Every profession, hobby, sport, etc… has it’s own humor. Some are inside jokes based on the vocabulary and jargon unique to the subject. These, I’ll admit, tend to be my favorite. Some are based on stereotypes of the people who participate in it or create broad (and harmful) generalizations. These are the ones I often find more problematic.
I recently received a new work laptop as half the keyboard on my old one literally just stopped working. I’m not traveling now, especially not for work. But someday I’ll be back in a company office, most likely as a visitor in a conference room with a bunch of other colleagues. I know from experience that it’s handy if I have a personalized sticker of some sort on my machine so it’s easy to find my machine again. My old laptop has a very-worn-can’t-relocate-it “I voted” sticker. So I figured I’d find a fun crafty themed sticker to put on my machine.
This was surprisingly hard. Some I eliminated due to taste – I just don’t like cutesy pastel pinks and blues in squishy cartoony shapes with faces. There’s a whole category of those and I know there are plenty of people who like that. It’s just not me… nor is it the professional image I want to portray even if it was something I liked elsewhere in my life. And while there are days I’m sympathetic to the sentiment “my job is getting in the way of my knitting/crafting/crochet,” or “I just want my coffee and to knit in my pajamas”, again… not appropriate on my company laptop. Especially as it would most often be seen at meetings with higher level directors, VPs, and C-suite folks! (Also – I hate spending all day in my pajamas if I’m honest, but you do you if that’s your thing).
I also wanted to skip any exclusively knitting themed (or crochet, though those are a smaller group). This again is just personal preference. I love knitting, but I also like crochet, sewing, and spinning. There’s an awful lot of crochet vs knitting, and I don’t want my laptop to suggest an exclusive allegiance to one. Spinning stuff if ok though – you need thread and yarn to do most fiber/textile related crafts. So I’m cool with those.
Anyway – the above are largely limitations due to personal preference, as well appropriateness for the intended use. There are others though that I see over and over and over again which I think are not funny. Some of them I even used to laugh at, but when I look back I think it’s because I understand why they were supposed to be funny, and by laughing I got to be part of the craft club. But now – I just look and think “ugh” most of the time. So apologies if I’m about to rain on your favorite craft jokes… but hear me out, ok? Here are a few I don’t think are funny:
“Knitting/Spinning/etc… is cheaper than therapy”
Or, more rarely, “Knitting/Spinning/etc… is cheaper than medication”
This is one I never found amusing. First of all, the “cheaper” premise is just wrong. I mean seriously, think about how easy it is to drop a couple hundred bucks on yarn, or luxury fibers. Pretty sure I spent more on yarn yesterday* than a typical therapy session costs… And lots of people resort to buying stuff they don’t need because they are unhappy. But more critically, this suggests that self-medicating is a good alternative to therapy. Craft time can be a critical part of self-care and mental health management. But it does not replace a therapist if that’s what a person needs. Your knitting will not walk you through how to better manage a relationship that’s falling apart. It will not help you untangle the impacts of past trauma on your present. Nor does it replace medication. It might give you the emotional energy and patience to carry out the strategies you’ve devised with a therapist, or help support the good effects of a medication. So yes, crafts can be critical to mental health for many many people (I include myself here) but it will not replace assistance from a trained therapist, or the need many people have for medication. And it’s not funny to suggest that it does. It just stigmatizes getting professional help.
“I knit so I don’t murder people”
Ok, I really kinda get this one. It’s definitely one I used to giggle at when I saw it. But in a world where so many people seem so very ready to inflict violence on those they disagree with, and in which far too many carry out that violence – it doesn’t sound so funny anymore. Look, making sure I have my craft time helps ensure I’m more patient with myself, my husband, my cats, and anybody else I interact with. I was a grumpy-gus while my finger was healing in January. But I wasn’t going to murder anybody. Advertising that your anger and self control issues are such that if you couldn’t craft you’d end peoples’ lives? Yeah – not going on my work laptop. This is also one that to me screams “white privilege” because I feel like it’s something white women would think was funny until they saw it on something a Black woman was carrying. Part of the “joke” is that we think of (white) women sitting there with their knitting needles (or fiber craft of choice) as meek, gentle images of peaceful domestic life. And yet… if you really knew the violence hiding under that innocent exterior. So yeah, just not that funny to me anymore.
