Yesterday, my first day at 33, I woke up at 6AM like a kid on Christmas morning if that kid happens to celebrate Christmas and also happens to be really jacked up about what the day might hold.

Handmade Nation and crafts showcase at the Rio Theatre

I won’t recount the whole day, but I’ll sum up by saying I spent it with new crafty friends, including Faythe Levine, the woman who made Handmade Nation, the film around which the crafty people of Vancouver made an excuse to celebrate for two days.

I was lucky to have Faythe stay at our house, as it meant I got to spend a good long time with her. She’s fun and fascinating and, it turns out, a wonderfully chill and creative shopping date. We spent hours on Main Street, and I’ll miss her the next time I shop there.

Eva (Barefoot Contessa), Faythe (Handmade Nation), Andrea & Rob (Lotus Events/Got Craft?)

Andrea and Rob of Lotus Events put on an incredible show for the film screening at the Rio Theatre last night. Fourteen local crafters set up shop and the stage was filled with people until the lights dimmed for Rob to introduce Faythe and the movie. I’d already seen the film, but I was surprised to enjoy it even more the second time around. Maybe it was because I was sitting in a packed, hometown audience.

I’ve fallen a little more in love with Vancouver after spending so much time with other local crafters. It felt odd when I realized last night as we headed home that I wasn’t the one who’d be heading to the airport in the morning, leaving new friends and good times behind (with the exception, obviously, of Faythe, whom I’m trying very hard not to annoy through email now because I miss her already). It was the perfect end to the perfect birthday to realize I was staying right here, with all these new friends just a bus ride away. I hope the electric vibe and good conversation continue well into the future. Coffee date, anyone?

Also, Handmade Nation will be screening in Vancouver that night, and filmmaker Faythe Levine will be here for her only Canadian appearance!

So, like, what are you doing that night? Perhaps you might consider attending what’s sure to be a wicked event for not only is the film screening complete with Q/A with Faythe, but there will be swag bags for the first 100 tickets sold, there’ll be a craft showcase featuring fourteen local crafters and artists, copies of Handmade Nation (the book) will be available, and Photobooth Vancouver will be set up for wicked fun.

It’s all going down at the Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway at Commercial Drive), doors at 7:00PM.

Note: Vancouver’s a fun city to visit! I can attest to this film being a fabulous excuse for a weekend trip…

Before her trip, her kind book editor suggested she email another author who would be at the show, thus ensuring she’d know at least one other person. This book author was friendly and outgoing and showed the woman what a trade show is all about.

Over the years she never did make a very good business out of her website, but she did enjoy the website a lot and she made great friends from all over the world because lovely people volunteered to work on it with her and she got lots of work doing other things and all that made up for her only sometimes barely breaking even on the website. And twice a year she would fly to that trade show except once she took the train, and she would do lots of business and see some of her great friends.

After a few years, the woman got a wonderful job that made her too busy to work all the time on the website, and so she changed it so it wouldn’t take up so much of her time but also so that it would be better and would allow all the people who enjoyed it to participate with it lots more.

Eventually, the time came for the woman to move on. There were other websites she wanted to play with and other topics she wanted to spend her time on. Someone else took over the wonderful job and a company took over the website, but the woman still went to the trade shows. She realized at her last one that she was mainly going just to see her great friends and to make new ones and she started wondering if that’s a good enough reason to attend a business event.

She hasn’t figured out the answer yet.

The end.

Garbage Pail Kid image by krystal.pritchett

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing—about how much I want to be doing it, what I might do it about, whether someone somewhere might pay me to do it. Since the theme of this year is “It’s no longer the time of sitting around and thinking about doing something,” well, welcome to Thursdays Are for Stories. Long or short, fiction or non- (most likely non-fiction, at least for now), proper stories or just memories, I’m going to do my best to write up some anecdote, thought or tale every Thursday, beginning today.

