Murderino Makers: Crafts, True Crime and Reality

2018-04-10T07:43:00.002-07:00

"Here's the thing:" while my love of yarn is no secret, neither is my love of true crime.

If you make things, I think you would agree you need some background entertainment. We joke that we can watch an entire season of a show without ever knowing what the characters look like.

Allow me to set the scene. I'm 10, sitting on the couch surrounded by Red Heart yarn, knitting and listening to Barbara Walters interview someone on 20/20. Then, I'm 20 sitting on the daybed in my college house, still knitting and listening Bill Kurtis narrate American Justice. Now, I'm 34 sitting in my own home, with some slightly more exotic and expensive yarn, in the company of Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark and their podcast, My Favorite Murder. I became a Murderino.

It wasn't until I came across this podcast in 2016 that I realized how many people share this fascination with true crime. Not long after that, I found a Facebook Group called Murderino Makers and realized so many of us Murderinos also share a fascination with creating things.

I pick up my latest project, safe in my house, doors locked, and get to work to the tune of a murder mystery.

Naturally, the two must be linked somehow. Then it hit me: they both change the way we view reality.

I crochet to escape. Painting, sewing, metal work, wood carving, furniture refinishing, cross stitch, computer graphics...why do you do it? For me, it's because the tools I use take my attention away from the problems of the real world; even if it's just for a little while.

And, I become part of a community. Even if I'm sitting all alone in my house and never create anything in the presence of another person, I'm a crocheter. You're a fill-in-the-blanker. We make a community. We can never know each other personally, and yet get together at any point and understand exactly what the other means when we talk about spending hours on a project, only to have to scrap it in the end. We share frustration and solutions and pride.

We can also get together, after having never known each other personally and finish the sentence, "Get a job. Buy your own sh** and..."

But, isn't true crime nothing but the problems of the real world? Yes. Precisely. We join up, subscribers to a a real-life horror story, to hold virtual hands and acknowledge that terrible things really do exist and our gratefulness that they don't exist in our version of reality.

Sure, we make light of them. We listen to what happens and unfolds and we diagnose the mental health of serial killers as armchair psychologists. We like to think we would react differently if we were the police or the victim or the defense attorney. We play judge and we play jury. And... somewhere in our psyche, we all share the same relief: at least it's not me.

We make up horrors to deal with the real ones. I think Stephen King said that somewhere, and I think it's true. We put ourselves in these situations as we sit safely, maybe making something, maybe not. And when reality sucks us back into the present moment, we breathe a sigh of relief.

Georgia sometimes says, "I went dark," meaning that particular murder was really bad. We swim back up to the surface, into the light, thankful for where we are and what we have. And we go back next week for more. When we get to go really really dark with her, the light seems really really light.

The solution seems so simple. "Get a job. Buy your own sh** and STAY OUT OF THE FOREST." It may not always be so easy, but we agree that life would be a lot simpler if we just follow that rule.

Reality sort of becomes better; an entirely new version where we're more aware. Reality also becomes better when we look at it through the lens of a creator. Awareness of our surroundings: that's the gift being a maker gives us and it's the gift being a Murderino gives us.

Awareness is a beautiful thing. That's my philosophy.

We form a circle inside of a circle, us Murderino Makers. I'm proud to be one.

SSDGM

The Chronicle of a Craft

2018-04-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is the chronicle of a craft; the journal of a journey through the voyage of a maker. This is a ledger, of sorts, to account for the progress, thoughts, success and disappointment of what's created using a ball of wool and a steel hook.

Pretty stitches make pretty fabrics. There's nothing wrong with pretty; with pleasing to the eye. But, what's beautiful are the symbols of life hooked into the yarn.

I've been knitting since I was about 5. It is a craft handed down to me from my grandmother. I fell in love immediately and eventually fell away from it. But, I believe if the universe has something in store for you, even if miles and years separate it, it will find its way back. And, it did.

Grandma

Every time life got especially hard or sad or challenging, I picked up my needles. They were the one constant in my past 34 years. Sitting with a pattern, the rhythm of the act, the meditation in the counting - it took away all the clamor. It redirected my focus from what was missing to what was being created.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. All that means is that I paid a lot of money to find out I knew next to nothing about everything. I learned that all I could do was to keep learning.

After 25 years of knitting, I taught myself how to crochet. While knitting and most other crafts can come from some sort of machine now, crochet remains the one art that can not be industrialized. It still requires two human hands to happen. There was something poetic about that I fell in love with.

I started talking to lots of people who shared my interest. It introduced me to people I otherwise wouldn't meet. It's amazing the conversation that starts in the checkout line when the people around ask what all the yarn is for. Mostly, I hear it's something their grandmothers used to do. And, yes, I can make pretty much anything!

I had the pleasure of teaching friends to crochet. I have the pleasure of giving gifts my hands created. I challenge myself by writing patterns out of the things I find in life that inspire me and I was keeping track of those stories.

See, the hook tells a story with yarn and we tell the yarn a story with the hook. It's the most simple form of reciprocity - of give and take - I've had. I believe we can't create something without it recreating us. In turn, we leave a piece of us in everything we create. There's beautiful evidence of that in a blanket that took hours of recreating. It becomes a story that can be wrapped around us.

Every stitch tells a story, and it gives us one to tell right back.

This is a narrative of those stories and lessons. It's a look at the deeper meaning that draws us into our crafts and where they take us. I have some stories I can share, but I have high hopes that best ones are still waiting in the wings.

I'm a collector of quotes, sayings, advice, ideas... The one that stuck with me the most throughout my life is, "We've all got a bird." It's a rough translation to English from German and it came straight my my grandma. It took me years to "get it" finally. But, a bird can be anything out of the ordinary. It means that each of us has a quirk; something chirping in our ear that won't let us be. The idea for this blog was my bird for many years.

This is an invitation. Let's go make something.

Here's to the creator in each of us.

The Philosopher's Hook

Murderino Makers: Crafts, True Crime and Reality

The Chronicle of a Craft