Hooked for Life by Mary Beth Temple Read Free Book Online Page A

yarn that breeds would be pretty cool, as well as a blessing to the budget, but I digress. Is there a wormhole leading from the stash closet to Mount Yarn? (See, I must have been watching sci-fi during my TV binge.) If you are a scientist who knows about these things, please drop me an e-mail. I am afraid someday I will get sucked in and never find my way out.
    But what a way to go.

Speaking In Tongues
    I f you watch medical shows on TV, or police procedural, which are my weakness, you find out quickly that like-minded people speak in a language all their own. “CBC, chem 7, STAT!” or “Book that perp for felony murder!” I am not always exactly sure what all the words mean, but familiarity and context give me the general gist.
    Crocheters have a language of their own as well. Some of it overlaps with what knitters say, some of it is completely different, and sometimes the words are the same but have different meanings or connotations. I have heard it said that England and the United States are two countries divided by a common language; I think the language of crochet and the language of knitting have the same sort of relationship.
    I don’t want to go on and on about language but since I lapse into crochet-speak so much in the course of this book, I thought a little detailed explanation might be in order. Herewith, a little primer—a translation,if you will, from crochet to English. That’s American English, by the way, I still get confused by UK crochet-ish!
    Voy a la tienda del hilado
—wait, that’s Spanish. I may not be multilingual but I have managed to find yarn in every country I have ever visited. By the way, that sentence means, “I am going to the yarn store.” Learn it; you may need it someday.
    “My WIPS are taking over my available stash storage
—
some of them are going to have to befrogged.”
In English, this means “My works-in-progress (meaning, loosely, anything that has a hook glommed onto it) have expanded beyond the capacity of the drawer (storage bin, guest room closet, second home) in which I store the yarn I have yet to use (and may never use because quite frankly I bought some of it because it was pretty/on sale/I was bored/all my friends were doing it), some of them are going to have to be ripped out (while I sob bitter tears over all the time I wasted on that ungrateful pile of fiber).”
    See? The language of crochet is a sort of shorthand that expresses more succinctly the thoughts of the crocheter. Let’s try another one.
    “My dealer hooked me up and now I have a raging case of startitis. I am going to have to CIP to get through this pile, and maybe join a CAL or two,”
is shorthand for, “My local purveyor of fine fibers, who is so intimately acquainted with my personal tastes that she can make wonderfully appropriate suggestions as to what sorts of yarn I should buy, found me some enticing objects at a fair price (made me an offer I couldn’t refuse/lowered the price on the sale bin detritus she was trying to get rid of to the point that I couldn’t put it back) and I am so excited by my many purchases that I must immediately yet thoughtfully (Hah!) begin a number of new projects. I am going to have to Crochet in Public (on the bus/during lunch hour/waiting in the carpool/at the supermarket/no matter how much my muttering while counting stitches embarrasses my offspring), and maybe join a Crochet-Along (in which many crocheters work on the same project at the same time and comment on it, ostensibly to give each other support but in actuality to make those who finish quickly feel superior and those who never finish at all yet another thing to berate themselves over) or two because the camaraderie (or mockery—much depends on the general tone of the group) makes the project go so much faster (if only to avoid FO envy—remember, FO means Finished Object, and I promise I will stop now).”
    My, that was a long one, wasn’t it? Thank goodness, we have our crochet language