As I write this I’m sitting in my parents’ living room in Upstate New York, two weeks into a nineteen-day trip. Having ventured all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Gunks/Catskills region and this, the strip-mall town of my adolescence, I’ve been overcome by memories big and small and I’ve started keeping a list. This first story isn’t so much a story as a memory of a particular childhood era, such as it was.

Until I was nine years old my family lived in an apartment in Brooklyn. Not a historic once-tenement brownstone in some western neighbourhood ten minutes from Manhattan by train, but a top-floor two-bedroom place in a nondescript three-story walk-up in Canarsie. You’ve probably never heard of Canarsie. It isn’t one of the more romantic parts of Brooklyn. Working-class, at the end of the L subway line, it’s the setting of the ill-fated boating jaunt in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; that’s the only time I recall encountering it in literature or cinema.

There was a proper shingled house next door to our apartment. I remember it being white and black. A young family lived in the basement suite. They yelled a lot and had a daughter a few years younger than I was. I played there a few times but never had fun. The mother’s parents lived in the main part of the house. They had guard dogs in a fenced-in area along our side of the building. I was terrified of dogs until I was eight. When I was a teenager, several years after we moved upstate, my mom casually mentioned that these neighbours were drug dealers. I’d had no idea. I’d thought limousines double parked on a residential street was a normal Brooklyn thing, like mothers yelling out third-story windows to their kids or playing in the street and yelling back up to your mother. As a teenager with my eyes newly opened, I felt simultaneously unsettled and like I’d earned an urban-dweller notch in my belt.

My world, up to age nine, was about three or four square blocks. I went to elementary school around the corner and across the street (that was exactly how I thought of it; if somebody asked, I’d say “I go to school aroundthecornerandacrossthestreet.”) Beginning in first grade I walked to and from school by myself. About two-thirds of the way down my street, away from the corner I rounded on my way to school, was an alley that cut through the block. On the other side of it and across the street was the school’s fenced-in asphalt field, but I didn’t walk through the alley to get to school. The alley was also asphalt, old and cracking, creating its own gravel grittiness. It sloped down at either end and a run-down convenience store sat at the bottom more toward the school than my street. I couldn’t quite see over the high counter. It’s possible the store did its entire business in candy, baseball cards and cigarettes.

Around fourth grade, a new obsession hit. It came after plastic charm necklaces and my first perm. Nod with a crooked smile if you also were obsessed, in the mid ’80s, with Garbage Pail Kids. Oh, how clever these collectors’ cards were*. The same size and shape as baseball cards, you didn’t have to follow a sport to collect them (I didn’t become a Yankees fan till after college, and I’ve since lost touch and regret it). You didn’t have to know the relative value of the cards you lucked into, or differentiate one league of teams from another. You just had to laugh your tiny ass off at grotesquely rendered caricatures like the iconic Adam Bomb (a Cabbage Patch Kid-like wee boy with his head exploding into a fiery mushroom cloud.)

I found one of my first packs of cards in the alley store. I went back all the time looking for more. I was nearly always disappointed. I became frantic and obsessed. I simply couldn’t wait. Consequently, Garbage Pail Kids were responsible for my growing familiarity with the greater neighbourhood. There was, a couple of stores in from the corner of Flatlands Avenue and some other street, a less falling-down store that also, on more frequent occasion than did the alley store, carry Garbage Pail Kids. This store may or may not have been called The Nosher, or some such variation. A “nosh,” in Yiddish, means a snack.

I carried my Garbage Pail Kids with me at all times. I amassed a stack a couple of inches thick and wrapped it with a rubber band. The corners bloomed and the edges got dirty.

A friend and I spent an afternoon on her stoop, skipping around, sitting cross-legged, giggling, drinking juice, coming up with new Kids for a contest Topps was having. My genius idea was for for Eli P. Hunt, a kid with an elephant trunk for a nose. It would have been awesome! It didn’t win. I couldn’t understand why.

