It always feels good to get a big shipment of yarn! We are full up again on Rios, Arroyo, Mecha, Rasta, Sock, and Ultimate Sock, at the best prices in town. Come and get it while we have lots of choices.

New yarn in the store: Araucanian Glisten. Cotton with lurex (sparkle!) in fingering weight.

If we’re going to have to be the sandwich generation, we should at least get to eat a sandwich! Thanks for being patient as we’ve been juggling caregiving, stomach bugs, and retail. Being a Mom & Pop means that sometimes both Mom AND Pop are down for the count. Thanks for making us REALLY WANT to come back to work, because we miss you when we don’t get to see y’all! See you at the shop, or come say hi on Zoom tonight.

So I’ve been listening to “You’re Wrong About” and got to the episode with Amanda Knox entitled “What Even Is Justice?”

Strap in, because I have thoughts. I’m also in the middle of reading Unmask Alice (inspired by another episode of the same podcast), which covers so many of the moral panics of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

I’m also going to throw in the Enneagram. This is one of those pseudo-scientific personality tests that one shouldn’t take overly seriously, but has enough truth to it that when something resonates, it can lead you to deeper truths–like the Tarot. Tools that inspire introspection don’t need to be scientific: it’s the introspection itself that is valuable, not the tools.

Maybe you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a high-strung guy. Knitting has helped me become a more patient person, but I’m prone to lashing out in my no-so-great moments. It bothers me when things are not right. I’m a middle child, and growing up I would perpetually say “That’s not fair!” (To which my father would inevitably answer, “I never promised you life would be fair.”) But part of being raised a white man in this culture has been the expectation of ease and entitlement, and the perception of that ease as “fairness.” Ease was not what I mostly experienced growing up, and maybe that’s why I always felt things were so unfair.

Every kid gets teased to some extent, gets bullied to some extent, I guess. But for me, it felt really extreme for a long time. I was a “sensitive” kid, which meant it was easy to make me cry, which made me a target. I never really got beat up, but I got threatened a lot, and I got made fun of a lot, and there were years of school where I felt like I had no friends, or one friend, and everyone else was indifferent at best or tormenting at worst. Looking back, I can see how I put myself in the crosshairs without realizing it: when asked to share our favorite song with the class, I brought in Beethoven’s 6th Symphony. I was a nerd from a very young age at a time when that still meant social death.

It made me angry to be treated that way. I didn’t understand why liking Tolkein instead of football meant I got to be shunned and scorned. I felt like the people who made me suffer should be the ones suffering instead. It’s been hard for me to escape from that model of justice: that tormentors deserve to be tormented. Even knowing what I know now about the moral panics of the time, the gender roles that had to be tightly screwed down because society was changing, even after making friends with one of my bullies because actually–just like in the afterschool specials–what he really wanted was attention, the hurt within me still wants to lash out.

When my sister-in-law convinced us all to take an Ennegram test one Thanksgiving, I figured it would be a lark, like astrology. But the results placed Elizabeth and I as a mix of #1 and #5, with me primarily #1 and her primarily #5. This really made a lot of sense to me: Elizabeth as The Investigator, who wants to figure out how to fix things, implement systems that will organize and run smoothly. I also want to fix things, but as The Reformer, I want people to be called to account, to take responsibility for misdeeds. To me, it doesn’t feel adequate just to solve the problem–I want an apology, Goddammit! Being aware of this sometimes helps me to deescalate my feelings. I think, on the whole, it’s healthier to be able to let things go. It’s just constitutionally difficult for me.

It’s clear the criminal justice system in this country is broken and has been from the start. Retributive justice, no matter how emotionally satisfying it might feel, is just spreading suffering around. Restorative justice seems like a much better goal. The biggest problem with that is that it takes an enormous amount of resources to truly work. Without a lot of societal power (and money) behind it, it’s just for show and provides neither restoration nor justice. Those resources are not coming any time soon, I’m afraid. Amanda Knox talked about a Quarantine Model of justice that’s a more achievable goal: people who are deemed dangerous to society are still cordoned off, but without the purpose of assigning blame and creating suffering. Of course, there’s always the problem of who does the judging, but so much weight could be removed by removing the frame of good vs. evil.

