The power of knitting as a tool for bad mental health days:
*No mistakes are permanent
*You can physically see and measure the progress you make even in the smallest session
*All you have to do is count and follow the pattern
*Distracts my hands and brain when I think I’m going to spiral down/ panic/ dissociate
*If I want to knit tiny tight complicated lace I can. If I want to knit huge soft squishy blankets I can. There’s a knitting pattern for every mental health emergency
*Wearing socks that I’ve made myself feels like an act of self-love, feels like taking care of myself
*Seeing other people wear/ use and love things I’ve knitted for them is the best kind of validation
*Knitting is forgiving, loving and doesn’t hurt anyone
you should have offered them four 12×12 squares and a bottle of glue
As hilarious as that is…
… we’re out of glue.
Completely out of glue. The glue slime trend that has swept the middle schools in our area has maxed out all outlets of glue from December 18th to today’s date- February 6th. We keep getting shipments of glue, but they only come in 20-bottle boxes and they are completely gone by the time the weekend is out. Children are buying them by the armful.
And I would find this cute and honestly amazing that these kiddos are getting their first taste of entrepreneurship (mine was in high school, where I made novelty school ID’s) if it weren’t for the involvement of the parents.
Because the kids are like ‘aw, you don’t have any? Ok. We’ll try somewhere else- thank you! Where’s your glitter?’
The parents… oh gods the parents.
Calling us up at 9am- “What do you MEAN you don’t have any glue!? ITS A BASIC CRAFT ITEM! YOU HAVE TO HAVE GLUE!”
“You’re telling me that you DON’T CARRY GLUE?”
“I’m calling your corporate office to tell them just how wholly unprepared you all are because this is the fourth store I’ve called and NONE of you have any glue.”
“Can I pre-order? What do you MEAN I have to order from the website?”
“When will you be getting more? You don’t KNOW! HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW!? Two weeks at the EARLIEST!?”
“Can you call me when you get some? YOU CAN’T EVEN CALL ME WHEN YOU GET IT IN?”
I once caught one of our framers taking a call like these and I saw her re-inact Winona Ryder’s entire range of facial expressions a la SAG awards, eventually ending in her left eye going slightly wall when the angry parent finally hung up.
And there are some that call every single day, asking the same questions and hoping that they’ll get a different answer. But no. I’m sorry. The Glue Fairy didn’t make a surprise visit last night. We did not plant the glue seeds in time for the harvest and now there is a glue famine. The small child that we sent to fetch more glue has been captured by witches- who are now intent on raising her as their own and we wish them luck.
One day, my brother will have children and they will ask me about the Glue Famine of 2017 and I will recall a very specific instance wherein I could feel flecks of spittle coming through the end of the phone.
One day I shall die and a team of necromancers will raise me from my crumbling sarcophagus and the very first words from my revived, husk of a maw will be ‘WE ARE STILL OUT OF GLUE, CRETINOUS FILTH!’
And this is how I knew that 2017 was going to be a bad year. Retail-mancy: I divine the fall of our nation by the fact that we are perpetually out of basic adhesives. And its not the children that buy them that make it a problem, but the parents who imagine that we somehow have control over the entire damn glue industry.
Why you want to yell at me for telling you the truth is beyond me when you could be putting all that energy towards not sucking. GIT GUD.
I just learned today that tomorrow our store will be hopping on the glue slime trend and making an end cap to make easy access to our stock of glues, glitters, and I suppose we might be adding borax to our inventory.
Need I remind you that this is what our glue stock has looked like for the past two months:
We just got some in two days ago and its already gone.
So you have to imagine the position we’re in here- where we’re advertising glue that does not exist for more than three days every two to four weeks because of these tots are hell-bent on selling slime to their sandbox buddies.
We’re not selling glue. We’re selling the concept of glue. We are selling the desire for glue. We are inspiring others to covet the glue we do not have. The glue is unknowable. It is invisible, intangible, ineffable. One day the glue uprising shall be upon us, and none shall speak its name.
So like just in case you didn’t get the message-
We are out of glue.
Glue we are out of.
Out of glue we are.
We glue of are out.
Because the dozen or so rows where we used to stock our glue is now a gaping cavity of woe, our heathen customers have decided that this is the perfect space to lazily put things that they just suddenly decide they don’t want anymore. And for some ridiculous reason, the most popular thing to leave where an associate can find it is fake flowers.