Wikipedia says the cards came out in 1985. That means the first series was released at most a mere six months before we moved upstate. In my memory, I was younger than that**. It’s hard for my adult brain to make sense of this timeline. I’m certain I wasn’t obsessed with collecting cards when I started fifth grade in my new school. The more I think about it, the happier I am that my brief passion for the collectibles seemed to endure for so long even if it really hadn’t. They were happy days, filled with ridiculous chatter and imagination. Those cards turned the more saccharine pop-culture phenomenon of Cabbage Patch Kids (I named my blond doll after the stars of Little House on the Prairie) on its head. They made it apparent to me as a young kid that even the most powerful fads could be flipped over. I’m tremendously grateful for that, and for the ooey gooey rhyming names and stickers I would never, ever peel off.

*I learned while looking up links for this post that the Garbage Pail Kids were an Art Spiegelman creation. No wonder they were so awesome.

**UPDATE (12 June): It turns out it’s my adult brain that was confused. We moved in 1986, not ‘85, as gently pointed out to me by my mom last night, which means my original memory of having Garbage-Pail-Kid fever in the third grade was accurate. It was nice to have that happy feeling of inaccurate memory for a day, but today it’s replaced by a different happy feeling—that of having been right all along.

Michelle mentioned to me a while back that during my whirlwind family visit in New York City this coming weekend, I’ll have to get to the Renegade Craft Fair. It’s pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday, so whatever my plans end up being, visiting cousins and aunts and uncles here and there and everywhere, I should be able to make it there for an hour or two.

Suffice it to say, I’m really excited to get to one of the best known craft fairs in all the land, especially after having checked out the Art Star Craft Bazaar in Philly last weekend (from where, excepting a card for our friends’ wedding, I left empty handed. Which isn’t to indicate that the fair was anything less than awesome—it was awesome).

I get really overwhelmed at big craft fairs, though. The abundant choices are paralyzing. How do you navigate big fairs? How do you decide what to bring home with you, especially if you’re traveling and have limited luggage space? I need advice!

And I hope to bump into you, whenever we make it over there. I’ll be the exhausted-looking one, with eyes bugged out and glazed over, not knowing where to go next.

I was pleased as all-natural, none of that corn-syrup-crap punch that Tara over at Blonde Chicken Boutique tweeted me about today’s xkcd comic. I just love spreading the Papyrus hate. Talk amongst yourselves.

The designs in this book are as lovely and clever as the designers who made them, and I hope you find at least a few things you’ll want for yourself in addition to the ones you’ll want to make for the people you love. The blanket on the cover is by Doris Chan, and it makes me so, so happy. Other designers featured include Kathy Merrick (whose own book is also coming out this fall), Karen Drouin, Kristin Omdahl, Katie Himmelberg, Donna Hulka, Chloe Nightingale, Jennifer Hagan, Lisa Naskrent, Annie Modesitt, Robyn Chachula, Christina Potter, Jill Wright, Sandi Wiseheart, Toni Rexroat, Myra Wood, Megan Granholm, Erica Alexander, and Julie Holetz (who also did the tech editing).

I think it would be great fun to support the indie booksellers and local yarn stores we sometimes take for granted, don’t you? If you’re an online shopper, pre-order a copy at Powells.com or add it to your wishlist over there. Let’s make someone at the great Portland indie scratch her head at the onslaught of interest in a crafts book. As an added bonus, a copy will arrive at your door long after you’ve forgotten you bought one. There’s nothing like surprising yourself.

If you’re an in-person shopper, get thee to your local bookseller or yarn store and let the owner or manager know you’ll want to buy a copy when the book comes out. Not only will this help others find the book when they see it displayed in the store, it’ll also result in you having a conversation with the most-certainly awesome and friendly people who create the shops you love so much.

Got questions about the book? Fire away!

You know about statistics, right? About how to judge whether the news you’re hearing or reading is actually reflecting the numbers behind it? Because you really, really should. (This post is inspired by the stats quoted at the end of this AdAge piece about the recent KFC grilled-chicken promotion fiasco I didn’t hear about till today.)

