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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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30 Rock’s Best Running Jokes

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When 30 Rock drew its final breath in 2013, yards of column inches were devoted – deservedly so – to praising the work of creator Tina Fey. Article upon article applauded the characters, cast, performances and seven seasons of energetic, inventive, satirical comedy.

More than anything else though, 30 Rock was always about the gags. It was fruitcake-dense with jokes, regularly fitting in more quotable laughs before its opening credits than many shows manage in a full half-hour. As it returns for a one-off reunion special, join us in celebrating the many, many running gags of its seven-season history, from the fake movies, to the terrible yet incredibly catchy songs, Frank’s hats, and those godawful TGS sketches…

The fake movies

The presence of Tracy Jordan (a bonafide Martin Lawrence meets the Wayans Brothers-style movie star) in the TGS cast opened up the world of film parody to 30 Rock.

Admittedly Jenna Maloney also enjoyed a movie career of sorts, but while she was being offered the part of “any blonde actress” in torture porn flicks by the producers who watched and rented Saw, Tracy was turning down the lead in Garfield 3: Feline Groovy to pursue his serious acting career. The latter climaxed with the release of spot-on Precious parody Hard To Watch (Based on the novel Stone Cold Bummer by Manipulate), for which Tracy received the O in his EGOT plan. Sheer class.

Over the years though, who couldn’t not smile at Tracy’s blaxpoitation-filled back catalogue, from the timeless romance of A Blaffair to Rememblack, to Sherlock Homie, Who Dat Ninja?, The Chunks 2: A Very Chunky Christmas, and last but by no means least, Honky Grandma Be Trippin’. The man is a chameleon (in that he’s always a lizard).

Two of Jenna’s TGS projects however, bring back the fondest memories of 30 Rock’s stinging movie satire: small-town legal drama The Rural Juror (based on a Kevin Grisham novel), and her GE-produced life rights-avoiding Janis Joplin biopic, Sing Them Blues White Girl: The Jackie Jormp Jomp Story.

The TGS sketches

The quality of TGS’ output was never under question in 30 Rock; the sketch show was unremittingly bad (when the absence of their star meant a ‘Best of TGS’ series had to be run in lieu of live shows, Legal objected to their use of the word ‘Best’, and when a review dubbed it the worst comedy ever made, Liz was thrilled they’d defined it as a comedy). Liz Lemon’s opus was a fluorescent collection of fart gags, dodgy caricatures, Jenna’s songs, and misjudged celebrity impressions.

Beginning life as, in Kenneth’s words, “a real fun ladies comedy show for ladies”, TGS was Saturday Night Live’s idiot brother, the unsophisticated thorn in NBC’s side, under constant threat of controversy and cancellation. Forced to synergise backward overflow, advertise parent company products and promote GE interests, 30 Rock’s show-within-a-show satirised both the TV industry and tired trends in comedy (the always hilarious combination of a fat woman who’s sexually confident! Old ladies are crazy! Farts!).

Lemon may have seduced pilot Carol (Matt Damon) with her Fart Doctor skits, but TGS failed to win many hearts. With sketches like Pam the Overly Confident Morbidly Obese Woman, Ching-Chong Man Who Loves to Play Ping-Pong, Fat Hillary Clinton, Bear vs. Killer Robots, Me Want Food, and Gaybraham Lincoln, why it wasn’t more successful is a mystery.

Astronaut Mike Dexter

Lemon may have ended up with James Marsden’s Criss Chros, but fictional boyfriend Astronaut Mike Dexter will always hold a special place in her heart. Handsomer than Dr Drew, less British than Wesley Snipes, less living-in-Cleveland than Floyd, and a million times better than Dennis Duffy, Astronaut Mike Dexter had it all… except of course, a corporeal self.

The fake songs

Over the years, Jenna Maroney’s singing career has vomited up some truly dreadful creations, and topping the list has to be Muffin Top (a big hit in the king-making music markets of Israel and Belgium). Seguing from its pop insanity chorus “My muffin top is all that, wholegrain, low-fat” into a Madonna-style spoken-word rap “I’m an independent lady, so please don’t try to play me. I run a tidy bakery. The boys all want my cake for free”, the song is a battery assault on the senses.

