I’m still not really sure about this whole “Do Art For a Living” business. I’ve spent the five-ish years since I’ve graduated from college, and the six-ish years I was working before graduating, trying for increasingly better-paying jobs- partly to fund my (expensive!) knitting hobby. Now, I’m deliberately earning a little over 1/4 of my last salary, working part time for an independent dyer, and trying to cobble together a spinning demonstrations here, knitting classes there, design a little bit on the side, fiber arts career. A career where I will probably never need a briefcase or pumps, which is unlikely to ever pay a company health insurance policy or have a company 401k. It’s a completely different paradigm of work than I’m used to and it’s really hard to explain to my family that I’m choosing neither a posh white collar job as befitting my very expensive education, nor an honest blue collar job with a union and a pension.
Part of this is going to involve trust- trust that the business I work for will continue to be successful, trust that I’ll be able to round it out with other jobs on the side, trust in my fiancee to make enough to close the gap for us- and I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of person, not a trust-it-will-work-out kind of person. I want certainty and there is none.
But my mental health has never been better- it’s closing the cognitive dissonance between “I AM a knitter” and “I do X for a living”. I feel comfortable and fluent in my industry for probably the first time ever. And even though my paycheck is less, I can come home from a fiber fair with only
and leave with money still in my checking account- a feat I could never manage while working at the higher-paying but more stressful jobs. (I absolutely did not need more yarn, but that’s how you tell fiber artists you love them, you buy their stuff. By the way, buy our stuff.)
Individually:
Darn Good Yarn in Silk Bubbles, fair trade reclaimed 100% silk waste yarn, and
Darn Good Yarn Slender Silk. I got these from the booth at The Green Yarn Company, and those ladies are hilarious! They also gave me a coupon for giving them a store-bought knitted sweater for them to unravel; they specialize in unraveling store-bought sweaters, sometimes plying them, so that knitters have access to the good stuff for a fraction of the price a mill would ask. I saw angora, cashmere and silk at their booth.
Shady Haven’s Fiber Designs, 65% merino 35% bamboo, a generous 8 oz skein (1120 yards). They’re kind of a Wisconsin legend, but I didn’t see them at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool last year, so I was super excited to see them today.
Shady Haven again, this time their Prime Alpaca in a jet black. I was gifted some Shady Haven in a gorgeous charcoal black by Amy Detjen, for imposing order on her Yarn Cave of Wonders (touch nothing but the lamp, Aladdin!), so I’m glad to have the jet black to contrast with it.
Sophie’s Toes Sock Yarn, in Lake. It’s a gorgeous blue with deep indigo shot through it, 375 yards of fingering weight superwash 50% merino 50% silk. This was the real prize today (I’m so sorry, Shady Haven! I love you anyway)- because it wasn’t selling well, she marked it 30% off and let us go a little nuts for it.
I actually had a lot of fun finding knitters in the relaxation areas, proud that they hadn’t bought anything today, and leading them back to it- I only didn’t-break one exceptionally strong-willed person. Unfortunately, my yarn enabling had a little bit of backsplash onto me- I wound up getting another.
Finally, I’ve been trying to design a pattern all month, and the yarns I keep buying for it are unsuitable in one hard-to-ignore way or another. I’m going to try again, with this
Saga Hill Designs, Alirio, 100% Bombyx silk noil fingering weight. Saga Hill specializes in undyed yarns and fibers, and has some intriguing ones. The Alirio is appropriately rough for the pattern idea I have, but it still has that heavenly silk smell.
Finally, not yarn, but given that I do most of my knitting in public in coffeehouses, still relevant- a coffee mug by Jenny Blasen Pottery. Not to be confused with Jennie the Potter, but her work is gorgeous anyway. A friend of mine recently gifted me a Hand Wash mug
and while I loved it, it only lasted a week before a cat knocked it over and the handle shattered off. Nothing a little super glue and patience can’t fix, but in my state of mourning, I was weak and the hedgehog was just so damn cute.
This also doesn’t count against my tally of five knitting-related mugs, because it has a cute hedgehog, and hedgehogs don’t have anything to do with knitting. (Right? RIGHT? OMG, is there hedgehog yarn somewhere?)
Chris Furuya 