One of my biggest pet peeves: Election poll coverage. News agencies seem to love ignoring a little thing called the margin of error. Since elections are over in my world right now, I’ll switch to entertainment as an example. The principles are the same.

Statistics are compiled on a sample of the population in question because in most cases that population is too big to be polled in its entirety. So lets say a network wants to know what youngish women think of the host of their talent show. They can’t ask every woman, so they hire a polling company to compile some statistics for them. The polling company will randomly pick a fairly large number of people who belong to the population they’re interested in (say, female Canadians between the ages of 25-34), and they’ll ask them the question(s) the network is interested in. Depending on the size of the sample (this is where the math comes in), a margin of error is calculated to account for any errors involved in polling the smaller sample. These errors might result in discrepancies against what the entire population’s results would be.

This means the statistic quoted (for example [and I made this up], 52% of Canadian women between the ages of 25-34 like Ben Mulroney as host of Canadian Idol) includes a range. It could really be that 49% of all women of that age like the host (that’s the quoted 52% minus 3% to account for possible error), or that 55% agree (that’s 52% plus 3%). If this were an election poll, perhaps you can see that the difference in impact of 49% vs. 55% could be huge.

Now consider if the statistic quoted compares results from people polled this month versus the same demographic polled with the same methodology last month. Say 51% of women 25-34 liked Ben Mulroney’s hosting of Canadian Idol last month, and this month their support has dropped to 49%. This might make entertainment-news headlines (”Mulroney popularity plummeting!”), but it shouldn’t. A 2% change like that falls within the margin of error, which means that change could just as easily be due to chance.

It’s not interesting news to report that “Opinions have reached an all-time constant!” It’s up to us, consumers of news on all topics, to judge statistics ourselves and not to blindly trust headlines that are often simply aimed at selling papers and magazines or getting eyeballs via Twitter.

Be smart, people!

On the heels of seeing the “Designer’s Edition” of Scrabble, with its pink letters and its pink box emblazoned with the anti-competitive promise that “Every word is a winner!”, I’m reminded how touchy I am about products marketed specifically to girls and women because said marketing is so often demeaning. So, so often.

I play Scrabble to win, I like to watch movies that render me addled with fear, I have a healthy fascination with the apocalypse. I enjoy entertainment that makes me think, but I’m not terribly discriminating when it comes to what I end up thinking about.  I also prefer not to be in a constant state of pissed-off, which means I avoid books I’ll rail against as being stupid or poorly written (which don’t always go hand in hand, but you might have found it entertaining to be around me during the couple of days I spent reading the perfect storm otherwise known as The Da Vinci Code); I also avoid fiction that’s blatantly (intentionally or not) anti-feminist (unless, apparently, it’s Twilight, in which case I’ll read 2500 pages through to the end, waving my arms about and frothing at the mouth all the while). I consider it to be in my own best interest not to be pissed off about fiction when there’s so much to be pissed off about in real life.

Anyway. There I was unimpressed with The Girl Next Door, and due to my book-picking history I couldn’t tease apart the book from its genre, which seems to be women’s fiction. The book is clearly intended for a female audience, and I’d love to know if men read such books, too, and if so what they think. I’ve never read chick lit (which is a different category), so I can’t speak to it at all except to say I find the book covers (that reflect the marketing plans, that reflect the intended audience which I can only thusly assume is not me) unappealing and the blurbs uninteresting.

So, what is it with gender and genre?

As has become my habit, I started out my exploration by asking people on Twitter what they think.

I was immediately amused, and noted the negativity surrounding chick lit. Is the negativity warranted?

Thanks, @Lyssistrata, @mmmfiber, @BuffaloGold, @littlefluffycat, @galateabot, and @carcosa!