But is it worse than Jenna’s summer dance jam, Balls, which earned her the princely sum of $50 in royalties? Or her computer generated, generic benefit song in aid of an unspecific natural disaster, which urged viewers to donate to “help the people the thing that happened, happened to”? How about the Jackie Jormp Jomp performance she gave of Chunk Of My Lung, written by Jack five minutes before the show, containing the classic line “You know you’ve bought it if life makes you sweet food”? Or Fart So Loud, the un-Weird Al-able song she and Tracy wrote after he parodied the theme to Avery Jessup TV movie Kidnapped? Such riches…

It’s not only Jenna who’s provided 30 Rock’s musical intervals of course. Season three finale Kidney Now! welcomed an eclectic collection of stars including Sheryl Crow, Mary J Blige, Elvis Costello, Moby, two of the Beastie Boys, Wyclef Jean, and Cyndi Lauper to perform a We Are The World-style anthem at the Milton Green benefit gig. Angie Jordan famously released a fifteen-second single My Single Is Dropping, to ride on the wave of her reality-show fame, Frank and Pete’s Sound Mound came up with unforgettable rock anthem Weekend Woman, and in the very same episode, even Tina Fey got in on the action by providing excellent Joni Mitchell parody, Paints and Brushes.

The legacy award though, as in the 30 Rock fake song that will continue to bring joy to the hearts of fans decades from now, has to go to one song, and one song only: Tracy Jordan’s Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

Frank’s hat slogans

Off-set, stand-up Judah Friedlander favours his ‘World Champion’ trucker hat, the one he claims to have been awarded as the winner of the World Championships of pretty much all sports, martial arts, and that time he karate kicked Chuck Norris’ beard off his face and forced him to legally change his name to Charles.

On-set as Frank Rossitano though, Friedlander wears a series of self-designed trucker hats, each bearing a different gnomic slogan. Often incongruous, sometimes suggestive, and always odd, Frank’s hat slogans are part of the bricks and mortar of 30 Rock. In terms of favourites, we’re quite fond of ‘Alabama Legsweep’, or the laconic enigma of ‘And’, though ‘Shark Cop’, ‘Half Centaur’ and ‘Space Gravy’ also caught our eye over the seasons.

Jenna’s Mickey Rourke sex stories

Like Dot Com’s intellectualism, this running gag may have been introduced late into proceedings, but Jenna’s torrid sexual history with putty-faced beefcake Mickey Rourke gave J-Mo some of her best lines. Jenna’s allusions to Rourke’s sexually deviant and murderous attempts on her life paint a fascinating picture for 30 Rock fans. Here are some of the finest:

“Your new vibe is a double-edged sword, much like the kind Mickey Rourke tried to kill me with”, “Nice try Hazel, but you made the same mistake Mickey Rourke made on that catamaran. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance.”, “I’m going to have to reinvent you. Break you down completely and build you up from scratch. Just like Mickey Rourke did to me sexually.” “Next time you’ll tell me Mickey Rourke catapulted you into the Hollywood sign.” “You know what they say, if you can’t stand the heat, get off Mickey Rourke’s sex grill.” Wise words.

Kenneth the immortal page

To this day Kenneth Ellen Parcell remains something of an enigma to 30 Rock viewers. In later seasons, Jack McBrayer’s character went from being a simple country rube from Stone Mountain, Georgia to the flesh vessel for a mysterious immortal with no reflection, no age, and links to a world beyond our own.

Plenty of reference has been made to Kenneth’s ageless and supernatural state over the years, including the suggestion that not only is he unable to die, but he’s also an angel, sent to oversee the transition of souls from one world to the next.

The fake TV shows

It’s either a credit to the 30 Rock team or a condemnation of our times that Jack Donaghy’s hit reality viewer vote show, MILF Island, no longer feels like a parody. In generations to come, time will no doubt erode the boundaries between fact and fiction, and we 30 Rock fans will be telling our kids about the time we watched Deborah beat her competitors and claim MILF victory in the same breath as educating them about those people who ate kangaroo anuses for public approval.

MILF Island stands head and shoulders above the rest of 30 Rock’s fake TV shows (including TGS itself, lest we not forget), but that doesn’t mean that Gold Case, Los Amantes Clandestinos, Black Frasier, Homonym, or the inimitable Bitch Hunter deserve any less respect. Our fallen brothers, we salute you.

