Craft Anxiety

Anyone who creates things - food, knits, sewing, embroidery, woodcraft, you get the idea - always wants to share their love of their craft with everyone else. Mostly by making them gifts - whether the recipient wants the gift or not. for knitters, the amount of time necessary to make a gift is weeks, or more often, months. Which means we start thinking about holiday gifts in July or August. Which means we start bugging people in July or August, all of which goes badly (b/c the intended recipient, although they love us, really don't want a sweater/scarf/whatever).

Following the advice of his therapist, of my favorite knitting bloggers and pattern writers, Franklin at the Panopticon, put together this little animation regarding the holiday anxiety most of us craft-types and artisans experience. Yes, he's Queen Elizabeth, and explains, "That will strike you as an odd coupling until I explain that whenever I experience a heated inner dialogue, that's who the voices in my head sound like. (Although sometimes instead of Einstein I hear Fanny Brice; but the animation Web site doesn't offer a Fanny Brice avatar.)"