horse puckie. In thinking about things, I realized that crochet doesn’t need to change what it is to get more respect, but that we as its practitioners merely need to put a better spin on things. We don’t need anything but some good PR. Herewith, my answers to the naysayers—feel free to adapt them for your own personal use.

Crocheters are cheap.
You say cheap—I say thrifty. And when did thrift become a sin instead of a virtue? If your project is going to require, conservatively, thirty million yards of yarn, does it make
sense to spend a dollar a yard? No matter what your income, no one in the world is going to feel comfortable lying on the couch with the dog and a small leaky child or two cuddled under an afghan whose material cost would feed a family of four for a month, including dinner out once a week. And comfort is key—we crocheters want to wrap up the world in our crocheted hugs, one person at a time. We don’t want to be upset when something is used hard. We prefer to feel jubilation that we chose just the right combination of beauty and utility. Hardworking crochet needs hardworking yarn, and lots of it.
    And for the odd project that requires less than a million yards, we will happily hit the LYS. It isn’t that we have an aversion to pricier yarns, but that we merely like to go yarn shopping without having to arrange for a second mortgage ahead of time. Cheap? Nah, smart shoppers.

Crocheters make ugly things.
Although crocheters might make certain styles of ugly things more than other crafters (I have to own up to the toilet paper covers and the bed dolls right now and get it over with—sorry, if you love them, but neither are objects of high style no matter how beautifully executed), we certainly don’t have the corner on the shameful craft project market. You want to mock the ’70s? Anyone remember macramé plant hangers that dripped from every ceiling? Or how the people who made a hobby out of burning brightly colored candles in chianti bottles until they had a wax sculpture that took up half the living room? Let’s talk about woodburning as home decor rather than a Scouting project. Ugly craft projects abound—and they aren’t all crocheted.

Crocheters don’t read.
Seriously, there are books on knitting history, books of knitting humor, books on the knitting lifestyle, and books and books and books of knitting patterns. What do we have? Um, this book you’re reading and about a thousand leaflets. It isn’t that I won’t read about crocheting; it’s that there haven’t been all that many books available to me that piqued my interest. It’s the conundrum of craft publishing. Are there no crochet books because they don’t sell, or do crochet books not sell because there aren’t enough good-quality ones published? And please don’t show me the alleged bicraftual books that advertise themselves as “110 Fill-in-the-Blanks to Knit and Crochet.” Of the 110 patterns, 108 of those will be for knitting and only two will be crochet, and one of those two will be ugly. There isn’t a crafter in the land who will pay $24.99 for just one pattern, any pattern.
    The real reason I think this particular hobbyhorse got started is that so many of the crocheters I have met learned to crochet without learning to read patterns first. Crocheters as a group tend to be very visual. I don’t know many knitters that can avoid the siren song of a cool knitting book even if they have just started knitting, whereas I know many crocheters who have been crocheting for years without ever cracking a book—especially if they love to make afghans. I could make a dozen afghans off the top of my head with stitches that I already know and don’t really need a book to tell me how to do it. It’s the nature of crochet.

A corollary of this “crocheters don’t read” myth is that crocheters copy patterns.
As in make copies of bought patterns to pass to their
friends, thus ensuring that the friends don’t go buy the pattern themselves and meaning the publisher, and by extension, the author/designer don’t get paid. I don’t know that crocheters are any more likely to do this than knitters or if they are just getting tarred with the “cheap” brush again. I do know that if one more person tries to sell me a crochet design that is the same granny square jacket that has been published since 1968 I am going to scream. I do not need to buy a pattern to make a granny square—I have been making them since 1968, myself. Show me something beautiful and innovative, and I will buy it.

Crocheted fabric doesn’t drape.
Crochet by its very nature has a structural quality—that is one of its best features. Of course, if you make a jacket out of single crochet with a giant hook and yarn the thickness of rope, you will get a sturdy garment with no drape at all. In fact, the boxier patterns out there might serve as storm shelters that stand up on their own if the circumstances demand it. However, use a smaller hook, some DK-weight natural fiber, and an open stitch, and you can wind up with a diaphanous piece of wonderful that clings in all the right places.

