Needle and ThREAD: Stitching for Literacy

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, the end of Lavender Wings.”

It has come to my attention that Linda at Lavender Wings is taking down her designing shingle. She explains, “…internet piracy and declining sales have made it impossible for me to continue to produce and sell charts….”

Oh, no!

Most of the comments and discussion I’ve seen relating to this latest loss focus on internet piracy. It’s a problem, to be sure. Some stitchers think they’re doing each other a favor by scanning and sharing patterns online, but that’s a short-sighted view. Will the stitchers still think it’s a favor when all their favorite designers are out of business?

But it’s the other part of the sentence I want to address here. I haven’t heard anyone discuss this part: declining sales.

Okay, so this one is a little harder to discuss. Who’s the Bad Guy here; who can we accuse and blame?

Fewer people are stitching. Avid stitchers are stitching less or stitching different kinds of things. More people are designing. Designs are smaller and coming out more frequently. The market simply cannot support the number of designers and designs out there. So no one’s to blame, right?

Who, me?

Or maybe we’re all to blame. We, the consumers, choose the products, manufacturers, and stores that get our money. Our dollars are votes: those who receive them are the ones we elect to stay in business.

Not long ago, a stitcher said to me, “Oh, I don’t buy patterns anymore; I can find more free patterns on the Web than I can stitch in my lifetime.” I assure you she wasn’t talking about pirated patterns; she was merely referring to the scads of widely and legally available freebies.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not a thing.

However, we should acknowledge the consequences of our choices. If we’re not willing to pay designers for their work, they will stop doing it. If free designs are what we choose to support, eventually, they may be all we have available.

Hmm…let me think.

So, what will it be today? A caffeinated frou-frou bevvie? A fast-food lunch? Two hours of movie entertainment at the local theater? Or hours of entertainment with a new kit by your favorite designer? Or maybe two of those kits so you can share the fun with a friend?

How do you choose to spend your money today?

“Oh, designers,” said the Embroiderer, “you’ve had a pleasant run. Shall we be charting something new?” But answer came there none. But this was scarcely odd because they’d retired, every one.

Acknowledgements
Opening and closing stanzas adapted from The Walrus and the Carpenter, by Lewis Carroll, with thanks to Mr. Jacobs who challenged me to memorize it in sixth grade.

This morning, Mama moose and Baby browsed in the yard for some time. Baby ended up at the back door, searching (not very hard) for a way up the hill.

I couldn’t miss Baby’s gimpy front leg. Long-term, short-term, injury, birth defect…beats me. I just know the calf is limping. Bummer.

It reminds me of a story I think I’ll share.

Once upon a time in April, in a land far, far away called Isla Isabela, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, there lives a tiny paraplegic marine iguana.

See how the back legs drag?

Every day, the gimpy iguana treks from the safety of the house rock garden and deck across the beach to the rocky shore to feed on the sea greenery during low tide. All the iguanas, a couple hundred or so, make the trek in a grand, if disorganized and sloppy, parade. There is safety in numbers.

But one day, the gimpy iguana is singled out and captured by a hungry lava gull.

It just so happens that a man is photographing the birds and iguanas and scenery. Catching a hunt and kill is rare for a part-time photographer. It’s a thrill to see nature in action. He understands that nature can be harsh, all animals need to eat, and his job is to watch and record, not interfere.

He snaps a couple of pictures. Through the telephoto lens he watches as the gull drops the iguana and the iguana tries to escape.

Then recognition sets in. The man lives in this house with the rock garden and deck where hundreds of small iguanas live. He knows this iguana. He can identify this one out of the hundreds of nearly-identical iguanas. He’s watched this particular iguana haul itself with two legs across the beach, over the rocks, and up the wall of the house, dragging its belly, hind legs, and tail.

The man doesn’t say a word. He just steps out from behind his tripod and strides purposefully toward the gull. The gull squawks and drags its prey across the rocks. The man gets closer. The gull squawks and snatches at the iguana, trying to get a better hold. The man is only a step away. The gull, flapping, makes one more grab but cannot carry its quarry away as it takes to the air and flees.

The man bends down and scoops up the panting iguana, gently carrying it across the beach to the rock garden at the house. He lays his open palm on a rock. The iguana pulls itself off the hand and disappears into a crevice.

