technology | Aberrant Crochet (TM)

I find myself writing a crochet pattern again (spawned by a request).

It’s been over a decade since I completed and published my last pattern.

Writing a pattern to international crochet standards is one of the most challenging–yet rewarding–exercises I’ve ever learned in crochet. But even the photos, illustrations, and formatting of the document layout took many hours and a lot of work. Don’t get me started on pattern testing, modeling, and photoshoots.

Designing is a lot easier than figuring out how to put an understandable (and pretty) explanation on paper that describes how I make things without thinking and “how you can too!”

And maybe I’m a little picky about the appearances of what I stamp my name on.

So I haven’t been looking forward to this request, for which chicken scratch isn’t going to do. Even though, at the moment, all I need are clear, basic beginning instructions that I can disseminate quickly and digitally.

As if that isn’t marvelously critical to the success of everything when working with newbies.

And then I remembered–I have tools today that weren’t available to me a decade ago. Even my Adobe and Word products are better tools today.

And it occurred to me–I’ve been writing and marketing on social media all this time. I’ve been designing graphics, e-courses, and web pages for clients–all this time. And I’ve been writing scripts and building templates. All. This. Time.

I wished for an easy button, but honestly–she’s right here. It’s me.

I’m the magic I seek.

And even better–I have a Canva Pro account today. Which is slick as heck and fun to use.

I’ll flesh out a right nice template that I can slip my instructions into in no time.

One of my favorite quotes: “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.”

Thanks, younger me.

—
September 19, 2022
7:49pm

Comments from my blog post a few nights ago sparked some meditations for me.

Though I don’t want to see us lose our past and forget the eloquent arts of how to write or how to speak, I also see that we’re evolving.

When you stop and think about it, it’s not just that the world is shrinking. With the influence of technology and our society’s adaption, we are learning and forming new languages and cultures.

We just don’t think about it that way.

Technology is a great tool.
But it’s also putting us in a position to be in contact with so much input of data, that we are now evolving at faster and faster rates.

Even our vocabulary. Language and behavioral evolution that previously would have taken much longer to evolve, after traditional historical fashion, is now happening in days.

It’s a fascinating realization.

Someone across the world in a country I’ve never seen, much less understand, can have an affect on my ideas and decisions. Even if only to simply decide whatever they’ve chosen to have for dinner sounds good to me too.

It’s an amazing frontier, and a bit of a frightening one as well.

We romanticize about secret societies and orders of human history. But we are creating them even as we speak. We’re developing languages and micro-cultures that only the members of which really understand. Only this time, it is not mountains and rivers that divide or unite us.

Twitter, texting, Facebook: these all have language specifics, expected behaviors and values. “Secret codes.” And if you’re not “in” the culture, then you don’t know. Not too unlike being in the military, or being a sci-fi geek. Each subgroup has its values, it’s language, it’s own support system and even its own humor.

So it brings us back to that evolution factor and how fast this is taking us just exactly where?

Because I definitely think there’s an argument that can be made for the potential to create an experience not too unlike the story of the Tower of Babel. Where the language and cultures become confused. And instead of unity within a single people, an undeniable division and separation of cultures is born.

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