Today I received in the post my lovely new (second-hand) copy of Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity, after months of ogling it in bookshops and feeling tempted to hand over £25 for a copy. It is a little remorse-inducing that it arrived the day after my rent payment annihilated my overdraft, but who cares, it's like a big sticky tray of cupcakes that I know will cheer me up, despite the guilt.Jane's blog, yarnstorm, is one of the reasons I wanted a blog, it's so bright and colourful and I love the delight she takes in knitting and baking and creating things. My own attempts at cooking are farcical, but I have always enjoyed making things. As a teenager, when most girls were probably in Claire's Accessories, I loved nothing more than perusing glue guns or glow-in-the-dark Fimo. Since then, living in rented accommodation has somewhat curbed my collections of yarn and buttons and 'useful' bits of cardboard, and I have found knitting to be a helpfully compact and transportable craft (although I did liberate some enormous lidless glass sweet jars from someone's recycling box and these are now full of the burgeoning squares for my patchwork).
I can't help but be a bit defensive about it, although another hero of mine, Debbie Stoller (founder of Stitch n Bitch and the amazing Bust magazine) has probably revolutionised the concept of knitting and other crafts as something for grannies or '70s throwbacks macrameing their own muesli. It still seems to baffle people, but I could argue its eco-friendly, anti-consumerist, possibly punky ethos all day (and probably have at some point - don't even get me started on the retro/feminist issues).
On a similar note, I was knitting on the train today, poring over my p1,k1s, and became aware of a glassy-eyed consumer glancing repeatedly at it over my shoulder, possibly thinking it was an alien copy of the Metro. I am used to people eye-balling my knitting, so I ignored him. The girl next to me was deep in her copy of what seemed to be some kind of Islamic text. And I couldn't help but feel a little jolt of affinity with her; just two people doing their own thing.