I also find jokes about using craft implements to inflict violence on others to be less and less funny for similar reasons. Yes, some of our tools are potentially dangerous. This is why we should have good safety practices when using them. It doesn’t mean we joke about hurting people with them – because we really really could! When I was practicing aikido in the US (no dojos close enough here) we had weapons practice. The weapons were a staff or jo (which is straight up the ACTUAL weapon) and a wooden sword (bokken). We were taught to treat both as equally real because both could be used to severely injure your practice partner or those around you. You didn’t “pretend” to hit somebody or threaten them and you always used safety best practices. Shop classes stress that their tools are dangerous and should be treated with care. And when I worked in the college theater costume shop, we were taught the same for the sewing machines and even pins and needles. Yet, so many crafters act like the potential to injure others with their tools is just a joke – like it couldn’t really happen. Again, I think we also overlook some racial and gender problems with these jokes. If a woman waves around a knitting needle and threatens to “stab you if you don’t do as I say”, I feel like people are more likely to laugh if it’s a white woman and call the cops if it’s a Black woman. And would you think it was as funny if it was a man waving around a screw driver, which is arguably no more dangerous?
“It’s not hoarding if it’s yarn”
And similarly “you can never have too much yarn”
Yes, yes you can have too much yarn. What is “too much” can vary greatly from person to person. Some people only buy yarn as they use it and have little to no stash at all. This was me when I first started because I didn’t want a bunch of yarn I didn’t know how to use (I have some fabrics like that…). Others have a HUGE stash, and it’s ok. I think some people see this joke as merely a way to validate that it’s OK to have a large stash. I’m not anti-SABLE (Stash acquired beyond life expectancy) because most of us can’t guess our precise life expectancy. I also know people who are building up a stash pre-retirement when they know their budget (and potentially their mobility) will be less. And for many, having a range of yarns available at hand lets them have spontaneity and flexibility in their next project. It’s their artists’ palette. My (still fairly modest) stash functions in part this way. But the reason this isn’t funny is because it references a real disorder (hoarding) and suggests buying yarn is never ever an issue.
So what is too much? Too much is when it interferes with your life, when it’s a compulsive need to buy or acquire more.
If a person is using the money they need for other essentials to buy yarn – that’s a problem. This also ties back to “X is cheaper than therapy” – a person regularly compulsively buying yarn they won’t be able to use or cannot afford to purchase has a real problem and should be seeking treatment, and telling them that there’s no such thing as too much yarn isn’t helping them. I think most of us have heard of “retail therapy”, a phrase which I wish we used with more care. The occasional shopping trip for fun with friends or to blow off a bit of stress is one thing. I’ve definitely indulged on occasion. But it doesn’t replace real help and it’s not a valid treatment plan.
When the yarn is taking over a persons’ living space, or can’t be cared for… that’s in hoarding territory. Again, this is a “funny joke” referencing a real problem real people have: hoarding. By specifying that collecting large amounts of yarn is not hoarding, the “joke” clearly indicates that here “hoarding” is the specific compulsive disorder and not merely “the practice of collecting or accumulating something”. Hoarding as a condition should be taken seriously and not made fun of. There is zero reason why hoarding as a disorder would never involve the purchase of yarn (or other craft supplies). In fact, as hoarders often justify their collections of objects as things that might be needed someday, craft supplies are especially easy to hoard in this manner.
I would like to add here that I generally find I don’t mind references to a yarn “hoard” because a hoard is just a large quantity of something (often hidden or secret). And again, the context of “yarn hoard” often reference dragons and a dragons’ hoard – ie: fantasy elements rather than psychological disorders. I do genuinely believe people can have a yarn stash which provides pleasure to look at and touch. I hang mine on the wall where I can pet it after all! But I also know that I do not need to and should not buy every pretty skein of yarn I see, or take advantage of every sale that comes along. Buying for buying’s sake is not a good road to go down and often indicates some other underlying problem.
So what did I end up getting?
One is of a drop spindle with “The original fidget spinner” printed next to it. As I said above, I’m happy to promote my love of spinning since yarn is necessary to all the other crafts. And I do use my spindle as a sort of fidget spinner. If I don’t have something to do with my hands, I will find something – clicking retractable pens, doodling, pulling my rings on and off… my hands aren’t going to stay still anyway. So for me this is a sticker with a positive message: it helps normalize the idea that just because I’d doing something with my hands doesn’t mean I’m not actively engaged in our conversation/meeting/etc… rather I value it enough take steps to be more engaged. I’m also willing to go with the stretch of “original” here as meaning “far older” than the dedicated fidget spinners being sold today. Probably the original fidget spinner was something like pulling apart pieces of grass, or playing with a small stone… or the stick that became the first spindle. I will say that something which associates spindles (or hand crafts) to fidget spinners could go the wrong route if phrased differently. For example, I wouldn’t want anything that referenced spinning as “more productive” than a fidget spinner, and thus “better”.
I also bought one of a dragon on a large pile of yarn – though I was pretty picky about what sort of dragon. I’ll take photos when they come.
*hey! I made it all the way through January before I bought any yarn this year.