Granny squares are the (square) root of all evil.
Despite the great amount of time I spend weeding through antique and vintage crochet patterns (pretending it is work instead of procrastination), I haven’t quite figured out when the granny square first came about, and if it was called a granny square at that time.
    Granny squares are wonderful things—portable, customizable, and the perfect building blocks for items that are square or rectangular. I think the problem came about when the granny
migrated from afghans to sweaters—some boxy sweaters are not a bad thing, but millions of them are a bit boring from a fashion standpoint. This does not mean that making granny squares is a bad thing, but that their use should be confined to appropriate projects.

Crochet does not have the history that knitting has.
Crochet might or might not have a long and distinguished history, but I don’t know because what we don’t have is a definitive crochet history book. Most likely, modern crochet didn’t get codified until sometime between 1835 and 1845, which makes it an infant in the world history of needle arts. Many early crocheters were imitating the much more expensive and time-consuming craft of making point lace. Thread lace, which went on to turn into dress fronts, lingerie trim, and doilies, eventually migrated into yarn crochet for both home decor items and warm garments such as a sweater. Crochet may not have been around for thousands of years, but because of the large numbers of crocheters on planet Earth, it has developed new branches and forms almost nonstop. The thing about crochet’s history or lack thereof is that I don’t think most of it has happened yet—the things we do today will inspire the crocheters of the future.

Only old ladies crochet.
Actually this last accusation tends to be thrown at both knitters and crocheters by those who aren’t capable of doing either. Generally, I just raise my eyebrows at this one and point out that I do not consider myself old. I can’t wait until I reach the age where I can just whack the ill-spoken lout with my cane and get away with it.
    
Crocheting has some real benefits to those of any age—it keeps the mind as well as the fingers agile, and being part of a like-minded community can combat loneliness and stress at any age. When I am an old woman I may not wear purple, but I will definitely crochet with it and any other color I can get my hands on. Hell, I might even relent and make a toilet paper cover; you just never know.

W
hy is it that the mainstream media can’t resist taking shots at Granny? Every time crocheting gets labeled cool or trendy, someone somewhere, who I am sure thinks that he or she is being very clever and original, says, “This is not your grandmother’s crochet!” Like that’s a good thing. One of the things I like about crochet is that my mother did it, and my grandmother probably did, too. I personally don’t want to disengage from Granny but to take her work and move forward from it.

And what do we as crocheters have named in Granny’s name? The granny square. The poor granny square gets mocked from time to time, particularly in reference to some of those boxy, clunky, garment styles from the 1970s.

Granny squares don’t need to be changed, but I think they need a little PR. Some clever designers have taken to referring to any sort
of repeatable unit, including granny squares, as “motifs.” This is a great idea—let the art of the pattern speak for itself without any knee-jerk negative connotations drawn from the name. I probably wouldn’t look twice at a pattern called Granny Square Poncho but I would be intrigued by a Square Motif Wrap.

So I propose a new nomenclature … instead of being a granny square, a particular motif could be called, I don’t know … Jenny or Tiffany … or Kate. Jenny could be hip and trendy, whereas Granny might be a little old fashioned. Tiffany could be lightweight and drapey, whereas Granny might be a little stiff in the joints. Kate could be sunny and warm without being a mélange of too-bright colors like Granny was in her hippie days. It’s the same great square, but a new name that doesn’t carry the negative connotations of the past.

I
don’t want to be a wet blanket who takes all the fun out of wordplay, but I have to say, the whole “crocheters are hookers” thing makes me a little nuts. In my own personal opinion (and you may certainly disagree), crochet gets little enough respect in the world at large without calling its practitioners the same name as those who ply their trade at the world’s oldest profession.

Why is it that crocheters have to be called anything other than crocheters? Is it the dicey spelling? Is it supposed to make us more palatable to the noncrocheting world? Are there any cutesy names for knitters that I am missing? At the risk of sounding like a bad
Seinfeld
parody, what’s up with that?

