We Have Thumbs

So I realize that at the moment most of the people coming here are going to be people who already know me, but I figure I should probably say some stuff about who I am and what I do, just in case.

I also realize that I have a distressing tendency to begin posts with “So,” but I’m working on that.

I’m mostly a fiber arts person, myself, I knit, I spin, I collect fiber and tools for both, I’m starting to experiment with dying, both fabric and fiber, and I make fiber art pieces to go with stories and books. If you have a Ravelry account you can see some of my stuff there, under emilytheslayer. When I was a kid my grandmother taught me how to crochet, and I did that for a while but it didn’t stick. Then in November of 2005 I was living in Little Rock, Arkansas, gearing up for a giant move to the Boston area for graduate school, and out of nowhere decided I was going to learn how to knit. This urge happened to coincide with a sale on craft books at Barnes and Noble, so I picked up a couple of knitting books and pretty much never looked back. A year or two ago now I was given a drop spindle and started trying to learn how to spin, which was frustrating because unlike knitting, it wasn’t something I could just learn from a book! At this point I’m a pretty decent spinner, and I’ve successfully taught several other people how to knit. Which is awesome! Watching the light come on for someone when the knitting suddenly makes sense is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been lucky enough to witness, let me tell you! Some of the artists that will be featured on the podcast are actually people I’ve taught to knit, and at least one of them calls me her “knitting mommy,” which cracks me up to no end.

The art stuff is fairly new for me, and still kind of funny. What happened is kind of a convoluted story, but I’ll attempt to make it reasonably clear. Shira Lipkin was asking for writing prompts for a project she was working on, and I supplied one. Just some words that were running through my head, no big deal, “Wool and silk and wood.” You know, the things I obsess over. She turned it into a poem that you can read here, and was her first professional sale. That was pretty cool, so not long after that when Shira put out a call to artists to make stuff for her to write about during Blogathon, I responded! During Blogathon Shira wrote a short story or poem once an hour for 24 hours, with sponsors pledging donations to the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, and the items being auctioned off to raise more funds for the center. I knit her two pieces, some baby booties and a lacy cowl, which both got stories and went off to new homes. Then came a friendship with Catherynne M. Valente, whose novels have a habit of turning into folk art. What I mean by that is people are often inspired by her works and end up making art about them. So there are cds that go along with some of her novels, and visual art in several different mediums; jewelry, paintings, knitted things, and more. So when her latest novel, Palimpsest, came out and art was being created for the story, I jumped in and made wristbands. I could explain them, but unless you’ve read the book they won’t make a lick of sense. My current project involves spinning yarn to go with one of Shira’s stories, a nice twist on our usual method of collaboration! Shira has a story in the upcoming Interfictions anthology, produced by the very nifty Interstitial Arts Foundation. I have plans for an art yarn to go with the story, and I’ll talk more about that at a later date. It’s going to be cool, though, I can tell you that.

Other stuff I do or have done or am getting into includes dying skirts and fiber and yarn, making silly yarn hair accessories, a little bit of sewing here and there, and now this podcast.

Up next I should be able to start talking about some of the people you’ll hear from on the show, now that I have some of this other stuff out of the way!