Aboard The Craft Train

February 3, 2015 by Ray Morgan

Aboard the craft train

When I was a commuter, I used to frequent a carriage (talking like this makes it sound a lot more The Lady Vanishes than it actually was) where a woman in her 50s knitted all the way to Fenchurch Street. Her needles would click and her fingers would nimbly work around the wool in such a fashion that I was mesmerised. Everyone else slept with mouths agape, stared at iPads or ate damp toast out of paper bags. She was the best.

Knitting has caught my eye ever since Scarlett Johansson sported a hefty pair of needles in Lost in Translation and made it look utterly cool. Yes, I am superficial. Plus it was back when she was brilliant, before the brassy blonde hair, rom coms and Justin Timberlake videos. Anyway I digress. CRAFT.

My mum is excellent at crafting (as was her mum before her, and my dad's mum, all the mums). She knocks up her own Christmas tags that look better than anything that has ever been sold in John Lewis. She crochets beautiful blankets and bunting. Bunting! This inspires me.

I learnt basic knitting and was soon ordering chunky threads and massive needles off the internet, and bought 4 enormous balls of wool from Aldi (Aldi!) before embarking on a scarf. Two years later, that scarf is complete. Hooray! Train-lady would have got it done in a week, but that's not the point. I did it.

I have also fallen in love with cross stitch. I love how twee it looks. I counter-act this tweeness by sewing very often rude phrases or in-jokes onto aida fabric and giving them to people as gifts. Some of them are too rude to put on here, this is a respectable website. You can see them on my Instagram though (shamelessplug)@raymondo_the_great(/shamelessplug).

Crafting is soothing. It's meditative. It takes the edge off the guilt as I sit watching Food Network of an evening (Barefoot Contessa is my life). It also brings people together. I have friends who also love to craft, so we have evenings round each other's homes where we work on current projects, and chat, and drink wine. It's something else my Mum and I can bond over. It's something that I can post on Twitter and all my crafting friends can chat to me about.

Give it a try...

My top 5 craft-related things

1. The Knitting & Stitching Show at Ally Pally. I went in November and it was like a woolly, felty, fat-quartery pilgrimage. Fierce old ladies jabbing you with elbows etc
2. My Cath Kidston knitting bag that my beaut colleagues bought me as a birthday gift
3. When you make a craft gift for someone and they totally dig it. PROUD MOMENT
4. The hilarious craft ideas that come from the internet. Especially Parks & Recreation-themed
5. Feeling like you're remaining in the Old World before iPads and blogging. This is real life tangible achievement! Well done! :)