We could go on indefinitely listing the recurring jokes that made 30 Rock great, from Liz’s sandwich lust and desire to go to there, to Jack’s gloriously thatched head of hair and Republican conspiracies. As the show prepares to return, which of the above will live again?

30 Rock: A One-Time Special lands on NBC on Thursday July 16th at 8pm in the US.

The post 30 Rock’s Best Running Jokes appeared first on Den of Geek.

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the-truth-of-hypnosis · 7 years ago

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Hypnosis Myth:

Suggestibility Scales and the Idea That Not Everyone is Hypnotizable

Ever since science began it’s investigation of hypnosis an attempt has been made to answer the questions of whether just anyone is susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, or if only certain people are affected; as well as, if there is a way to measure and or predict the hypnotizability of an individual.

In 1938 the Friedlander-Sarbin scale was developed by Theodore R. Sarbin. This work was used in the Stanford Suggestibility Scale, which was developed by André Muller Weitzenhoffer and Ernest R. Hilgard in 1959. It was the first formal standardized test developed to try and determine the hypnotizability of a subject. This scale and the Harvard Group Scale, created by Ronald Shor and Emily Carota Orne developed in 1962, are still used to this day in the clinical setting.

The experiments that let to the creation of these scales used a standardized induction to hypnotize a group of subjects. A set of criteria was used to asses when and how deep a subject went into trance, e.i. eye closure, lethargy etc. Psychological evaluations were then used to determine what constitutes the personality of a hypnotizable subject. The data obtained from that was used to develop the suggestibility scales that are still used today.

The problem with the experiments used was the lack of consideration for the subjective nature of trance experience and the individuality of the subjects. Basically different people respond to different approaches in different ways. All the experiments proved were which kinds of people are susceptible to the specific approach used in that experiment. In these cases a direct, authoritarian induction was used. This means that the technique used was direct suggestions of relaxation and sleep, e.i. ‘You are getting sleepy”. Basically you tell the person what to do and hope they respond.

In 1968, John G. Kappas, Ph.D. made a discovery regarding how people use ,and respond to, communication. He identified two major types of suggestibility and a less common one. The two most common types he referred to as emotional and physical suggestibility, the less common one intellectual suggestibility . This principle says physically suggestible people tend to communicate indirectly and permissively, and respond better to direct communication and being told what to do. Emotionally suggestible people are the opposite, they speak directly and respond better to permissive, indirect communication. They would rather be asked, or told they “can do something if they want to”. Intellectual suggestibility refers to those who prefer logical explanations and intellectual discussion, and will accept any communication that makes rational sense to them.

This discovery made it so people previously considered hypnotically inaccessible could be worked with, unlike before when the only commonly accepted method of hypnotic induction was by direct suggestion and an authoritarian approach. Basically, no one really ever thought to just ask them to go into a trance instead.

Milton H. Erickson, a psychiatrist and general physician, spent more than 50 years developing countless ways to induce trance in all kinds of people, including psychotics and even a few cases of catatonics. He developed a more naturalistic way of approaching trance work, taking into account that one is working with normal everyday functions of the mind that are a natural part of a person’s everyday mental faculties. In the creation of trance states he used shock, confusion, stories, jokes, casual conversation, and even pantomime. He believed in using the situational context as the induction.

This proved effective in showing there are many ways to hypnotize many different kinds of people. I myself have hypnotized a variety of people deemed not hypnotizable by other hypnotists and therapists. As far as I can tell there doesn’t seem to be such a thing as an unhypnotizable subject because the mental mechanisms that make it possible are a normal part of a person’s everyday functioning. The only limitations that exist are the hypnotist’s ability to find the right approach for the subject and the ability to deal with the fears and self imposed limitations. With patience and a proper understanding of the unique needs of the subject anyone can learn to be hypnotized, and with a proper pre-talk any fears or limitations can be overcome.

