i have a very hard time remembering the names of yarn brands -- and even yarn types and weights. and i have a resistance to knowing them.
i do not think there is some sort of bohemian cachet in not knowing the names of yarns. i did not cultivate this trait.
remember in grade school, how sometimes, you'd just say something, and some little moronicus would go, "nuh uh" -- usually somebody you weren't even talking to? wasn't that puzzling? it was for me. it just stopped me in my tracks. it's hard when you're a kid, to keep talking under such conditions. i was saying things that were perfectly natural and honest -- which some people, of course, simply accepted -- but some people didn't believe me. my dad's a nurse, my cousins are black, my sister has steel rods running up and down her spine. nuh uh.
my life was literally incredible! i think it still may be!
i have a resistance, a completely conscious one, to the heavy branding associated with yarns and the "industry". but i like words, of course, so why do i not like to learn these words -- and why is it hard to even get them unconsciously, when there is so much other stuff i pick up without trying? i am pretty sure anyone anywhere would want me on their quizzo team, if my "jeopardy" track record is any indication. and yet, we must hope there isn't yarn "industry" quizzo or i am dead.
i am generally familiar with the yarns i have purchased because i have seen the wrappers. once in the last year or two i bought some rowan yarn called ... forgive me... either it is CALLED "big yarn" and i was calling it "big knit" or the other way around. i don't know, i don't know! but whichever it was i was wrong and the young twentysomethings at rosie's yarn cellar would snap at me with exasperation, even embarassment -- not that they do this to EVERYBODY -- a certain level of intimacy has been reached for me there i dare say -- they would snap at me the way you snap at your mom or your grandma when she keeps calling something by a slightly wrong name. "no, nana, it's not big KNIT. it's big YARN."
or the other way! whatever!
here are some words i know go with yarn but i have absolutely no idea what they are: cascade. blitz. um... shit. i knew one more that i was going to put here.
i know what koigu is and i know what noro is -- even if you took the labels off i would know! i know colinette!
we got the orvis catalog this week and it has all kinds of new patterns for flies. it's been slow going with the flies but i've been thinking about it more lately and last night bookmarked a pattern for something called a "hula shrimp". which requires a material called "flashabou". i do not have any, nor had i heard of it before, but i am sure it is some hybrid of krystal flash and marabou. there! why was THAT so easy and pleasant? are these things not the corrolaries of yarn?
(to be fair, when i started tying flies i kept insisting i needed a material called "spackle hackle". there is no such thing as spackle hackle.)
i do not know the difference between dk weight and worsted weight and sport weight and fingering weight and lace weight. but let me guess, i just accidentally listed them in perfect descending order, right?
fly patterns have fun directions like "tie in a bunch of white zonker." that's really appealing! who's gonna forget white zonker? but is there one brand that rates above the others? does it have a name? i think that's where it starts to fall apart for me.
was there a time when yarn brands, and specific lines of yarn, and even colors of yarn, had better names?
like bands used to have better names? they really did -- band names suck now, too. the full-page ads in the free weeklies, for the small clubs that feature about sixty bands a month -- crap name after crap name after crap name. well, no, "better than ezra" is still a good name. does anybody but me sit around shouting "that's from hemingway!" while drinking coffee and eating crumb cake and reading the paper in public? but "death cab for cutie"... does anybody but me sit around shouting "that's a line from a song on culture club's third album and it STILL sucks!" while drinking iced tea and eating crumb cake and looking at ben's paper?
you want better band names? here's your better bandnames. among my favorites: Dudley Piro and the Unseemly Girl Adventure. Handful of Breeders. Donna Nugent and the Fresh Consultant Orchestra. Bag of Thumbs.
(another good way to get band names is to check your blog's stats, and look at the keyword phrases.)
if there were a line of yarn called "Bag of Thumbs", i would so be breaking the self-imposed yarn moratorium. if there were a yarn company called Buckaroo Cooper and the Jerusalem Porn Stars, i would count heavily on its greatness. i am very susceptible to such charms.