Saturday 9 May 2015

SABLE anyone?

SABLE is an acronym. If you are a crafts person you will know what it means. For the rest of you it means "Stash Advancement Beyond Life Expectancy" or having more craft materials than you can possibly hope to use in your lifetime.
This is a "disease" that most crafty people suffer from in varying degrees. The Senior Cat has more timber than he will ever be able to use. I have more yarn than I am likely to use - but less than many people. I have been given a great deal of yarn and I have also passed a great deal of it on to other people.
I might add that serious bibliomaniacs also suffer from "BABLE" (book advancement beyond life expectancy),
Both SABLE and BABLE have been under discussion in the last couple of days. The reason for this has been my attendance at a craft fair where I have been helping a friend who has a yarn type stall. She sells a few books and some patterns (some of which are mine) and we also direct people looking for information about other subjects to another stall where there are books about all things crafty. 
There have been some interesting reactions to this. The young will often agree that they can go on line and search information out. Older people will say they can get their children to do the same thing or they say they will do it with help from their children.
But, whether older or younger, people want books. They tell us they want pictures and diagrams and the capacity to look and be inspired by books. Over and over again people say that looking at something on the screen is not the same..
I have to agree. I have an e-book which is about knitting. I looked carefully at it when I bought it. I thought it was going to be useful. The other day I realised that I really had not used the book. It just isn't convenient in e-book form.
I think craft books have an even greater future than before...and at the rate people were buying yarn and other craft related materials I think SABLE is at epidemic proportions.
 

1 comment:

jeanfromcornwall said...

The thing about craft books - and yarn - is that there are so many fascinating and delicious items becoming available, but there is still a lovely lot of old stuff around and it is all out there waiting to be re-homed and cherished. One can learn a lot from the old books, but there are new ideas to be had from the new ones and they also benefit from the improvements in printing and colour. It is all valuable!