Other Articles:

https://www.quora.com/How-come-some-people-can-be-hypnotized-while-others-cannot?ref=forbes&rel_pos=1

http://www.adam-eason.com/hypnotic-susceptibility-scales-and-the-notion-of-hypnotisability-or-suggestibility/

http://drjohnmcgrail.com/3-common-myths-hypnosis-debunked/

http://davidgodot.com/8-myths-about-hypnosis/

#hypnosis myths #sugestibility #hypnosis #Stanford suggestibility scale

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caveartfair · 6 years ago

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The 5 Trends That Will Shape the Art Market This Fall

Each fall, the art market awakes from its summer slumber with a sonic boom. In the weeks after Labor Day, hundreds of galleries open some of their strongest shows of the year, followed by a mushrooming of fairs in October and November in London, Paris, and Shanghai. The season is capped by the fall evening sales in New York in mid-November, which set the tone for Art Basel in Miami Beach just a few weeks later.

Out of the torrent of gallery shows, fair booths, or auction lots set to be parsed over by the art market this fall, we identified the key takeaways to focus on this season. Let the games begin.

More big estates are coming to auction

Edward Hopper, Chop Suey, 1929. Courtesy of Christie’s.

It’s only been a few months since the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller grossed $832.6 million at Christie’s, making it the most valuable estate sale in history.

This fall, the auction house will follow it up with a stand-alone sale of a collection that’s nearly as impressive: work from the collection of Barney Ebsworth, the Seattle collector who assembled what is widely considered one of the great collections of American art. When Ebsworth died in April, he left five works to his local Seattle Art Museum, and six to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., with each institution getting one of his two masterpieces by Georgia O’Keeffe: Black, White and Blue (1930), and Music—Pink and Blue No.1 (1918).

One work that was reported to be donated, as well, was Edward Hopper’s Chop Suey (1929), a depiction of two women in pillbox hats waiting for their food at a Chinese restaurant—an iconic and instantly recognizable work of 20th-century American art. A profile of Ebsworth in the November 2007 issue of Seattle Met said it would be among the works given to the Seattle Art Museum, but instead it was bequeathed to the family, who decided to included it in the sale after Christie’s successfully pitched them.

“When we were pitching for the collection, [Chop Suey] was always the centerpiece of the sale,” Sara Friedlander, head of the post-war and contemporary department at Christie’s, told Artsy. “This was a collection that everyone has always been after—private collectors and institutions.”

It’s part of a number of exemplary collections that have been given to auction houses to sell in recent years. In 2016, Sotheby’s won the Steven and Ann Ames collection, and 25 of the couple’s paintings sold at the contemporary art evening auction that November for $122.8 million, above a $100 million guarantee. At this year’s post-war sale, Sotheby’s will offer work from the collection of late Museum of Modern Art trustee David Teiger, and these works are expected to bring in $100 million.

“For us, the holy grail is working with a collection, because it’s not dealer stock you’ve seen at every art fair, it’s not material that’s been up a million times on the block,” Friedlander said.

Lucrative artist estates get center stage

Stuart Davis, (Study for “Men Without Women”), 1932. © Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Courtesy of Kasmin, New York.

The arms race for artist estates has escalated in recent years, as galleries realized that there’s a market for under-recognized artists from the past, not just hot young market stars. This September, Hauser & Wirth is showing Lygia Pape uptown, Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea is showing Anne Truitt, and at its mini fiefdom of spaces around 10th Avenue and West 27th Street, Kasmin is staging shows of three of its estates: the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, the American Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner, and the American Modernist Stuart Davis, the latest estate to join the gallery’s roster.

“This is a watershed moment for Davis, to be in a Chelsea gallery with contemporary artists in galleries nearby, positioned differently than in the past,” said Laura Lester, a director at the gallery who put together the show, “Lines Thicken: Stuart Davis in Black & White,” which opened September 13th.

Davis’s high-octane, jazzed-up paintings are often mentioned as a precursor to Pop art, but Lester said she wanted to unveil the gallery’s representation of the estate by staging a show of black-and-white works on paper—minimalist works that can be in concert with the contemporary output of the gallery’s living artists. Lester compared this to the way London gallery Victoria Miro brings work by Milton Avery to contemporary fairs and juxtaposes them with new work in a natural way.

Art fairs go full Robin Hood

In April, David Zwirner mentioned during a panel in Berlin that perhaps more prosperous galleries—like, um, David Zwirner—should subsidize struggling smaller galleries by paying more for fair booths.

“A little bit like a tax,” he told the crowd during the panel, which was convened by the New York Times. “You make a little more money, and you get taxed a little bit.”

