Welcome to Purlin' Acres

In about thirty years or so, I am going to buy a sprawling house with a wrap-around porch, with at least twenty acres attached. I shall name it "Purlin' Acres." It will become an knitting old folks home.


Purlin' Acres will feature all the latest care for older Americans. There will be a medical team on site, with friendly doctors who really listen to you and don't patronize you or tell you it's all in your head. There will be a staff of lovely and friendly individuals who will cheerfully take care of all of the annoying tasks of day-to-day living: laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping. Each resident will have an airy suite of rooms with plenty of natural light, including a living room with lots of built-in shelving perfect for storing skeins of yarn (cedar with herbal moth-repellant sachets), and comfy chairs that allow you to knit in ergonometric comfort while watching digital cable, listening to music, or enjoying silence. Each suite will have a bedroom and small kitchen, and of course a bathroom with a big tub and plenty of handrails, since we will be getting less steady on our feet by then.


Purlin' Acres will feature expansive common areas designed with the comfort of knitters in mind. More comfy furniture, magnifier lenses on stands, plenty of Ott-lites, baskets on or under every table chock full of extra Susan Bates Knit-Cheks, ring markers, fancy little scissors shaped like storks, and such like, defibrillator stations, Depends dispensers. There will be wireless internet access, natch (or whatever form of speedy access to whatever version of the web exists by then) and computer terminals everywhere, all loaded with knitting-related software. Each resident will be given a Ravelry account upon admission (if s/he doesn't already have one), alhtough one hopes the waiting list will be significantly shorter by then. Residents will be responsible for providing their own stash, however; otherwise, Purlin' Acres is sure to go bankrupt. There will be a Purlin' Acres Company Store in one of the outbuildings, with constant service via golf cart, so that knitters can shop to their heart's content -- or until their pension check runs out. (A generous senior citizen discount will apply.) If your pension isn't going as far as it used to, you can take advantage of the Purlin' Acres Test Knitters program, in which you help designers perfect their new patterns in exchange for money and/or yarn.

Workshops will be held in a separate outbuilding, and Purlin' Acres will attract some of the best-loved teachers in the knitting world. Guest speakers will give talks on knitting and other crafts that may be of interest to residents. A special dyeing room will allow residents to play with color and fiber. Indie artists will make occasional visits to bring their rovings and yarns and buttons and other items for purchase. Every major yarn company, publishing house and magazine will send trunk shows each season, displaying the newest developments in yarn and knitting technology. And of course, there will be an entire outbuilding devoted to spinning: wheels of every shape, size and maker, for residents to play with, plenty of drop spindles and niddy noddies, swifts and ballwinders, too. Field trips to fiber festivals, Stitches, Soar, yarn crawls and other events will be taken via plush motorcoach.


Don't forget to check out the library should you visit. In both computer and book form, it will contain an unparalleled collection of books on knitting, crochet, fashion, design, as well as fiction and nonfiction. The entire collection of Alice *more fair isles will be one especially popular feature. Each resident will get a special reader which displays the pages of their desired reading material on a screen -- type size and color is adjustable to take into account any vision issues the resident may have -- with a foot pedal that advances to the next page. Read and knit simultaneously, with no fear of losing your place or missing a stitch.

In the adjoining fields, fiber animals of every ilk can be found: sheep, llamas, alpaca, goats, musk oxen, to name a few. A special "Bunny House" will provide chew-safe, burrow-filled, predator-free environments for the rabbits. Sheep-herding dogs will live in the outbuildings and are available for residents to take for a walk or play fetch with. The roster of cats -- Maine Coon, Ragdoll, Kitlers -- will of course have the run of the residents' building. A weekly LOL-CAT captioning contest is sure to be a popular diversion.


There will be a special area for knitters who have lost, or are losing, their buttons (not the kind you sew on garments). These knitters can sit and knit endless rows of garter stitch should they so choose, or receive infinitely-patient instruction on how to bind off stitches for the forty-seventh time. The truly ga-ga will find pleasure in operating the crank on the ballwinders, helping care for the sheep, and other wholesome pursuits. Should your arthritis or other orthopedic diseases make you unable to knit, fear not. You may simply hold your gnarled fingers and arms up and serve as a human niddy-noddy. (At least you'll get to touch the fiber that way.) And you can be sure that there will be a friendly knitter in the main building who is happy to knit you a colostomy bag cozie out of a high quality, machine-washable, natural fiber yarn.


Enrollment for Purlin' Acres will fill up fast. I imagine I'll have to adopt a stringent application process, but I will conduct all personal interviews myself. KnitDweebs will be rigorously screened out.* Preferential admissions will be given to people who read this blog and Black Bunny customers.



Doesn't it sound wonderful? It's almost enough to make me want to grow old.







*Trick questions will be employed to this end. For example, if I ask you "Is it okay to bring needles on an airplane?" the only acceptable responses are "Google it, you asshole"; "Who gives a shit"; and "I'm outta here."