Oh FFS

Even the news services are in on it now...

Firstly, the least annoying of the two and the most recent: this article on the BBC News website yesterday. Apparently we must crochet or knit presents for everybody because homemade presents are the way to survive the financial downturn.

Er, no. I mean, OK, the person who is advocating the cashmere wristwarmers is knitting from stash, so that's cost effective at least, but if you're the kind of person who already has a stash of cashmere yarn, you probably already know that making wristwarmers is an option and are either well on the way to finishing them or have rejected the idea. Anyone else? They're going to have a heart attack if they bound out to any of the London yarn shops in search of the required materials - if the price of the cashmere doesn't do them in, learning to knit on the recommended 2.5mm circs certainly will.

And ha ha, yeah, crochet makes nice, practical gifts. Not sexy or wanted, practical. Oh dear.

That reminded me about the second item, something I meant to blog about last month but forgot: an article in thelondonpaper (non-Londoners: this is one of the free ones and you only get spaces in your titles if you're paying for them) which I saw on my way home and had saved to scan and post as a picture, but it seems you can cleverly read it online, and zoom in and everything. All together now, ooooohhh, get you!

Go here and have a read, then come back to me, if your head hasn't exploded.  If the reader doesn't show the right page, you're looking for the 17 November 2008 issue, page 13.

OK, deep breath.

I shall ignore the fact that this is written by the faintly annoying DJ Johnny Vaughan.

Let's take the opening section by dear Johnny. Where do I start? So we're "Yappies" now: "young aged pensioners" because we like crafts. How patronising is that, both to those of us who are in their 20-30 year old category, and to actual pensioners, who, it seems, are the only people who are supposed to like crafts but for this recent turning of society on its head. We don't go out much, clearly. I should probably be watching TV right now, but, oh dear, I don't have one. If I'm feeling really really brave, I guess I could leave the safety of home (because crafts = agoraphobia?) and "venture out" to a "so called 'stitch and bitch'". It'd have to be at a "knitting nightspot [insert shriek of incredulity here]" and apparently there are loads of these! Funny, I've never seen one. We just go to bars and cafes like normal people but I guess we are just even weirder than the Yappies in the article and should be shunned and driven back to our acceptable special knitting venues, or preferably home, where it's nice and warm and safe, after all.

Then there's a whole heap of shit about cardigans and Pyrex. Oh please. When have people ever not worn cardigans? And Pyrex is fairly useful but I'm not excited about it as such. Silicone bakeware, maybe, but that would imply that I'm actually fairly cutting edge, and that wouldn't fit with the jam making, would it? (No, I haven't made jam, yet, but I've asked my grandma for a book on it for Christmas.)

It's OK, though. Johnny says "there's no shame in it", so I won't kill myself over being outed.

Then! Then there's the actual box about knitting itself. If anybody ever said to me anything about being "26 not 86", they'd feel the sharp end of my needle, I can tell you. And "the money I save" - ha! At least this person bucks the normal trend of knitting = cheap by admitting that this might not actually be true. "Yarns of wool"? Who says that?

I could live with all of that, you know, were it not for the last sentence here. She wants to convince her friends that her FOs are from a "pricey boutique". For the love of god, why? What's wrong with being proud that they're not from a fancy, expensive shop, being proud that you've made them yourself, showing off your unique and beautiful crafts? Wazz writes about this kind of thing far more eloquently over here (in the context of the execrable Janet Street-Porter), whereas I can scarcely type for fury.

I'd better go and have a fish finger sandwich for dinner, or else the modern world might frighten me so much that I can't sleep tonight.

Happy Yapping.