Pace Gallery’s Marc Glimcher and Independent Art Fair founder Elizabeth Dee were in the crowd, and when asked if they would get behind such an idea, they offered their immediate support.

Not long after, fair directors have decided to experiment with sliding booth prices. On September 3rd, Art Basel announced that, starting in 2019, its fairs would begin to switch to a sliding scale, with the transition completed at Art Basel in Hong Kong in 2020. For the Swiss edition, the changes enacted will bring the price down to CHF 760 ($778) per square meter for a smaller booth of 25 square meters (269 square feet), versus CHF 905 ($927) per square meter for one of the fair’s larger booths of 124 square meters (1,335 square feet) starting next year. Frieze followed suit, announcing the next day that it would adjust prices at its new Los Angeles fair: The 215-foot booths will cost $38.50 per square foot, while 861-foot booths will go for $88.50 per square foot.

On September 6th, the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC)—the Parisian fair that takes place in mid-October—announced that it, too, would lower the price of smaller booths and raise the price of larger booths, lowering small booth prices by 5%, to €550 per square meter, and increasing larger booth prices by 2.2%, to €650 per square meter. “Much more must be done in the future to consolidate the position of galleries,” said director Jennifer Flay at the time of the announcement.

It’s a proactive move for the world’s most prestigious contemporary art fairs to quickly shift longtime pricing standards to support galleries. Frieze Fairs director Victoria Siddall said that she hopes galleries feel they can participate in fairs without breaking the bank.

“It’s not surprising that we are all talking about the same thing; galleries are raising the same concerns,” Siddall told The Art Newspaper. “It’s a positive thing that Art Basel is doing this, too. The more it becomes the norm, the more helpful it is for galleries.”

The coronation of Zao Wou-Ki

Zao Wou-Ki with I.M. Pei in 1976. Photo by Françoise Marquet© Françoise Marquet. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

When Chinese-born artist Zao Wou-Ki died in April 2013, he left behind decades of work made as a émigré in France and Switzerland, where he befriended Joan Miró and Alberto Giacometti. At the time, his work was selling for $1 million to $2 million, according to the New York Times.

Now, Sotheby’s said that in 2017, works of Wou-Ki’s at auction grossed $156 million. In 2018, there have already been more than $135 million in sales, and his market is on track to go even higher.

Vinci Chang, Sotheby’s head of modern Asian art, said that such figures put Wou-Ki “on par with that of Western masters.”

In October 2013, during the 40th anniversary sale for Sotheby’s Hong Kong, five works by Wou-Ki sold for more than his previous $2 million mark, including two paintings that went for over $10 million.

By 2017, Wou-Ki was becoming one of the few artists who consistently cracks the $20 million range. One painting sold for $25.9 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in November of that year; early this year, another sold for $23.3 million—a record for the artist—at Poly Auction Hong Kong in March, and still another went for $22.6 million at Christie’s Hong Kong in May.

Installation view of Zao Wou-Ki, Juin-Octobre 1985, 1985, at Raffles City, Singapore. © Fondation Zao Wou-Ki. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

That record is set to be broken when Sotheby’s Hong Kong auctions off the triptych Juin-Octobre 1985 (1985), the largest work the master ever made: It’s estimated to sell for $45 million, which would make it the most expensive work ever sold by the auction house in Asia. Personally commissioned by I.M. Pei for the Raffles City shopping complex in Singapore, the mural is one of just 20 large-scale triptychs Wou-Ki made in his lifetime, of which just 10—including Juin-Octobre 1985—are left in private hands.

Even if auction houses have chosen to sell his work mostly out of Hong Kong—no auction house has sold a painting by him in New York since 2008, when his work fetched just $157,000—the new price bracket he’s entering will increase his reputation.

“It is no exaggeration to say that Zao Wou-Ki is one of the very few Chinese modern artists whose recognition has ascended to a global level,” Chang said.

