Day 5 was to blog in a differnet way than you normally do. I casually asked my husband if he would like to be a guest blogger here. And he readily agreed. I have never done a guest post before and am so happy to have my best friend and husband Ganesh as a guest blogger.So here is him talking about being a crafter's husband
The Emerging Vocabulary of a Crafter's Husband
You grow up reading.
Textbooks, newspapers, magazines, novels, blogs, tweets, reports, documents,
maps, emails, text messages, brochures, the works. And you hit a point in life
where you think you know it all, words, terms, phrases, synonyms, acronyms, idioms,
the works again. You think you are wordly wise; life seems to be under control,
predictable even.
And then one fine day a
craftaholic waltzes into your life and it all gets a bit a shaky. You thought
you knew it all; you realize you did not. The rough encounters begin, some
strange terms start wafting in. Merino, Angora. Mohair. Alpaca. You freeze. And
then ponder. Certainly not types of pasta, those you know. Places in South of
Spain, maybe? Surely not, those you researched the last time you planned a
holiday. Tribe names of native American Red Indians? Umm, possible; you were
never strong in American history. But turns out these are types of yarn! Those
innocuous colourful soft and squishy little balls that magically turn
themselves into some really stylish and warm pieces of winter wear. And turns
out there is also cotton and acrylic yarn! So much for thinking all balls of
wool were the same!
There is of course more to
come. And these are not even proper nouns, just basic every day terms that you
thought meant something else. The last time you checked, needles were as
straight as err… needles. But seems there are circular needles! And who would
have thought that a ‘row counter’ is not just another name for an usher, but a
device used during knitting to keep track of number of stitches? Just when you
think a ‘ball winder’ is a labourer in a factory that makes cricket balls, you
are shown an inanimate contraption used to reshape huge chunks of yarn into
more manageable smaller balls.
When you hear the
term‘worsted’, the old school grammar boy in you is aghast. An adjective is
quite simply not a verb and cannot, repeat, cannot have a past complete form.
But you of course panicked for no reason; it is just a type of fabric texture.
You take delight in that
cracker of a goal that comes off Messi’s left foot, but would you have known
that there is a zipper foot, a gathering foot and an embroidery foot? All
accessories of a sewing machine to create different types of stitches, you are
told. In cricket, you hold the ball by the seam and send down a ripper with all
your might, but you never knew that a ‘seam ripper’ could turn out to be a
sewing tool to just undo stitches! You know a straight line but you are of
course totally ignorant of ‘A’ line, pencil line and princess line, shapes of
skirts as it were. An ‘invisible zipper’ sounds like something out of J.K. Rowling’s
dramatically imaginative world of Hogwarts, but alas, it
is anything but invisible; just a zipper that is structured such that it won’t
show when sewn on. And no, a bobbin is not a cross between a giraffe and a seal
with three legs, six fins and two snouts; it is a case that holds and releases
thread on a sewing machine. Or some such.
And thus life unfolds. You learn a new word
every day, a new phrase every week. But alongside you also see a fascinating
world emerge. Of colours and patterns, of fabrics and materials, of scissors
and needles, of measuring tapes and rulers. But more important, a world of
passion and imagination, of hard work and determination. A world of creating
the most beautiful things from absolute nothings. And at some point, you just
become a part of that fascinating world, even if just as a humble
assistant.