One yarny magazine for which I wrote wanted to avoid the whole hooker issue and referred to crocheters throughout as loopers. Loopers? That brings up pot holders for me but, okay, at least it doesn’t have a preexisting negative connotation.

Sometimes a group needs to fight for their label in the interest of self-respect. When I worked on costumes in the entertainment industry, I always identified myself as a tailor or a stitcher. But that had a spelling reason. Think for a minute, how do you spell the word meaning one who sews, which is pronounced soh-er? Sewer. How do spell that underground morass filled with waste water, which is pronounced soo-er? See? I want to be confused with a dank underground cesspool even less than I want to be confused with a lady of the evening.

The problem with words that identify a person with one craft or another, is they aren’t real helpful for those of us who are multicraftual. Does identifying a person as a crocheter or a knitter (or a spinner or a quilter) mean that they do just that craft and no others? That seems a little limiting to me. That single-craft identifier can lead one trippingly down the primrose path to stereotyping as well—it’s easy to make a generalization about a small group if that group is identified as “other.” And now I sound like a bad sociology professor instead of a stand-up parodist—sorry about that.

There are a lot of terms describing a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession—lady of the evening, streetwalker, escort, hooker—because polite society does not want to come out and say “prostitute,” which is what one is talking about. The less descriptive terms make the job more palatable in conversation.

But you know what? I don’t think people need to avoid saying “crocheter” in any conversation at all, no matter where it is held, or what age the participants. There is nothing even vaguely shameful about crochet.

So if you must call me something, I prefer author, designer, stitcher, and even the somewhat bulky needlecrafter. I will accept crocheter with good grace, although that is not all that I am. Just please, don’t call me a hooker. Not even a happy one.

T
oday I brought a crochet project along with me on a two-hour flight. It’s a lacy openwork in treble crochets, and my hook flew along. The piece in front of me grew at warp speed, and I remembered once again what an instant-gratification jolt I can get from crochet. Luckily the flight wasn’t too crowded, as the ball of yarn jumped off my lap and rolled around under the seats from time to time because of the speed with which the yarn moved through my fingers. It was a new design of mine so I fiddled and fooled, occasionally ripping a bit out, only to rework the area so it looked even better. I crocheted, I took notes on the pattern, and I was happy.

Now? Not so happy. Why? I ran through that 220-yard skein of yarn already and all of its cousin skeins are in the checked baggage. I have a ninety-minute connecting flight and nothing to do! Nothing! Why, oh, why aren’t there yarn stores in airports? Do we really need 1,500 coffee
bars? Couldn’t some of that space be used for yarn? There is a freaking children’s museum in this acres-wide airport, but no yarn. Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair.

Sheer statistics should prove that thousands of knitters and crocheters move through a hub airport on any given day—why should the caffeine dependent be catered to more than the alpaca dependent? And actually, giving more caffeine to certain fliers only makes life worse for those around them, whereas giving yarn to the yarn deprived would make them calm and much more pleasant travelers. So my first vote for places yarn stores ought to open up is in the airport, train station, and, yes, even the bus depot.

While I am fantasizing, the next thing I would like to see is a yarn store that is open during the wee hours of the morning, especially in the weeks leading up to major gift-giving holidays. By the time my daughter and I get through homework, real work, dog walking, dance class, garbage-taking-out, a spot of laundry, wolfing down some food,
and
I have time to sit with my hooks in hand and get some quality time with my crocheting, (a) it is invariably past midnight and (b) I find I am missing some pertinent part, such as the correct size hook or the contrast color yarn. How happy would I be to zip over to a yarn store at 1:00 A.M. to get what I need. In the later hours, I suspect the clientele would primarily be insomniacs happy to have something to do other than worry about the fact that they aren’t sleeping. And an open store would be a boon for absentminded last-minute gift finishers who are always short on something with four hours to go. Think of the hundreds of boxes that could be opened on birthdays and winter holidays that would contain actual finished gifts rather than oddly shaped swatches, hooks, and partial skeins of yarn. Holiday joy would increase exponentially for all.