White Cube takes Manhattan

My Favourite Little Bird, 2010. Tracey Emin White Cube

Word started to circulate during Art Basel in Miami Beach in 2015 that White Cube, one London’s most influential galleries, was gearing up to open a space in New York after decades of dominating across the pond. After a few years of waiting, in May 2018, the mega-gallery opened an office space on the Upper East Side, and in July, it poached Eric Shiner, former director of the Andy Warhol Museum, away from his position as senior vice president at Sotheby’s to be artistic director at White Cube. For now, the New York presence of White Cube has no white cube—there’s just office space on the third floor of a building on East 62nd Street, near Madison Avenue. But that location puts it within spitting distance of global peers such as Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, Lévy Gorvy, and, a little bit farther north, Gagosian.

A roster of White Cube’s caliber would make for a stream of blockbuster shows, as it includes Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and the most recent addition, Danh Vo, who typically shows a short walk away at Marian Goodman Gallery. Upper East Side galleries need to be on their toes.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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freemygypsys0ul · 8 years ago

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Hobbycraft Knitcraft Social 26-1-17

Emma Harrison-Brown Knows Good Crochet... Couldn't make it to this week's Knitcraft Social at +Hobbycraft Milton Keynes? Catch up on all the gossip with this week's review.

This week has been CRAZY BUSY here at SFMGS... so much so that I have had so many lovely people message me to ask if all is well as I've not been around so much... so so kind and touching. All is well lovelies, I have just been literally eat, sleep, crochet, repeat for 7 whole days!!

Some of those things are top secret, but I can tell you that I launched my handmade ergomic polymer clay Unicorn Hooks and also attended the amazing +Hobbycraft Spring and Easter preview in London at Drink, Shop, Do which I will be telling you all about next week!

There are some absolutely gorgeous new yarns on their way from +Hobbycraft and some exclusive and much hankered after here in the UK releases coming soon!! EEEK! I also got to meet gorgeous lady Emma Friedlander-Collins of +Steel&Stitch Emma Friedlander-Collins and Mrs Steel's School of Stitchcraft and Scissory in the flesh and yes, she really is THAT cool and more lovelies... an amazing inspirational lady full of so much creative vibrance. See why you need her latest book, 35 Crocheted Bags by clicking here.

Don't forget right up until the end of January, to celebrate Knitcraft Social, my latest pattern "Off The Chain" is free now by clicking here...

I designed this pattern to celebrate the chains of both yarn and friendship Knitcraft Social creates... it's a wonderful way to meet new friends and to make new connections whilst exploring and embracing your own creativity. For details of a Knitcraft Social near you soon, click here to follow @knitcrafthq.

Now, read on for all the gossip from Knitcraft Social at +Hobbycraft Milton Keynes this week and also some comforting words on when your project doesn't necessarily turn out how you wanted it to from this gorgeous lady, Emma Harrison-Brown...

Knitcraft Social 26 January 2017

“But it’s not how it is supposed to be”

Knitcraft Social 26th January 2017 – Emma Harrison-Brown Knows Good Crochet

How many times have you finished a piece of crochet and people have told you how much they like and admire it and you return with the refrain..

“But it’s not how it is supposed to be”

It’s so frustrating, both for you, and for whomever is trying to pay you the compliment. It adds a layer of drama to a simple human interaction of someone admiring something you have created. Because you know “the wrong side” of that piece of crochet, you remember the frustrating times of frogging, the bit that just doesn’t look like it’s supposed to, and it stops you seeing it for what it is. I enjoyed the social yesterday, but! What is stopping me saying that I really absolutely loved the social was that “it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be”.

Behind the scenes, the night before the social, Miki had been in London for the Hobbycraft spring preview for bloggers. It had been such an exciting event and Miki had shared pictures of beautiful crocheted daisies strewn over astroturf and cheeky pom pom bunnies and I wanted to hear all about it in every detail. I wanted to hear about all the new and exciting yarn that Hobbycraft are bringing (hello Caron Cakes!)

The ever gorgeous and exceptionally creative Kate (@lanaboushop) was coming along after enjoying the social so much when she attended at the beginning of the month. I absolutely love her amazing acrylic jewellery and Kate is working on some new lines and I wanted to hear about the enamel badges she is bringing seeing as I did not get to ever wear a prefect, dinner monitor , or indeed any kind of enamel badge at school!

