Yesterday, I sent this letter to my newsletter. Today is the Feast of All Souls and truly Election-Eve. I implore everyone in the yarn community of the United States to read, breathe, contemplate, and seriously consider being kind to your audience because if they are a representation of the American populace, half of them are going to be very sad in 2 days.

Letter to the Yarn Community, 
Today is the Feast of all Saints, in the Catholic church.  It is why we celebrated Halloween last night, or All Hallow’s Eve —> Hallow e’en, the eve of celebrating all the Holy people.  We celebrate because they are in Heaven. In the church, we believe that saints are those men and women (and some children) that have lived a life so Holy that upon death they need not repent for any wrongdoing but go directly to Heaven.  Because they have lived with Jesus on Earth, they are rewarded by being with him directly in Heaven.  Ultimately, Heaven is our home.  In the early church, it was recognized of Christians that they acted as though they were not citizens of this world but citizens of Heaven.  Wherever they were, they took on the customs of the local town or country but still acted as foreigners.  What struck me this morning, at mass, was this very clear behavior and characteristic of all Christians that they acted as citizens of Heaven, regardless of where they were on Earth.

In this world, and in America, we are approaching another eve.  This week will be Election Day.  For some, this, too, will be a day of great celebration.  For others, it may be a day of great remorse.  If you are an American, or if you have a population of American clientelle, this message is for you.  Please remember that we are ALL citizens of the yarn community.  We came to these great crafts of crochet, knitting, weaving, spinning, dyeing because we love the fiber and the fabric.  We love working with our hands.  We love making beautiful things.  We share all these characteristics regardless of who we are, where we live, how we look or how we vote.  This is what needs to be celebrated in the yarn community.

As citizens of the yarn community, we also are citizens of the world.  Much of my audience (although not all of it) are also American citizens.  As such, much like the country, I assume that they are split on their personal election priorities.  Your audience may be much the same.  Please remember that after Election Day, all of your audience will still be your audience.  But it is likely that half of your audience will be hurting.  Please do not assume that all of your audience is hurting or rejoicing the same way that you will be. Please find a way to unify under the flag of yarn.  While you may not agree with the voting choice of some of your audience, that does not make them evil.  It just means they have a different approach to solving the same problems that we all see. If you wish to express your own remorse or joy following the Election, you run the risk of further alienating and fracturing the yarn community and your personal audience. 

Fiber and fiber arts is ancient.  As soon as man sewed two leaves together to make clothing, fiber arts was born. The fiber world pre-dated politics and it will outlast politics. If we’ve learned nothing from post-apocalyptic movies it is that yarn prevails!  As such, your audience that you’ve cultivated, and nurtured, and loved, and who has loved you in return is made up of a vast and wide ranging type of people who all have one thing in common.  They. Love. Yarn.

If you wish to retain all of your audience after Election Day, be compassionate. Be loving. Be kind. Do not assume that they agree with you politically, for that is not why they are following you.  They are following you because of what you do in this industry.  You create great yarn, or you create great things with yarn, or you create great patterns that make great things, or you help designers make great patterns for makers who create great things.  We are all connected by this love of creation of beauty and yarn. Let us all rejoice and connect through that, regardless of what follows Election Day. 

Happy All Saints Day to all of you.
Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, Pray for Us.