A few years back, my mother and I took a tour of some homes in a very chichi section of Indianapolis known as Meridian-Kessler, where houses on the main drag look something like this:

2013-Weller-COLOR-300x199

On the tour this year

After we walked through three houses comparable to that one, I begged off.  I couldn’t stand to look one more professionally decorated room.  Not one.  Walking to our cars, my mother asked, “So what are you taking away from this experience?”  “Rich people have too much f****** money,” I advised her darkly, “and their houses piss me off.”

Yes, I really do drop f-bombs in front of my mother.  She hates it almost as much as I hated that peek into the lives of my socio-economic betters.

Honestly, though, I would sooner sleep on a college student’s grimy couch than live in a 5,500-square-foot house.  It’s not from some noble political conviction that I say this, although it does bother me to think about a family of six sharing a two-bedroom apartment while a family of three redecorates their mansion just to “make it their own.”  For the most part, however, my reaction to wealth is much more instinctive than intellectual.  I just don’t like big, fancy, expensive stuff.  It makes me feel small and alien, as if I do not belong, as if I need to look around for the nearest authority figure for permission to approach the Royal Things, the ones I mustn’t sully with my mundane middle-class dust.

All of this leads me to the trip I made to a yarn store this week to buy some fancy yarn.  When I told fellow WonderStrange artist Sarah Trumpp that I was going out to the yarn store, she said, “Ooh. Yarn porn.”  I believe I said, “I know, right?”  I really didn’t expect to have a Meridian-Kessler experience in the middle of Aisle Four.  (Okay, that’s a joke.  Yarn stores don’t have aisles.  Aisles are for serfs.)

Keep in mind, now, that I usually get my yarn at Michaels, or Hobby Lobby, or on a really racy day, JoAnn’s.  These stores do have aisles, and they don’t carry the $20 Madeline Tosh.  Their nicest skein of yarn might cost . . . oh . . . $9.00, while a more average price is $4.00 or $5.00

 

Group Shot in Line

These are my new Supernatural minis. 

They were all made with yarn from Hobby Lobby that costs less than $9.

If I had to make them from $9 yarn, no one could afford to buy them except people from Meridian-Kessler.

 

Yeah, so at any rate, I flipped out a little at the yarn store, and more specifically, I burst into tears.  (I told you.  Instinctive.)  No one had greeted me.  No one had offered to help me.  I might as well have been invisible – especially when I took my yarn to the cash register, where I waited and waited for the grand privilege of giving someone my money.

When I mentioned on Facebook that the yarn store had done me wrong, my friend Louise asked what yarn I’d purchased.  After I told her the brand, she said, “Yarn stores are kinda like record stores.  [You just bought] the Justin Bieber record in that store, my friend.”

Ugh.  I mean, Louise is hilarious, and I wish we could hang out in real life and cook delicious vegetarian food and make things out of yarn while we watch cool TV shows, but UGH!

Ugh about snobs.  Ugh about crying in the parking lot of a yarn store.  And ugh about my Justin Bieber yarn, which cost me $12 but feels exactly the same to me as the Lily Sugar ‘n Cream that I get at the local grocery store for a dollar and change.

So hey.  Know what?

I renounce good yarn.  I do it proudly.  I don’t make wearable things like sweaters, and that means I really don’t need to worry about the elegant softness of wool that comes from sheep who sip champagne while graduate students read them Baudelaire.

Eff.  Good.  Yarn.

There. I feel better now.  Power to the people and all that.

Did I mention how cute my new Supernatural minis are?

 Sam 34 DL Bobby Alone DL

Sam                                                              Bobby

Cas DL

Castiel

Dean 34 DL

Dean

Lucifer DL

Lucifer

You can find them here.  And thanks for reading.

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ann

Ann D'Angelo is a dedicated drinker of diet Coke who has never spotted a thrift store she didn't want to visit or an item she didn't want to alter. Check out Ann's shop.

9 Comments

sarah · May 24, 2013 at 12:29 am

"the elegant softness of wool that comes from sheep who sip champagne while graduate students read them Baudelaire"

HAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!

I think if you went to a yarn store here in the wilds of nowhere, that yarn would be the equivalent of buying a special bootleg press of the circle jerks playing on moonshine jugs on colored vinyl. I'm sorry it was so snobby, though.

shuckclod · May 24, 2013 at 1:40 am

Great post… I also don't like huge houses. If the whole house echoes like a toilet, that is not a home. I also hate gold stuff. Only at Christmas time. Do you ever make yarn socks? There is an alpaca farm a couple miles from my house. I want some of their yarn for some socks. They only sell it around the holidays. If you do maybe we can make a deal, a pair for me and a pair for you. Justin Bieber is awful. Have a great weekend.

    Ann Pierson D'Angelo · May 24, 2013 at 12:14 pm

    Thanks, shuckclod! I really need to learn to make socks. And I'd be down for a deal!

Melissa Jhenine · May 24, 2013 at 6:45 am

You do have to realize that there is a time and a project for those expensive yarns. And you never use them on ami projects. No, no, no!

One point of interest, too, is that not all LYS owners are made equal. LYS's require a good amount of overhead, for which the proprietor must have a good chunk of money laying around to buy. Think about that Bieber skein you bought yesterday, then think about the skeins of $60+ yarns in that same store. (The ones that only true yarn snobs know where to find–without asking.) A lot of people with that kind of money to throw around aren't going to be happy with a single Bieber skein leaving the store on any given day. The trick is to find the stores that have the good-hearted people who aren't out to snub their nose at you because you can't afford (or don't want) to buy the yarn for a $500 sweater that you're likely to never finish knitting.

    sarah · May 24, 2013 at 12:04 pm

    (she would never use expensive yarn on an ami… just sayin!)

    Ann Pierson D'Angelo · May 24, 2013 at 12:12 pm

    Oh, absolutely I realize that there are good projects for those high-end yarns! They're just not mine. I have friends who make stunning sweaters, and I'm sure they're using nice yarn. As you say, my work doesn't require it, and on this one venture, when I wanted yarn for a hat, I thought I'd try it. It didn't agree with me, obviously. But I certainly don't mean to seem anti-LYS, or anti-small business, or even anti-THIS store, which is why I did not call it out by name. It's just not for me.

cindyjob · May 28, 2013 at 8:11 am

I thought LYS people were just snotty to people like me who are not gifted with the needle arts! When I went looking for some fancy yarn so I could have my friend repair the mitten dumbdog ate a hole in I was so mortified at how people treated me. I am not such a cryer as our girl Ann or I'd have been sobbing in the parking lot of all 4 of them I visited. I did finally find some sweet hipster girls working at one in WIsconsin and they were nice.
I like those big houses though Ann. Perfect for the art commune. I call the room in the tower.

AngeLikeMe · May 28, 2013 at 8:44 pm

OMG I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOUR OPINION OF RICH PEOPLE!!! Never being one myself of course….don't you wonder how much they actually give to charity?? I'm orignally a Hoosier but never saw these locations. I'm glad…I H8 puking and I don't think the rich would like that on their professionally landscaped yards….LoL
Love your lil goths…2 cute and looking very tedious to make…get your nerves on. ;-}

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