Not even the first time this has happened, people. People are attempting to build a memorial to the glue that was, and will never be again. The time of glue has passed, we shall remember it fondly. Ashes to ashes, goop to goop.
Rest in Particulate, Glue Aisle.
Its about to get…
…significantly worse.
I’ve had several people contact me about an email that went out from our company, advertising Glue Slime and giving out a recipe (instead of borax, using baking soda and contact lens solution… I weep for our local optometrists). Luckily, we were sent a large ration of glue on Thursday in preparation for the endcap that we just put up.
And for a moment, the balance was restored. We could rebuild! There was enough glue to fill the dozen or so places in its home and have a good amount for the display. Sadly, we were only given a few bottles of clear glue- which is the one that people really want because…. clear slime. But things were looking better!
But little did we know…
… President’s Day was coming.
And the children… needed something to do…
Here is a photo of the display on Saturday morning.
And here it is on Monday morning:
They have ravaged our glue surplus to 1/10th. The glue that filled its home space is completely gone. I am honestly surprised that the meager 40 bottles we have left are still there, and by the time I finish writing this- they may not be.
Why would you do this to us, Mr President?
So while we have those 40 bottles, we can at least fend off the screaming parents, but I anticipate that a considerable amount of screaming will have already started by the time I start my shift this afternoon.
I shall scream as well.
I scream, they scream- we all scream into the yawning void of the glue section in hopes that the Elmer, God of Cheap Adhesives, will hear our cries and grant us the glue we so desperately yearn for. We shall be united in our despair.
We have reached a place in our glue stock where we are consistently keeping up with demand, more or less. We get it in on Wednesday, they all come in on the weekend and we’re out by Monday- giving people one day to bitch and moan because what would these people do if they weren’t allowed to scream at us for a whole thirty seconds?
Well, I came in to work on Wednesday and I found this at our customer service desk:
Look out world- we have the gallons!
People asked for the gallons of glue, they got the gallons of glue.
There were 20 of them on that endcap. I saw a woman buy three of them at once (and of course she wanted to use a coupon on each and every one of them because ‘gosh- who knew that glue would be so expensive!’ Like… lady- you’re getting this at 20 cents an ounce if you get it without a coupon. It’s not expensive, you’re just a cheapskate.)
By the end of Wednesday, they were all gone. We sold 20 gallons of glue in four hours. People were laying down $60 for glue. I could feel my Great Depression-raised grandpa shaking his head from…. I dunno, probably Purgatory.
Now the entire area knows that we have the glue gallons- the word has spread. But we don’t have them in stock and guess what emotions they have over it! If you guessed ‘anger’ then you’re right! So they do what they’ve always done when they need a literal gallon of glue and there are no gallons of glue to be had: they buy a ton of individual bottles.
But now knowing that there is an easier way to do this that is yet inaccessible to them fills them with ennui, and as they walk through the store their excitement over their hoard wanes and they put some of it back.
Now, any person of the retail-worker persuasion will tell you that a customer never puts an item back where they’re supposed to. That would be, frankly, preposterous. So instead, as they lose their grip on their desire for glue, they leave a single bottle where it is most convenient to them- a symbol of their defeat.
This is a fancy way of saying that I found a bottle of glue in every aisle one night because someone got pissy about not being able to buy it by the gallon and forgot to get a basket.
THE EPIC SAGA CONTINUES
how the fuck did we get from 12×12 squares of paper the the glue famine
can we please bring body glitter back in 2017. we already have enough to deal with in 2016 but 2017 is the year we need to fully commit ourselves to glitter and all things that sparkle. who is with me.
i hope you all realize that reblogging this is a binding spiritual contract and i expect follow through
You can make your own body glitter incredibly easily. You’ll need:
Pure aloe vera gel. I get a big ol tub off of ebay for like a fiver, keeps me going for a nice long time.
Some small clean jars to put yer goop in. I get a big batch of clear screwtop plastic storage jars off ebay for a quid and make glitter gel gifts for friends. Keeping the goop size small means you use it up fast before it dries out.
An assload of glitter. Again, ebay has this in many different sizes and colours, which is what you want. I also get mine from facepaint-uk.com, which is my favourite shop in the world probably. make sure to get a variety of sizes, colours, and shapes: that looks best tbh. If you can get it in ziplock baggies as opposed to like jars and shit then it saves you money on pointless packaging because who cares
HOW:
Take jar. Shoof a buncha glitter in the jar. Not enough to fill it, fill it like a quarter of the way with a mix of glitters. I usually fill it a third of the way because I like my glitter gel to be excruciatingly glittery
Squirt some aloe gel on top to fill the jar half way. Stir carefully until a gritty paste is formed. nice
Add a bit more aloe and stir again. Keep adding gel a bit at a time until a smooth glitter gel is formed.
