Tag Archives: crochet

Yarn Techie

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You know the saying, “Use your friends wisely?” I have this friend, Chelsie…

Jack and I were proud of building a Facebook page for our bookshop. We felt social media-accomplished, slick even, when we added news about my forthcoming book on independent bookstores. But when St. Martin’s Press started saying things like “you need a Twitter presence” and “what about hits from YouTube,” a sinking feeling formed in our guts.

I’d never tweeted anyone in my life; I was raised in a respectable, Southern family.

Enter Chelsie. Twentyish with a Master’s Degree in something to do with computers, she has luminous dark eyes as big as the Earth, and a dancer’s body. Men breathe hard when Chelsie wafts into a room. Plus she’s really, really smart.

Chelsie likes fashion, and cats, and anything to do with computers.

I like cats….

Chelsie offered to help – or maybe I coerced her; it’s all a bit hazy – and soon I was tweeting away, presided over a newly revamped blog, and had an Author page on Facebook connected to Goodreads, Pinterest, Youtube, Flickr and a bunch of other stuff I’d never heard of. When I inherited an iPad, she married it to my laptop with a few flicks of her long red fingernails across the keyboard.

The coolest thing about Chelsie is that she gives instruction tailored to my needs: “OK, here’s the ‘on’ switch,” is her standard opening line.

In appreciation, we try to return favors. See, Jack and I are totally the people you want to know when the apocalypse hits; we can make shoes and furniture, plus Jack is a wonderful singer, so we’re good face-to-face company.

But in a world hurtling through techspace at the speed of human thumbs on a keypad,  our skills are old-fashioned. Our tech queen is a thoroughly modern Chelsie, capable of bringing down a developing nation’s government with her blackberry if she chose. I am VERY glad Chelsie is on our side instead of Amazon’s; she could get anything she wanted online in five seconds or less, but supports local shopping–and independent bookstores in particular.

So Jack made her Indian curry, we sent tomatoes from the garden, and finally, inspired by hot pink yarn found in my stash (how did THAT get in there?!) I made her one of those all-the-rage curly scarves.

Jack photographed it modeled by Val-kyttie, bookshop manager. Chelsie tweeted a pic of herself in the scarf, but I don’t know how to get it off Instagram. (One step at a time….)


 (This was made from eyeballing one a friend brought to the shop’s Needlework Night. Chain 150 LOOSELY with an I hook using standard weight yarn; turn, chain 4, dc in fourth ch from hook, [dc, ch 1] 4 times in same ch, then [dc, ch 1] 5 times in each chain across; turn, chain 4, [dc, ch 1] in each dc across; do not turn, sc in each stitch around for a nice finished edge.)

Scrubbies

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Our bookshop is closed on Mondays, but sometimes it’s our busiest day. It’s part of the small town ethos; you’re not really closed unless the door’s locked and your car is gone. Two Mondays ago, as I sat at the table doing some pricing and sorting, the door opened and two older women walked in.

“Help you?” I smiled.

The two women were embarrassed that they’d barged in, but they were talkative. Staying with relatives in nearby Kingsport as they did every year, they’d made their usual detour to the Tolliver House, the gift shop attached to the outdoor drama. Big Stone Gap’s famous son John Fox Jr. wrote Trail of the Lonesome Pine more than 100 years ago now, and the folk opera created from this novel is still running strong in his native town.

Not so the volunteer pool to continue keeping the gift shop (featuring local crafts and authors) open seven days a week, I explained to the disappointed women. Feeling guilty that Big Stone pretty much rolls up the sidewalks on Mondays, I invited them to go ahead and browse our place. They did, but over and over again, the older lady returned to her disappointment at not getting new scrubbies. Apparently a high point of her annual pilgrimage to Big Stone was getting to buy new crocheted round discs, made from old nylons, that were “perfect” for cleaning the bottoms of pots. She lamented the scrubbies sore as she and her daughter cruised the shop, ultimately buying several Christian romances.

A couple of days after these women came through, in one of those cute coincidences of life, a friend who likes to crochet brought me a dozen scrubbies to sell in the bookstore. I laughed and told her about women visiting from Texas. “I think I’ll mail them some,” I said. “She paid with a check, so I have her address.”

My friend looked skeptical. “You think they’d pay after they got them?”

“‘Course they would!” I said, defensive of my tribe. “Book people are honest!”

“OK, OK,” my scrubby-making friend replied, hands up. “Send ’em.”

Off the scrubbies went, with a wee note explaining that if she didn’t want them, she could mail them back, and if she did want them, please remit $3 each plus whatever the postage was.

Ten days passed and nary a word. My friend, who enjoys teasing me, asked every day, “Hear from scrubby lady yet?”

I remained outwardly confident, but inside, began to wonder. Even people with good intentions don’t always keep up with them in this day and age….

The check came yesterday, folded inside a handwritten note on pretty stationary, thanking me for taking the trouble and having the trust to do such a thing. The check covered three scrubbies and the exact postage.

See? The world is full of good, decent people. And most of them frequent bookshops.

This is a scrubbie. If you want to make your own, crochet pattern central has lots of suggestions. http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/directory/scrubbers.php
And if you want to buy any of my friend Anne’s, I will mail them to you! (She’s raising money for her grandson’s birthday party; it’s a good cause.)