Stitch Stirrers Prompt! Why do you do it?

The question has been asked…Why do you do it?

Why crochet?

Short answer: Because I love it.

Medium Answer: Because it is my heritage, and I feel connected to the beautiful women who taught me, and those who came before me that I never got to know.

Long Answer:

When I was a little girl, I was often told I was like my grandmother who died long before my birth. In fact, she died when my own mother was 8 years old.  Crochet and her eyes are what we have in common.

Every Sunday, I would stay at my great grandmother’s house and it was she who first taught me hand work (and my mulitplication tables, and made me read the classics) I was to be a well educated and well rounded young lady.

I enjoyed our time together, be it making lace, or embroidering hankies, or making yummy cream puffs (from scratch!).  Making things together was something she and I could do with little effort, she was 70 years older than I, and handwork was fast enough for me, and slow enough for her. It was a middle ground.

When she died, all I had of her besides some photos (which never really look like her to me, because they don’t have her real inner glow beaming out at me) was her handwork. Then, to my surprise my mother gave me some of her mother’s hand work. It’s all I have of Grandma Grace, who’s hand was so perfect, delicate and her lace was beyond compare.

On the other side of the family, time with my Great Aunt Alice was  spent making lace and ornaments, and it kept me out of trouble. She died last year, after seven years of battling stroke after stroke. My hand work, made out of my own yarns, comforted her in her final years. A gift I could give back to her after the frustrations of teaching me to make doilies all those years ago!

I do this, because I need that feminine tie to my own heritage. There is nothing destructive in my craft, it is pure creative energy, and I feel very linked to all of the women in my family each time I pick up a hook. It’s a way of being with the women who shaped my life!

And now, it is a way to share time with my teenage daughter, who also enjoys that cozy feeling, when our heads are bent over a project that needs fixing, and working together to solve it.

To me, making things, or more precisely; crocheting is love.

Crochet Liberation Front!

I have one of those odd, quirky senses of humor. I also suffer from insomnia, which is why I crochet, spin, etc. If you can’t sleep, you might as well do other things right?

So, back in July I started a group on Ravelry called the Crochet Liberation Front Headquarters. 

Here is is what it says on the group description:

We use hooks and are darned proud of it! If you are like me and are tired of the crochet appoligists out there then raise a hook and cry freedom! (Knitters are welome as long as they are nice to us)

Come on gents and ladies, join me, hold your hooks high!

This is a place for we who can use anything (including duck tape and bandaids to spaghetti) to make anything (that’s right from pink flamingo tp roll holders to wedding dresses and doilies!) to stand up, straight & tall, and scream out that we are GREAT!

That’s right! Gone are the days where we hide our love of hooking! We are crocheters and we are proud, we deserve to be identified as more than the kid sister of knitting!

In fact it’s time people figured out that we dont’ have anything in common with knitting except we all like yarn.

This is not a knitting bashing group at all, this is a place to heal ourselves from being bashed, and to grow our self esteem as crafters and well… Liberate the Hook!

Please join CLF!

The Base Chain (rules)

1) This is a CROCHET group, cool if you knit, but really keep the project talk about crochet…I mean we can’t be radical liberators of the hook if the talk keeps going on about needles…

2) You don’t have to be nice, just please don’t be mean or cruel to others. Nice is rather bland and boring, but mean and cruel is just plain wrong. In short, no biting, hitting kicking, scratching or spitting and definately no full nelsons.

3) Everyone has a right to speak their opinion. It is not mean to have a difference of opinion. Defining mean here: name calling, insults, etc. Not sharing the same viewpoint is human, not mean.

That’s basically it I believe in free speech here, so speak away, have fun and LIBERATE THE HOOK!

Ok, so with only that and our cute little graphic done by Crankymama, we now have over 130 members! This is a fun group, and it has become a great place to share information about techniques, books, articles, and support each other’s habit of hooking and yarn!

In fact, at the conference in Oakland, I was amazed at the response to my wearing a t-shirt with the logo and name: Crochet Liberation Front on the back. The response was so awesome I’m giving birth to this baby for real! I do not have a deadline set just yet, but keep your eyes posted here for a website and other information about the CLF for real in the comming months!

LIBERATE THE HOOK!