Later, the gimpy iguana emerges. It drags itself to the house wall, stopping for a bite of banana the man has set out. With the strength of just its two front legs, it hoists itself up the wall and over the ledge to the warm dark space beneath the upper deck where dozens of other iguanas are already settled for the night.

The end.

I hope the baby moose just stubbed its toe this morning.

A bookmark from the 2010 collection of the Redwood Stitchers EGA chapter in Santa Rosa, CA.

The Monday “What have you done lately?” accountability post, where I announce my Needle and Thread: Stitching for Literacy program promotion goal for the week and fess up on last week’s goal.

Last week, my goal was to have another go at a plan for achieving our Outreach goals and to get a new bookmark design sketched.

I’m happy to report I had some success on both fronts. Woot! Better still, it was fun. Woot-woot! Especially the designing part. It’s been a while since I’ve put colored squares on a grid.

This week, my goal is to answer an e-mail that could result in a whole new kind of promotion for the program. If it pans out, it will scare the behoozies out of me. It will put me in a position guaranteed to make my knees pound, my heart sweat, and my palms knock; i.e. I will be all out of sorts. Some ridiculous part of me, perhaps around my eponychia, thinks it could be fun.

So I will screw up my courage, choose my words carefully, and reply to this e-mail.

Got anything on your To-Do list that scares you?

Thanks to our cool, rainy summer, it looks as though we’re going to have a banner blueberry season.

The bushes around the house are loaded with fat green berries. I am on a mission to use the remaining 2009 blueberries in the freezer–a surprisingly large quantity, imagine that–to justify hours and hours of picking next month.

Yesterday, Stitch Bitch Anna posted a list of fruit cobbler-ish desserts with brief descriptions explaining their differences.

• clafouti
• flaugnarde
• crumble
• cobbler
• buckle
• Betty
• slump
• grunt
• pandowdies

If you want the descriptions, you’ll have to visit Anna’s post.

Eureka!

I’m committed to making each and every one of these, one after the other, repeating as needed until the 2009 berries are finished.

Think I’m kidding? I started last night with clafouti; although according to Anna’s description, which I don’t doubt is accurate, since I used blueberries instead of cherries, I made flaugnarde instead of clafouti.

The recipe I used, however, was called “Blueberry Clafouti,” which makes perfect sense when you consider that’s the phrase I Googled. I’m interested to see what I get when I search “blueberry flaugnarde.”

If I have to repeat the list–uh…yeah, I like to pick berries–I’ll try different recipes.

I’ve never had clafouti before. I’m having a hard time pronouncing it; the accent’s on the last syllable. It reminds Mike of an old family recipe they call “Apfel Danche.” I don’t think it will ever be a favorite for me, but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And way-yonder better than brussel sprouts and lima beans.

This is going to be fun!

If this idea catches on (what’s the point of dreaming small?), that will be the name of my new blog or, what the heck, multi-million dollar business: The Craft Whisperer.

Until then, maybe we’ll have Fix-It Fridays or something here. Or on the soon-to-exist Funk & Weber World blog. Somewhere.

History: I’ve long wanted to have a business called something like Solutions R Us where people bring me their problems, and I find creative ways to solve or deal with them. Mind you, I’m of the opinion that not all problems should be solved.

Current Event: When I woke up this morning and checked in with the Bracelet Basics class that is taking place right now, Harriet, working from the other side of the globe while I was dreaming, claimed she had a problem. Oh, boy! A problem to solve!

It’s true. I got excited. It’s not that I wish problems on people, certainly not people taking my class, but I really do enjoy the challenge and promise of adventure that some problems, like needlework problems, hold.

Based on her verbal description, written very well in her non-native English, my mind started whirring. We could do this, or this, or maybe this…what about this?! Without seeing it, I was sure we could salvage her work.

Then she posted pictures. I was…disappointed? Well, yes, I was disappointed on one level and happy for her on another. Harriet’s problem, it turns out, is not really a problem at all. She’s a meticulous stitcher; her bracelet, stitched in miniature, is beautiful. The “problem” is a perfectly normal occurrence that is taken care of in the finishing process.

That’s great news for Harriet, of course, but I was, in fact, disappointed that there would be no Fix-It adventure for me.

The Point: Since I was deprived of a perplexing problem in the Bracelet class, I was hoping maybe one of you would have one I can work on. In fact, if I can drum up some problems, I’d like to make this a regular feature, Fix-It Fridays.

