It was actually Marilyn Manson's fault. Well, not actually Marilyn Manson, but it was him I was thinking about that night. Wondering what his house might look like. Wondering about his kitchen. In my kitchen, there are a lot of things with roosters on them. I had one towel and one clock, and somebody said "Wow! There are cocks in your kitchen!", and that was enough to set me off. Cocks in the kitchen? Why, yes. Yes, there are. Lots of them. Big, giant ones. Big ones with feathers. Little ones in many colors. But I digress.
So what does Marilyn Manson's kitchen look like? Does he recycle? Do his kitchen towels have- *gasp* flowers on them? Or really big gold monograms? Or bleeding, sliced open hearts or veins or, no, wait, that was Ozzy Osborne---. Let's get back to Marilyn. Or Ritchie, we can call him that, we're from New Jersey. He's from New Jersey. So, kitchen towels, Ritchie? Black, I'm thinking, and then I went "Ooh! Black kitchen towels!" Those would match my packed away dishes. Which won't look well with cocks. Not the colorful ones, anyway. Black kitchen towels. And dishcloths. And maybe instead of the little Amish lady you shove plastic bags up the skirt of, maybe there could be a zombie or something, yes, a recycling zombie would be just the thing. Wait, somebody makes these things, right? Right? Off to the interwebs---
After a week of poking around, I discovered something significant. Nobody makes these things. No recycling zombies, no black towels, no bloody dishrags, no bat shaped kitchen clocks. Not a thing. I was so bummed. What the hell was Ritchie to do? And me, for that matter. And didn't I know some goths, some vampires, some really, really dark emo folk who would really dig black kitchen towels? Surely they didn't have roosters or flowers or little Italian chefs, or horses---
I kept at it. and then one late night, I hit what I thought might be paydirt. Now you have to keep in mind that I was a real novice at searching at that point, if I'd had any real skill, I would have found this much sooner, but there they were at last. The Hip Forums. People talking about making things that I could see myself actually using. Some of them, well, a lot of them really, were black. And for the kitchen. And there were pot leaves and peace signs-no, wait, that was a few years back-and skull shaped soap and coffin shaped soap, and, and, and---well, yes, there were roosters, too--
My head was full of ideas. I'm a crafty person. Hell, I'm an artsy-fartsy person. I can make shit. Really good shit. I just had to think of it. And now, now I had thought of it. I was on a roll. First, I had to learn to knit. Well, I could knit, but I needed to learn to knit properly. Like holding the yarn and all. And more than two stitches. Imagine my disappointment when I found out there are only two stitches. Bummer. But it didn't last, there are infinite ways to combine them, and a million kinds of yarn, and , and-- (wait, I have to stop a minute to breathe) okay, I'm good.
From the Hip Forums, I found Craftster. I learned about what today's knitters and crocheters and other crafters were doing with our heritage of handicrafts. Okay, there were a lot of pastel baby blankets. No, you don't understand, a REALLY lot of them, and sweaters that match. Ouch. what about my kitchen? Not so much. Grandma's kitchen, yes. My goth/emo/vampire kitchen? no. well, as it turned out, not yet. sorry. I lose my capital letters when I get excited.
One day I was looking at the website for Vicky Howell, a really cute little knitter girl, wait, they spell it grrrl now. And I started clicking on links and stuff and all of a sudden, I was looking at a knitted uterus. A knitted uterus? Why, in the name of all that's unholy, why did somebody knit a uterus? I had to know. If they did that, what the hell else had they done? And so I discovered the AntiCraft. I was home at last.
