give handmade!

I must tell you, I am mighty sick of the statistics. Numbers that track our every move to what store and how much money we spend this holiday season. The burden is laid upon the consumer to put the economy back on track, and I for one am sick and tired of having numbers thrown at me. Evidently we must go to the nearest (or farthest!) department store at 4 am on Black Friday and shop, only to continue shopping on Cyber Monday.

I finally saw the movie "Miracle on 34th Street" for the first time the other night. That movie was made in 1947, and Kris Kringle laments the commercialization of Christmas...so what we are dealing with here goes way back, of course, and I am not going to be able to change it -- by much.

This year, I asked my family and relatives early on what they would like for Christmas, and warned them: if they don't tell me exactly what they want, they will have to put up with my handknits. Guess what happened. They requested handknit socks.

Little do they know that this is not a burden to me, on the contrary, I rejoiced. You mean I get to spend the entire gift giving season doing what I like best?? Seems the gift was given to me, instead. You mean I don't have to run around, go to the mall and try to find a parking spot, only to have to stand in line, while I am being bombarded with holiday music from a thousand loudspeakers? While I have to watch little children being dragged around, getting crankier all the time, and hassled parents are trying to figure out how many gifts they can afford...

I always try to make at least a few handmade gifts, but this year I re-doubled my efforts. I took the handmade pledge (see button in sidebar; click on it and you, too, can participate!).

To help spread the handmade idea, a local arts organization put together 4 craft fairs in conjunction with existing traditional events here in the NYS capital region, and I will be participating. I do realize that it involves a retail situation and crafters trying to sell things, but I like to see it as an expansion of what we do in our homes all the time: make things by hand in a thoughtful and skilled way. Crafters at the venues will have such an enormous impact...the sheer number of us showing that it's OK to know how to make things ourselves, and give the consumer the opportunity to purchase something handmade from a real person rather than run to a soul-less store and buy items that were made in some far away country, by underpaid workers (oh the irony of the "Christmas Tree Shop").

If you are local, please consider coming to one of the four opportunities:

Saturday, December 6th :
Uncle Sam Atrium (upstairs from the Troy Indoor Farmer's Market)
Broadway at 3rd & 4th Street, Troy NY
Event Time:10am-4pm


Sunday, December 7th:

this is during the Victorian Stroll!
YWCA
21 First Street, Troy NY
Event Time:11am-5pm


Saturday, December 13th:

during Winter WonderLARK!
Trinity Church
235 Lark Street, Albany NY
Event Time: 12pm-5pm


Sunday, December 14th:
Trinity Church
235 Lark Street, Albany NY
Event Time: 12pm-5pm

I will be selling my handdyed yarn, handdyed silk scarves, and a variety of warm winter knits for those folks who like to buy ready made. I even think that the handdyed yarn would make a nice gift for any knitter. :)

Hope to see you then, and please don't hesitate to spread the word to everyone you know.

We thank you for your support!

PS: I have just tried about 7 times to put actual paragraphs into this post, but blogger isn't letting me do it. My apologies for a crunched together post. If it works now, it'll be the miracle on Harris Ave in Albany.