We could make it a sort of game (surprise, surprise). If you give me a legitimate problem, and I don’t feel I can offer an interesting and/or viable solution, you win a prize! A Stump the Chump deal.

What do you think? Got a crafty problem you’d like help solving? Tomorrow’s Friday, bring it on! Post your problem as a Comment or send pictures and/or a description to me at

mail [AT] funkandweber [DOT] com

The address is in the sidebar, you know.

I was brainstorming bookmark design ideas yesterday and came up with the phrase “reading tastes.”

I imagined my friend’s baby chewing on the corner of a board book–this friend once wrote, “She loves books. Especially the corners.”

I imagined scratch-and-sniff turned lick-and-taste.

Hey, you like what you like; I like what I like. Leave me alone.

Then I imagined this list:

My Reading Tastes

• Picture Books = peanut butter
• Middle Grade = strawberry rhubarb (yummy, sweet, beginning to get complex)
• Young Adult = sour lemon (I make the same face when I eat sour lemon and when I read teen angst.)
• Puzzle Books = Thanksgiving dinner (A complete meal, nutritious, delicious. They make you want to overindulge.)
• History = sharp cheese
• Literature = orange spice
• Romance = chocolate
• Mystery = bubblegum (Something to chew on, I guess.)
• Memoir = chai (Huh. Go figure.)
• Fantasy = mashed potatoes (They’re kind of all the same–a la LOTR–and, for me, most stories are clear soup compared to mashed potato fantasy. I cannot see my way through them. What can I say? I’m not a fantasy person.)
• Adventure = curry
• Horror = brussel sprouts (Just…ew.)
• Erotica = cinnamon

Now you’re all wondering how much erotica I read. Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know!

What I did not imagine: a good embroidery design.

Dive right in!

Your turn. Tell us your reading tastes in the comments. You can use fewer, more, or different categories.

If you prefer to write your reading tastes on your own blog, I hope you’ll link back here so I can come read them. Or e-mail me. My address is in the sidebar, you know.

You might recall last summer’s efforts to build new strawberry beds after having some dirt work done.

Back in May/June this year, I finished putting shale on the paths and transplanted 500 of these little babies from the overcrowded original beds. They haven’t grown much in size, but they have taken root and are putting out flowers and runners. I’m clipping runners.

Plants in the old beds are big and loaded with promising blossoms.

A couple of weeks ago, I was excited to see the first berries beginning to turn pink. I watched the pink spread and turn orange-red. Finally, Mike and I decided two could be picked the following day. Our first strawberries of 2010!

The next day, as I weeded the old berry patch, I discovered one of the two ripe berries wasn’t there. Crumb! When I got down to the second ripe berry, I noticed it was partially eaten. Double crumb!

I make an effort to keep critters from eating my produce, and keep a pretty close eye on things, so what was eluding me?

I took a break to pout and gulp some water. From the deck, I saw my pal, Mr. or Ms. Robin, flutter into the strawberries where I had just been. I’ve watched it munch up insects in those beds all spring/summer.

You see, a pair of robins has been hanging around all spring. One flew into a window, and I kind of aided it as it recovered for three hours on our deck, providing shade, water, relative peace, and safety. The pair built a nest on our wood pile while I was gone for a few days, but decided to move out when I returned. Still, one visits when I’m out in the garden, and I see them often.

When I returned to the strawberries, the beautiful, ripe, partially-eaten berry was gone.

Do robins eat strawberries?!

I got online to find out.

Crap.

Robins love ripe strawberries. That changes everything.

Scarecrows, pinwheels, dangling pie tins or cds, cheesecloth, right? Sure, except I don’t have any of those things. Then some advice from a former director of the St. Louis Zoo came to mind.

See that scary black thing winding through the strawberries?

Bungie cords! They’re a substitute for rubber snakes. They may not work on Alaskan birds because what do Alaskan birds know from snakes, right? We don’t have snakes. But robins migrate. They should know what snakes are.

But I don’t have that many bungies, so I rounded up some old pieces of electric cable (building materials saved for craft purposes). One bit has a yellow stripe running down the length of it–a nice touch, I thought.

