Christmas Crochet Survival Kit

I know I’m not the only person who wants to be generous without being frivolous at Christmas but is a Go Bag an inappropriate gift?

I’m notoriously ill prepared for absolutely everything but occasionally I have a sudden urge to get my shizzle together.

Back in the summer of 2019 for no apparent reason I started collecting tinned vegetables and firewood and this Autumn I began squirreling matches, batteries and butane gas as the actual squirrels in my garden dug holes and buried hazelnuts

A 65 litre rucksack packed full of Christmas goodies like water purification tablets, duct tape and a wind up radio may not a make a conventional Christmas gift but since Covid made all perfumes smell like toilet cleaner to me I’ll happily accept energy bars, freeze dried meals and 5 litre bottles  of water this year – and don’t be offended if my usual gift of luxury hand cream is now a multi pack of hand sanitiser. It’s my way of showing I care.

I definitely don’t fit the caricature of a prepper. I’m not building a bunker; I’ve no idea how to do that – but I could probably crochet a comfy hammock. And I’m not stockpiling ammo, unless water pistols count. I find these useful for deterring the dog from peeing on the scrubland I used to call my lawn.

But just for a moment think the unthinkable……

Imagine this scenario: something bad happens resulting in a Cloudflare outage for 14 days. All your favourite websites are down, including your own. This is an exciting new potential catastrophe I’ve added to my regular 5am panic attacks.

But it did happen recently; for just a few hours Kajabi (the platform that hosts our online courses) was down and The Mercerie’s inboxes were flooded. Thankfully Mel (our Kajabi expert) bailed us out and helped us keep our course members informed, but a longer outage could have escalated into a crochet catastrophe.

So how would you survive 14 days with no access to your favourite craft sites or online yarn stores? And imagine if you also couldn’t go out, so no shopping for yarn in real life either.

If you’re looking for a thoughtful present for the Yarnies on your Gift List, how about putting together a 14 Day Survival Kit for Yarn Addicts?

Craft withdrawal can be serious and may have a dramatic impact on your domestic relationships but you can be the hero in this dystopia by providing some basic essentials in a Crochet Survival kit.

Here’s a suggested list of contents:

• Emergency yarn stash: a variety of colours and weights for playful sampling and exploring ideas that you don’t usually have time for or can’t be bothered to do.
• UFO’s. Boredom could be just the catalyst you need to pick up those unfinished projects you lost interest in years ago.
• Printed patterns: What if all your projects are stored online and you can’t get past the Error 502- Bad Gateway or Error 500 – Internal Server Error because you have absolutely no idea what they mean? Make sure you have hard copies of anything you may want to work on.
• A note book and pen. When Ravelry’s down you’ll need to make actual notes. In a book. You may do this anyway if, like me, you can’t use Ravelry because it’s too complicated and no one ever gets back to you when you need help.
• Some books on things that inspire you. My go-to books are generally about colour and pattern. I like looking at the pictures.
• Kendal Mint Cake (every survival kit needs this) and maybe some healthy sugar free snacks to show your friends.
• Store all of this in waterproof containers, with the exception of the acrylic yarns that were made to withstand all natural and man-made disasters and can survive a thousand years in landfill with no visible signs of decay.

If a Go-Bag sounds too apocalyptic and a Crochet Survival Kit sounds like too much hard work; how about giving a gift that really will keep on giving for months, possibly years……

You can gift one of our lovely crochet courses to a yarnie friend and they’ll get a delivery of beautifully curated tutorials to their inbox twice a week plus invitations to join live meet ups on Zoom with me and other course members – we’re an amazing community of crafters with an incredible wealth of knowledge between us.

And you can’t buy that on Amazon.

Even when things are ‘normal’ crafting at home by yourself can feel a little isolating but when you do a course with me you know that there’s a whole cohort working on the project with you who totally understand the challenges involved and can work through them with you.

Our fabulous community is always there to support and cheer you on and my assistant Jess and I are available for real conversations and answers to your questions; there are no AI chat bots at The Mercerie, only real people and we’re all genuinely excited to see the incredible work generated by our course members.

We only open bookings at limited times throughout the year. This ensures each cohort gets my full attention and whilst everyone works through a course at their own pace it helps me support everyone  when I know all course members have received the same content at the same time each week.

It also means there are times in the year when there are no live courses running and this gives me time to take a breath and recalibrate before the next course begins. Experience has taught me that ‘evergreen’ courses (one’s where bookings are always open) have a lower completion rate and studies have proved that people have a better learning experience when they’re working with an interactive group of peers.

Press the buzzer if you’d like to join us!