The Joy of Knitting

Dear Elizabeth,

I came across your post regarding your unwillingness to sell yarn to women involved with the Women's Movement on your "The Joy Of Knitting" Facebook page. I love knitting, btw! My granny taught me how to knit when I was 8. My granny is 91 now, but still knits blankets for preemie babies every week! She donates them to a phenomenal program at a local church that we don't belong to. Those preemie babies love love love those blankies! They keep the babies so warm! That church does such great work in our community! (FYI neither the babies nor the church care that my Granny isn't Christian! The blankies are non-denominational!) Anyway, your post made me feel so sad for you. I could tell that your heart is so obviously in the right place - wanting to promote values of respect and love and all. So, I hope you won't mind me reaching out to you, with both respect and love in my heart, to offer you an opportunity to release some of that heavy load of hate you've been carrying around! The burden of hatred can really hurt your back! I've pasted your words in red below and commented beneath them ...

With the recent women's march on Washington, I ask that you if you want yarn for any project for the women's movement that you please shop for yarn elsewhere.

Ok. Done! We will respect your wishes and definitely will not shop at your store.

The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable.

Based on this sentence above, my hunch is you don't have the correct information about the women's movement. Here's the link to the website and here's our mission statement: https://www.womensmarch.com/

We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.

See! It's totally based in love! If you're looking for something to call vulgar, click this link to a man bragging about grabbing a woman by the pussy! Isn't that just unfathomable?! I still can't get over the epic nature of that kind of vulgarity! And if you're looking for something vile, click this link to information regarding the massacre on school children in Connecticut. Our gun laws made it so simple for this mentally ill shooter to access murderous guns and ammo, that he went ahead and killed a whole bunch of innocent children and their teachers. There's a lot of info about it actually; here at The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and here at SmartGunLaws.Org and here at The National Alliance on Mental Illness. If you ask me, that kind of gun violence is about as vile as you can get. Oh, and if you're looking for an example of "evilness," check this out! This is a video of a white man killing a black man just because he is black! Have you ever heard of something so evil? I know. It's truly gutting. Sorry to be such a downer, but it just seemed like you were so far off course on your categorizations of vulgar, vile and evil, that I wanted to help steer you back on course!

That kind of behavior is unacceptable and is not welcomed at The Joy of Knitting.

I AGREE! If vulgar pussy grabbers, vile gunmen and evil racists came to my joyful knitting shop, I would totally un-invite them too! I see your point, Liz.

I will never need that kind of business to remain open. Two wrong will never ever make it right.

(FWIW and for future ref, in that colloquial expression, the word "wrong" ought to be pluralized). OK, so in the above scenario, am I correct that BEING the evil guy is one wrong, and SELLING joyful yarn to that same evil guy is the other? I AGREE LIZ! You know what that's like?! I have the best comparison for this! Ooo, I'm so excited! That's like when owners of perfectly joyful gun stores, sell guns to evil gun shooters! Stores should definitely be so careful about selling to people with evil intentions! There's a whole movement about that. It's called Background Checking. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has so much info about it here! Ooh! Ooh! I just got an idea! What if you started to do background checks at The Joyful Knitting?! That way you'd know if someone was a vulgar pussy grabber, a vile gun murderer, or an evil white supremacist before you sold them joyful yarn! Think it over, Liz. Sleep on it!

As the owner of this business and a Christian, I have a duty to my customers and my community to promote values of respect, love, compassion, understanding, and integrity.

AMEN! Do it! Pah-LEASE! This world needs SO much more of those values above!

The women's movement is counterproductive to unity of family, friends, community, and nation.

Oopsie Daisy! You veered off course again! A) The women's movement loves unity! Men & Women, Men & Men, Women & Women, sometimes to spice things up Men & Women & Women! UNITE, Sister! We are super PRO-UNITY! As far as family, friends, & community go, we are 100% on board! Just ask our families, friends, communities! And as for our nation ... we love this nation and the freedoms and liberties that it stands for SO much, that most of us put all our stuff (even tampons!) in see-through plastic backpacks so that we could march safely and transparently. If sacrificing fashion sense for the greater good isn't love for our nation, I don't know what is!

I do pray for these women. May the God work out His love in their hearts and continue to heal and unite Americans.

God is a personal issue. So I won't bring Her into this. But I will say, that we have love in our hearts, which is the meat & potatoes of every single religion in the whole wide world. JOYFUL indeed!