Pre-bungie strawberry score:
Robins: 2
Mike: 1
Jen: 0

Post-bungie strawberry score:
Robins: 0
Mike: 0
Jen: 10 (8 in the freezer, 2 in the belly)

That’s more like it!

There are a lot of berries out there. I won’t mind sharing some.

Bookmarks from the 2010 collection of The Stitchers’ Village.

The Monday “What have you done lately?” accountability post, where I announce my Needle and Thread: Stitching for Literacy program promotion goal for the week and fess up on last week’s goal.

My goal last week was to make an outline of what needs to be done to provide resources and guidelines for stitchers wanting to host outreach events.

I pretty much failed. The strawberry beds have fewer weeds, though. Does that count for anything?

Excuses, excuses.

Actually, I think I do have an attitude that it’s okay to slack off on this over the summer. Gardening is a pretty big part of my life these days. It’s not just recreation, though I do enjoy it immensely; it’s subsistence. It’s time well-spent. If it prevents me from making progress with Stitching for Literacy, so be it.

Earlier this summer, often during times when this blog was quiet, I contemplated taking a blog vacation or reducing posts to two or three a week. Summer’s a busy time. Plus, I’m always seeking balance, juggling activities, trying not to go completely nuts. That may slow progress here, and I’m okay with that. Sometimes letting go is good.

But it’s a temporary letting go, I assure you. I’ll still aim to accomplish an outline this week, and maybe I’ll succeed. But I want another, more fun goal, too.

I have materials to start developing a different kind of bookmark, which, in the long run, I hope will help raise funds for Stitching for Literacy. I need to make some designs for this format, so my second goal for this week is to get one design drafted. My ultimate goal is to come up with six designs for this particular finishing technique, but I’ll be happy with one this week. Mind you, I’m also stitching a bracelet for the class that’s in session, so these are lofty goals. I’m okay with that, too. I don’t mind failing. I’ll just keep trying until I succeed.

What do you want to accomplish this week?

If you’d like to be more involved in planning Needle and Thread: Stitching for Literacy events and working behind-the-scenes, please join our Yahoo Group.

The group allows participants to share ideas and resources, and we’d love to have your help.

This is an ad I got in the mail from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, reminding me to get my fishing license and go fishing.

That line, “Parents don’t frame pictures of their kid playing video games” struck me the way a great line, phrase, or passage in a book does.

It’s true.
It’s simple and fairly universal within this culture.
It’s obvious, though it’s not something I’ve ever stopped to notice or contemplate.
It implies much.

I suppose that’s good advertising, isn’t it?

The Facebook group, Fans of SCBWI, has started offering blog prompts to assist and encourage kidlit writers who blog. Naturally, I consider this both a game and a challenge.

Here’s the first prompt:

Pick a successful writer/illustrator, whether you like their work or not, and write a blog post about what other writers or illustrators can learn from them.

I got hung up on picking an author, so I reached above my head and grabbed a book: Sports Illustrated for Kids: Year in Sports 2008. Huh. This is how I got sidetracked onto what writers can learn from a book rather than an author. Whatever.

If my hand had landed one book to the right, I would have had to write about Elizabeth Castro’s HTML and CSS Visual Quickstart Guide. One book to the left, and this post would stem from Essentials of English.

I contemplated starting over on a different bookshelf. But I didn’t. A game’s a game; a challenge is a challenge.

So here goes.

Ten things fiction writers can learn from Sports Illustrated for Kids: Year In Sports 2008.

1. Having many characters assures all readers will relate to someone.

2. No giant walls of intimidating text. Intimidating stats, however, are gems. Keep the story moving with short paragraphs, blurbs, and charts, whenever possible.

3. Cheerleading is not a sport, but snowmobiling is.

4. Throw in pop quizzes to make sure readers are paying attention. Make them sound cool by titling them “Trivia Challenge.”

5. Weave in backstory to put the current state of affairs in perspective.

6. It’s all about competition.

7. Challenge and entertain readers with character names like Zydrunas Ilgauskas or Albert Pujols.

8. Include lots of pictures of famous athletes.

9. The best books include puzzles. (Year in Sports 2009 vs. Year in Sports 2008–2009 has puzzles.)

10. They can’t all be winners.

Now here’s our next challenge: In the comments, let’s post things needleworkers can learn from Sports Illustrated for Kids: Year in Sports 2008.

Okay. Go!