What sorts of fiction do you prefer, and why do you prefer it? What do you think about fiction aimed toward women—be it women’s lit, chick lit, or what have you? What about fiction aimed toward men? Do you fit the marketing plan, whatever your sex or gender?

You know what, maybe I’ll delve a little into science fiction (typically aimed more at a male audience) and fantasy (typically aimed more toward women). Yes, I think a wee micro-study is in order. Got great recommendations? I’m hitting the road soon and can load up for a genre gender bender!

UPDATE: After some great comments regarding fantasy not being aimed just at women (so true! What was I thinking?!), I’m cutting sci-fi out of the wee study. It’ll be way more interesting (to me, at least) to look just at fantasy–books clearly aimed at women, books clearly aimed at men, and books that are more gender-neutral. Let me know what you recommend, and which category of those three it fits into! I’ll compile a list and will post it.

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PS Don’t get me wrong, I totally like to be entertained in brain-off mode, too. Not usually from reading, but I love me a television teen melodrama and have a penchant for renting rom coms when I’m sick or exhausted.

The Girl Next Door is by Elizabeth Noble, who is a bestselling British author whom I hadn’t heard of before.

The Girl Next Door, by Elizabeth Noble

The novel follows the inhabitants of an apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The characters for the most part each fit one stereotype or another, which wasn’t blatantly offensive initially but upon any deeper reflection pretty much was. There’s a gay couple, and the one who gets any dialog speaks like that caricature you’re about to imagine—the one who talks with his hands, calls you “girlfriend” and tells you it would be a crime against humanity and puppies to leave the house wearing that hat with those pants. There’s the couple whose marriage is strained after years of infertility and the strain of interventions, even though they now have a healthy toddler. There’s the perfect couple whose happiness is doomed. There’s the super-rich guy whose family bought him the apartment; he seems self-centered and unmotivated until we discover he’s really a nice guy. There’s the unattractive librarian who really just lacks confidence. The sorority girl. The crusty old people, one of whom reveals her softer side. And, of course, there’s the couple that serves as the frame of the story, a young married pair of Brits who come to New York for his job.

Over the course of eight months, the apartment-building dwellers love, lose, weep, laugh. They all change and grow.

And that’s about all I took from it. There was no subtext I could perceive. No greater theme or moral. And so the part of my brain that usually churns through those things while I read was left to create topics to dwell on, and it settled on my dissatisfaction with the book. The stereotypes. The nagging implication that women of a certain age are obsessed with babies and that their male partners are different from them somehow—not necessarily that they’re emotionally retarded, but just sort of different in a way I found unsatisfying and in fact banal and a little depressing. At the very least, I’d hoped to gain a Brit’s impressions of New York, and although Noble describes the British couple’s experiences well and believably, I was left wanting for more evidence of the author’s take. All I really ended up with was the recurring reaction, “Dude, New Yorkers don’t say ‘arse’.”

I might not have been inspired by this book, but I did learn about myself from reading it. I learned that popular women’s fiction—by which I mean books that are more, I don’t know, mature? than chick lit and marketed specifically to women—is possibly not at all a category for me. I suppose I prefer literary fiction—whatever that is—with its subtexts and ambiguities. I want to learn and grow from and occasionally be challenged by the fiction I read; I don’t want to read about ordinary people’s ordinary lives unless the story is written by someone who makes those ordinary people and their lives seem extraordinary. Give me Steinbeck. If I want a lighter read, give me genre fiction—give me sci-fi, give me some fantasy. Oh, metaphor, how I love thee.

I felt miserable reading The Girl Next Door because my imagination wasn’t engaged while reading it, the stereotypes made me uncomfortable, and it didn’t make me strive for something bigger. That said, I’m crusty and cynical about books like this—that I finished it at all means the writing was good. If you like books in this vein, you might like this one. I’m, however, now enjoying Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which is a welcome and wonderful antidote.

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The Girl Next Door
Elizabeth Noble
Penguin Group Canada
Paperback, May 2009