But “sorry” is all I have. I didn’t post here for a week even though I thought about here everyday (or maybe every hour). But I had a really bad week and I just couldn’t bring myself to write anything. I had too much anger and frustration bubbling up right to the surface and to be honest, I don’t want other people to see that stuff. They say a writer always reveals themselves and while I can admit to having really dark thoughts inside my head, I’m too ashamed to let anyone see what they are. I don’t want anyone, not anyone at all, to ever see that part of me. So I just stayed away from here.

For any who might wonder, no my bad week was not because of that (stupid) election we just had here in the States. Don’t misunderstand, it was a real toughie and the aftermath is even worse. Me and probably 100 million other Americans are sick at heart watching the country tear itself apart a spew insults and hate on every corner of the internet. But that is not what kept me from writing.

I had some trouble with a friend, a very dear friend. I almost lost this friend. And it was over knitting. It just tore me up that knitting, this all consuming passion of mine, this thing that I love and try to convince everyone else to love too, was the thing that might cost me someone I count as special.

Its resolved now, thank the Lord, which is the only reason I can write anything at all. But for days I just couldn’t. I couldn’t knit either. I could barely eat. I managed to pull on a mask and face my knitting students with a smile but that was about it. You see I’ve built so much of my life around knitting and when knitting became that thing that reminded me of this huge looming confrontation, I just didn’t know where to rest my mind. Knitting is my cooping strategy, its what I do to avoid all the sucky things in life. I’ve never been in a situation where knitting was part of the big sucky thing. So I put up some emotional walls, re-watched a lot of episodes of The Walking Dead (which is the most nihilist show that I can personally stand), and just wallowed in it all.

As far as what the dispute was over, I’m not going to talk about it. I can’t actually, not without letting some really ugly parts of me come out. But I will say that while I am a darn good knitter I am terrible at the business of knitting. There is quite a healthy industry around this knitting that we all do and I tend to forget that the people in that business are in business. Me? I doodle along, I knit what I want to knit, teach what I want to teach, and I’m thrilled when my knitting and knitting related activities generate some money. (I use it to pay off the bills for this site and then I go to a local yarn store and blow the rest.)  I forget that the other people in this business are not trying to convince every single soul on the planet to take up knitting; they are trying to make money. And so I get taken advantage of. A lot. This was not the first time.

• There was the time that I got fired from a LYS when I was pulling in nearly $1000 a month in class fees. The shop owner thought they could keep my students, and the income, and move new instructors in. They went out of business, and most of my students followed me. But let me tell you it came as a total shock.
• There was the time that a LYS offered to take me on a spinning instructor. They asked for samples of my handspun yarn to put on display while they drummed up interest in the classes. I gave them a basket full. Then they “accidentally” gave away my handspun yarn as door prizes for some promotional event. Another shock.
• There was the time that I showed up at a shop to teach a class and another instructor was there to “sit in”. She had signed up students for herself to teach the exact same class I was teaching and she needed me to teach it all to her first. Being fairly naive, I managed to be shocked. Again.

Those are the three big ones, the times I was confronted by the greed of people in this business and basically stood around like a deer in the headlines. Afterwards I was righteously pissed off but none of those sucky times put me off my knitting. None of them involved a friend though and I guess that was the difference.

So that’s my excuse for avoiding this place. Sorry. It won’t happen again; I won’t let it. In furtherance of making good on that promise I am going to do the thing that my mother (who is the smartest person I know) has been telling me to do for some time: stop trusting everyone and get contracts made up. I need to start taking the business side of knitting more seriously because everyone else takes it very freaking seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I have no plans to do anything other than knit what I want, teach what I want to teach, and chuckle with delight when people actually pay me for it. But I don’t ever want to have last week again.

printablecontracts.com here I come.