Witch, Please

Let me be honest…

Friends, my goal in this little space of mine is to be honest.

I find there are enough areas of life where people (myself included) maybe aren’t completely honest...

We try to spare a friend’s feelings. They think their new shirt looks fab, and we think it looks like a tablecloth.

We want others to think we keep a clean house. We stroll to the table in front of the window that gets the best morning sunlight. We stretch out our arm and slide it across that table top while stacks of papers and dead plants and our kids’ shriveled long-lost sandwiches crash to the floor. Then we take a sophisticated photo of our latest acquisition to post online.

We want our cohorts to think that we are responsible (and maybe a little superior). We tell our fellow moms at playgroup that we never allow our toddlers to eat MSG. But when we get home, the only way to get our sweet angels to eat veggies is to slather those carrots and broccoli florets in ranch dressing.

Sometimes honesty gets a little hazy… distant… non-existent.

Most of us, I hope, try to be as honest as possible.

But I find that honesty generally needs to be tempered with one other quality:

Kindness

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We didn’t start the fire… but I remember when the dumpster caught

I don’t know if you remember 2019. It was the final pre-pandemic year. By all accounts, it should have been fantastic!

Unfortunately, for many of us in the fiber world, it turned into a 💩 show.

I had to force myself to stop reading the thousands of mean comments on Instagram. Somehow, people lost their minds and started “speaking” to others (generally complete strangers) in ways that were truly appalling.

Then 2020 hit, and I went into hiberknition.

I couldn’t take it.

I even… wait for it… started to knit GARTER again!!! I rarely knit garter for probably a decade because it was “too easy,” but my goodness, it came in handy in 2020! (Honesty Moment: I still find garter a little annoying at times, but I do appreciate it much more now.)

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Peanut Gallery

I generally stay away from the Comments section in most online spaces. Usually, when I do read them, the comments tend to be positive and supportive.

The other day, though, I had a 2019 flashback. A yarn dyer I follow (and whose yarn I adore) just revamped their YouTube podcast. I enjoyed their past videos over the years, so I thought this new journey sounded fun.

Then I noticed the top comment on the Instagram announcement. Apparently, an audio podcast also uses the same name. You would suppose that the commenter would have respectfully informed the dyer that another podcast of the same name, though on a different platform, already existed.

Welp, folks, that’s not what happened. This person was mean. And disrespectful. And gave no benefits-of-doubts. It made me feel icky just reading it. In fact, I read it a few times to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood their message.

Perhaps I choose to live in a bubble. A happy, floaty bubble where people are kind and considerate and generous of spirit. Especially when they’ve never even met the other person! Maybe this isn’t how the world—online or otherwise—works.

But gosh darn it, I think that’s a world in which we should be able to live.

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Some Kind of Wonderful

I guess I don’t have much to offer today in the way of knitting and techniques and whatnot. But I would, very simply, ask you to consider your words before you type them.

Maybe the person at whom you are firing those characters isn’t, in reality, the monster your mind has drummed up. Maybe they simply aren’t aware of the situation from your perspective. Maybe you misunderstood them. Maybe you are biased. Maybe you shouldn’t use negative adjectives when describing them or their behavior. Maybe you shouldn’t attack their integrity. Maybe you should offer your honesty through a lens of kindness and grace.

So, Friends, I hope you will go out into the world this week with a small goal in mind.

Be honest, but be kind, too.

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All of the links to Mountain Song Designs on the web….

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