Humans are still animals, after all. We might be the only animals with a sense of justice, but we’re not the only animals who hurt each other, dominate each other, kill each other. It’s not as unnatural as we like to think. And if we’re going to deal with it, we need to send fewer Reformers and more Investigators. It’s possible to define “Fairness” in different ways, and the last hundred years has seen a flood of propaganda against “To each according to their need, from each according to their ability,” but given enough accountability I’ve never seen a better definition.

As we work this year to expand out community into the Craft Underground, we want to make it a space for everyone who needs it. We want to be welcoming and not cliquish. We want people to craft with us even if they don’t have a lot of money to contribute. We want awkward people (myself included) to find their place, but we want to hold people who cause problems to account and not let bad behavior slide because we don’t like confrontation. Building an open community takes justice and compassion, and we have to look deeply into what those things mean. The moral panics of today are just as ridiculous as the supposed Satanic cults and men in white vans offering candy to children were when I was growing up. We need to offer counterprogramming and spaces of connection that debunk the hate and fear passed around so casually.

That’s probably enough ranting for now. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because I got norovirus halfway through writing it. I’ve had a number of people lately say they like the blog, and that means a lot! So this post is maybe a little deeper than usual, but there it is.

Got three big cartons of Berroco yarns: Ultra Wool, Remix, Vintage Chunky, etc. and the shelves in the washable section are full again. I have a big shipment of Malabrigo on the way!

Every day is an opportunity to learn something. Like I just found out that the man who is best known for popularizing peanut butter was also an avid crocheter!

The industry wide run on red yarn has become a story in itself. We are trying our best to keep up, but it goes to show how much we all hate fascist goons. We have our own hand dye, but I’ve got to order more red dye soon.

Just kidding! I never got into TikTok. I left Twitter when Elon Musk bought it. Purl’s still begrudgingly keeps a presence on Facebook and Instagram, but as more people discover the blog feed here, we hope to abandon them. We’re using Discord a lot right now because it gives us privacy and control but I’m afraid it will go toxic too at some point. I spend more time on Reddit than I probably should, but at least you can filter what you’re looking for.

I’ve been listening to the podcast “You’re Wrong About” obsessively, and this episode about smartphones and social media and this one about email got me thinking about the internet and how we can make it better. One way is to get away from platforms we don’t own. I pay for my domain names, and I pay for my web/email hosting (from local provider purplecat.net! They are great!). It’s not very expensive and I know they aren’t scraping my data to sell to advertisers. It IS annoying to have to spell out my email domain instead of saying gmail, but it’s a point of pride now. If you can’t afford your own, neocities and proton mail are not evil yet, just remember that you are relying on them to not become evil.

I miss having a lot of sites to go visit. I’ve been on Metafilter.com for 20+ years, which has finally transitioned to a community-run site. I used to read a lot of webcomics daily but my favorite creators moved on to other things or got stuck retreading the same territory too long. There’s less text than there used to be and more audio and video. Why aren’t there as many dumb flash games (I know, flash is dead)? What is today’s equivalent of Homestar Runner? Or is that golden age gone for good?

Finding communities online is really what we want, whether that’s on a blog, webring, Discord server, Minecraft, Overwatch, or whatever. But it’s best when we can find them in places that aren’t exploiting them. And it’s amazing when we can find communities in the real world, too. Because having lunch with your internet friends isn’t as tasty.

Okay, yesterday was nice being stuck inside keeping warm with cats and a fire, baking bread and knitting. But it also feels like I need to be DOING something. Purl’s is closed again today because nobody should be out there on the roads except essential workers. But we all can do a little bit of essential work today.

You can knit a red hat. It’s not much but in a crowd you can see who’s had enough. But we can all do more. It’s frustrating when you know your “elected representatives” have cheated and lied to get where they are and aren’t likely to do better, but pressure is pressure, and enough pressure can force bad people to shift a little. Call your senators, rep, state legislators, everyone. It’s insane that the fictional Pizzagate tarnished Hillary Clinton when the very real Epstein omniscandal touches such a large percentage of people with hard and soft power. It sickens me what these people get away with, including murder on the street.

It’s too cold and slippery to go out, and we all need more time for self-care and connecting with others. But even if we can’t be on the streets we can be calling and shouting (or talking rationally, if you can manage) at our so-called “leaders.”

Tillis (202) 224-6342

Budd (202) 224-3154

Edwards (202) 225-6401

We’ll have Nerd Night on Zoom again at 6 tonight if you need a friendly face. Thanks to Ruth for helping me dye up some more red yarn on Friday. I promise we’ll be back again in person on Wednesday.