YARN BALL BROOCH - £8 PLUS P & P here

I was hoping that Jude would be there, as I said last week that it wasn’t for Jude I wouldn’t have started writing these reviews. I had printed them all off especially for her and sadly for me Jude did not arrive back at the social yesterday - we can't remember the date she flies back, and neither did Amazing Anne, our knitter from last week due to work commitments on the canal. So, before the social began I had some ideas of how I wanted it to be. It started in earnest with the lady from Hobbycraft MK coming in before her shift started so that she could learn to crochet the picot edge for her knitted scarf.

Peggillini and I were chatting and catching up. I always like to give Peggillini lots of squeezey squeezey tight hugs, and let me tell you, she gives them back just as tight! Sadly, she is a bit troubled with her asthma at the moment and wasn’t feeling quite herself. Kate had brought her little girl Lana along and it is absolutely brilliant and inspiring to be around children when they are drawing and colouring in. The excitement is real! When you say to them “Wow! I love that!” they giggle and absorb the compliment, they don’t reply with “well, I went out the lines a bit there, and that colour choice wasn’t the best in hindsight, that squiggle there is really not working with those crayon dots, overall it’s just not how it’s supposed to be”... They just accept the compliment and know that they are learning. The hard times that we give ourselves learning as adults, if we did that as children, I believe that we would never learn anything.

Alongside the colouring in, and the fact that little Lana’s doll was also called Emma, I was also very excited to meet the trusted Malcolm the monkey in his snazzy red waistcoat, I could tell that Malcolm was the chosen friend. Out of all the soft toys of all shapes and sizes that little girls are gifted, there’s always one, that for whatever reason becomes the chosen one. And maybe there’s parents all over the world thinking and saying “of all the soft toys she’s got I have no idea why she has chosen THAT one, it’s not what we imagined at all”. Whereas the child knows none of the back story, “the wrong side of crochet”, of the toys, it’s a simple uncomplicated relationship of chosen loyal soft toy friend.

As the picot scarf edge was on its way and the lady went to begin her shift, Miki started teaching again. As Miki got the lady on her way with her how to hold the hook and yarn and create a chain, an older lady and her husband approached the table, again, another very eager and enthusiastic knitter desperate to learn to crochet. Just like the Hobbycraft lady, she too was on limited time and wanted to learn as much as possible in the time that she had.

It was very busy with Miki teaching and whilst it was fantastic that new people were learning to crochet, some new learners can be very demanding and I had that nagging feeling that it just wasn’t going how it was supposed to, the picture I had in my mind wasn’t matching the reality. Like your crochet not quite matching the picture on the pattern. Kate was making the crocheted daisies that Miki had been making at the Hobbycraft spring launch the previous night. The picture of the daisy strewn astroturf had put me in the mind of how when you all work together towards something it can become a much bigger thing. One or two daisies can soon become a huge work of art when we all work together, and everyone can contribute, no matter how big or small.

The Knitcraft Social is very much like that daisy strewn astroturf. The two daisies that Kate crocheted were a little bit different, Kate was very critical of them, whilst I loved them. Kate had a picture how she wanted them to be and they didn’t quite match that, and I had a picture in my mind of how I wanted the social to be this week and with Jude not returning and the demanding learners, the reality didn’t quite match that. But overtime, just as the daisies that Miki made in London the previous night, mingle in with all the other daisies, it will eventually turn into something that is stunning and couldn’t be the work of art that it is if only daisies deemed perfect could go on the astroturf. If I only went to every Knitcraft Social that was perfect I would never go! As the Knitcraft Social is still in its infancy, today will mingle in with the other ones that aren’t quite right. Maybe I could have enjoyed it more if I could had let go of the feeling of it being “not how it is supposed to be”...

Sometimes when we follow a pattern we don’t get it quite right and the wrong side of a piece of crochet is like the behind of scenes of creating the front masterpiece. There’s some ends you couldn’t be bothered to weave in, the odd knot or tangle, it bears a strong resemblance to the front, but it’s not quite right. Ultimately, although you know and have seen the wrong side of your crochet, it doesn’t mean that anyone else that looks it will see it, it’s the wrong side of crochet that creates “the right side”.

I think we could all do with a little more kindness to ourselves and the wrong side of crochet and when people say “wow I love that!” be a little bit more like little Lana and absorb the compliment as it is meant. Celebrate the not quite right daisies, and the experiences that we have as that that they are rather than dismissive of them because they are “not as they are supposed to be”.

Lots of Love Emma xxx

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