It occurs to me that if you follow me on Facebook, Ravelry, and/or Twitter (and if you don’t you should), none of this is news to you. Still, I’m going to use a lot of exclamation points and pretend like it is.
I got a pattern into Knitty!! I dropped a lot of hints about this. But now I’m officially unveiling the pattern, and it is a Beer Mitt, for all of your cold-weather outdoor beer drinking needs. It will keep your beverage cold and your hand warm.
The deadline for pattern submissions was in the summer, and these photos were taken in July. An alternate caption for this photo could be, “It is 100 degrees and humid, mosquitos are biting all my exposed parts, I am sitting 2 feet from a FIRE, wearing a COAT and a WOOL MITTEN, my roommates want to kill me, and I am DRINKING this motherfucking beer while it is still motherfucking COLD.” It clearly paid off, though.
Do,you think your language is appropriate?????
Hey Helen!
Haven’t seen you in ages, I hope you’re well.
You know, I’ve given a lot of thought to this issue. I tend to use pretty colorful language in my everyday life, but I’m hesitant to put it on the internet. I don’t want to offend anyone, and I certainly don’t want to lose customers. On the other hand, I want to be true to myself. I’m not saying I’m going to go all Pulp Fiction on my blog, but chances are, if I’ve used a “bad” word, I’ve thought pretty hard about whether or not it needed to be there.
I’ve consulted some peers about it too, and ultimately I’ve decided that the “motherfuckers” in that sentence are essential to the message I’m trying to convey. That was an extremely frustrating photo shoot and I wanted to communicate that, along with maintaining a sense of humor about it.
I actually posted a “clean” version of that sentence on facebook and I felt that it lost all it’s power. It wasn’t as funny or sharp and it just didn’t feel like ME. And that’s important to me. I never use curse words on my facebook or twitter accounts, but I want my blog to be a place for my friends, supporters, customers and potential customers to get to know me better and what it comes down to is that, for me, authenticity trumps word choice.
There are places where I’ve substituted “crap” and “freaking” for the words I really wanted to use and, weirdly enough, afterward I felt dirty and dissatisfied, like I’d sold out. Honestly, I think a few words our culture has imbued with more power than others aren’t worth making myself feel that way, nor are they worth starting massive debates or losing friendships–and I hope you feel the same way.
I realize that you might be offended by this. I’m really sorry you feel that way. But I feel comfortable with the small amount of swearing I do on this blog–maybe once every 5 or 10 posts?–and if I feel there’s no better way to get my point across every once in a while, I’m okay with that.