by Terri
The oath is the perfect gift for the fiber artist in your life. It's also a great treat for your own craft room wall.
How It Came To Be:
It all started with an IM conversation:
| Ariela Housman: | isn't it a shame that geeks never knit and i would have no reason whatsoever to make geeky knitting art |
| Terri Ash: | Not a single one |
| Ariela Housman: | .... KNITTER'S OATH!!!! aaaah, why did i never think of this before?!?1 |
I'm an avid knitter, to the point where I have assembled plans to open a yarn shop.* Naturally, this meant talking to Ariela, and thus the above conversation. Ariela's brain is amazing at making cross-connections, and she'd been working really hard on the SysAdmin's Oath. And so the seeds began sprouting. Since Ariela sews rather than knits, she knew that the theme needed to be expanded. In addition, we wanted to recognize every form of fiber arts we know the geek world embraces - knitting, spinning,** needlepoint, weaving, sewing and crochet. Thus, the Fiber Artist's Oath.
The text was a collaborative effort between the two of us, which we then ran by other fiber artist friends to make sure we hadn't left anything out.*** After quite a bit of culling, we still ended up with the longest oath that we've ever made. Ariela asked me for suggestions for tools to include in the border art, and really managed to fit most of them in. The art is similar to the other oaths on the site, but you will notice a distinct lack of curves and tangles emblematic of the other oaths.**** This is because after making both the full Cordthulhu and the mini one contained in the SA's Oath, Ariela was tired of trying to create tangles that look both aesthetically pleasing and pleasingly random and balanced. This is quite the difficult task, and we don't get art if we push the artist too hard. It's possible that there might have been tangled yarn if Ariela hadn't been banging her head against the other art, but the process was making her more than a little itchy. So in the end, the art is comprised of the tools and raw materials that fiber artists use.
The Fiber Artist's Oath is available for $45.
*You'll start to notice a theme around here - neither Ariela nor I are very good at limiting ourselves to one project at a time. I'm a little better at it, which is why I'm the resident killjoy for Ariela's grand dreams.
**That person in the back of the panel with the weird rotating thing making thread - they're spinning.
***Turns out we had - neither of us had thought of repetitive stress injuries.
****You'd think they belonged here - yarn gets tangled a LOT.