Put the lid on and marvel at your creation! Well done. Now wear it all the time. I wear mine to work habitually. It might dry out if you don’t screw the lid on well – but it can be rehydrated with a few drops of water and a good mix. I tend to tear through mine pretty fast though.
Let the contract be bled on and wrought.
For those of you who want to make your own glitter gel, this is a very good tutorial.
(Listen closely: you can hear @peteventers muttering “nooooo not glitter.”)
VIKING LORE HELD THAT BOTH WEAVING AND SORCERY WERE WOMEN’S WORK, DITTO THE ORDERING OF THE HOUSE ACCOUNTS. MANY CULTURES HAVE HISTORICALLY LEFT ACCOUNTANCY TO WOMEN! MANY SOCIETIES HAVE ALSO LEFT FIBERCRAFT TO WOMEN BECAUSE IT IS TEDIOUS AND REPETITIVE BUT ALSO VERY NECESSARY. SEE ALSO: COOKING, CLEANING, BUDGETING, EMOTIONAL LABOR.
ANYWAY FIBERCRAFT, AS I HAVE DISCOVERED VIA LEARNING TO DO A WHOLE LOT OF IT, IS ALMOST ENTIRELY APPLIED MATHEMATICS EXCEPT FOR THE PART THAT’S ENGINEERING (WHICH IS ALSO MATHEMATICS). ONCE YOU LEARN EVEN THE BASICS OF KNITTING, SEWING, AND WEAVING, IT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE TO REALIZE MEN THINK WOMEN ARE BY VIRTUE OF THEIR SEX (these are of course sexist gender-essentialist men who are not cool with trans people) ILL-EQUIPPED TO DO MATH SOMEHOW. HOLY SHIT, HAVE YOU SEEN HEIRLOOM KNITTING PATTERNS? HAVE YOU SEEN THE FORETHOUGHT THAT GOES INTO WORKING A HARNESS LOOM? OH MY GOD.
THIS IS, THEN, WHERE PROGRAMMING (AND SORCERY) COMES IN. A PROGRAM IS “CODED INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE AUTOMATIC PERFORMANCE OF A PARTICULAR TASK”. WEAVING IS OFTEN A BINARY PATTERN: OVER/UNDER. PUNCH CARDS ON ADVANCED LOOMS CAN SET WHETHER THREADS GO OVER OR UNDER, AND SWITCHING THE CARDS AROUND YIELDS DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CLOTH. A DUDE NAMED JAQUARD DEVELOPED EXTREMELY COMPLEX PUNCH CARDS THAT STARTED TO ENCODE HIGH VOLUMES OF INFORMATION FOR INCREASINGLY AUTOMATED LOOMS. A HUNDRED YEARS LATER WOMEN ARE USED AGAIN FOR THE ‘TEDIOUS BUT NECESSARY’ BUSINESS OF USING BINARY ON/OFF CARDS TO WRITE PROGRAMS FOR EARLY COMPUTERS.
WHERE SORCERY FITS INTO ALL THIS IS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A WOMAN USE A CARD LOOM REALLY FAST? IT’S THE MOST INTIMIDATING SKILLSET OUTSIDE OF A RODEO. SHE 100% LOOKS LIKE SHE COULD MAKE YOUR BUTT FALL OFF IF YOU CROSSED HER. APPLIED MATHEMATICS / ENGINEERING IS BAFFLING TO WATCH FROM THE OUTSIDE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO FIBERCRAFT. YOU CAN MANIFEST WITH YOUR MIND AND HANDS THIS HIGHER AND TRUER ARCANE PLANE OF EXISTENCE INTO A NICE SCARF AND KEEP YOUR HUSBAND ALIVE FOR THE WINTER. MAYBE IF HE CROSSES YOU YOU CAN ALSO MAKE HIS BUTT FALL OFF.
I TOTALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MEN DO FIBERCRAFT TOO BUT THIS WAS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN, MATH, FIBERCRAFT, AND MAGIC, SO THERE YOU GO.
Steel Phoenix Studios 