Author: Betsy

Finding Ground.

| Betsy

I’m grounded by history.

I’ve been reminded of this many times over the past few weeks as I discover Washington, DC. Passing signs to my father’s old high school, waving to my great-grandmother in Arlington Cemetery (she has a great view of the Pentagon, where her husband worked), hearing stories about my grandfather’s grandparents farm (now a park), hearing about how my grandfather would walk their pony to Tyson’s Corner to be reshod as there was a blacksmith there.

Lately the photo above has been a touchstone. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tell me about how we were related to the sculptor Daniel Chester French. This photo reminds me of big dreams and creativity and a smidge of hope that it will all look as magical as conceived once fully constructed. I still haven’t found the building that housed the bakery my grandfather’s grandmother owned, but my grandmother has a map.

There’s something about knowing all of this that allows me to sink into the city more, wondering about how our genes and journeys will mix as I wander around eying old buildings and time-tested construction. After moving so often and taking so many trips far and wide, it’s nice to find a spot of ground that feels firm and real and solid under my feet. In thinking about the hopes and dreams and fears and loves and first crushes in my family’s lives as they strolled along these streets to the market, to work, to the doctor, to school, a sense of magic surrounds me. It may seem silly or impossible or mawkish to some, but after feeling so temporary and transient, here, for a moment, this sense of being grounded comforts me deep and true and completely.

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And for some crafty and otherwise creative links:
*Textile Encyclopedia*How to hem jeans in 3 easy steps
*The Newly Redesigned Mr. Xstitch! (Great job, Jamie!)
*Guide to Reading Japanese Crochet & Knitting Patterns
*Find where your clothes come from with the Baacode
*The Art of Manliness (Ok, not so crafty as interesting)
*Copenhagen Cyclic Chic (see how to bike in high heels)
*National Museum of African Art archives
*Make softies? How about making a few for Softies for Mirabel
*Awista Ayub’s However Tall the Mountain (what happens when young Afghan girls learn about soccer… and more)

Over the Mountain and Through the Woods…

| Betsy

…To grandmother’s house we go.

The other weekend I joined several of my cousins at our grandparent’s house in the North Carolina mountains near the border of Tennessee. One afternoon, when it was quiet, I took out my camera and took photographs of a few of my favorite things. I had a second to really pay attention to my great grandmother’s organ that was in her living room in Florida (complete with songbook!), some Matchbox cars from 1955 that were my uncle’s and a crocheted quilt made by someone in my family years ago.

Taking some extra quiet time to wander through their house like it was a museum was wonderful. My grandparents traveled all over the world, there were artifacts from my grandfather’s Army tours over his 30-year career, and bits covering every decade of the last century. I used to go to their house in South Carolina and do the same thing, walk around and look at all the delightful things they were attracted to at one point in time. It reminded me that that’s part of why I love older things, because they all have a journey and story to them, all different, all magical, all lovely.

Craft + DIY = Punk?

| Betsy

Below is the most visited post in my archives, one from March 23, 2004 called Why Craft = Punk Rock. In 2004, I was living in London, getting my MA and had just started writing and researching about craft and community. It was before all the press and essays and was a true time of discovery. It was the beginning of the press frenzy and interviews at the start of UK’s finding craft as a subversive act.

Fast forward 5 years, and I think of all the places craft has brought me and all the wonderful people it has allowed me to meet. I never would have thought that the tenets behind this post would influence, well, everything that followed. Everything. Where did your craft spirit originate? What gives you fire in your belly? As I’m in the process of changing gears, looking for work* that helps women find their creative spirit in developing countries, I’m reminded of this post below. And I’m wondering where this new journey will take me, who I will meet, and held safe in the knowledge that my belief in the power of craft and creativity is real and deep and pure.

*

Living in London, I’m constantly amazed by the fact that the so-called ‘subversive craft scene’ is non-existent. In the U.S., it is everywhere you look and it’s not so much a ‘call to arms’ as it is an expression of something I/you/we can do with our own hands to make our own lives as well as the lives of others a little bit better in the chaos of life around us.

Currently I’m helping out with an event called V&A Museum here in London.

There is a press frenzy surrounding it and I’ve been dealing with people who are calling knitting a ‘trend,’ a ‘fad,’ a ‘craze’ and I can’t help but get a little but frustrated by it all yet continually finding it all naive. Both my reaction to the press interest as well as their wanting to just find a creative angle to fit their byline.

I don’t do my various crafts because it’s ‘trendy,’ although I do sometimes have crafty dreams that include everyone turning off their televisions and making stuff, whether it’s knitting a sweater or making macaroni necklaces or screenprinting fliers for a local demo. Anything as long as you are letting your passion be your guide rather than what’s seen a ‘popular for the moment.’

I’m fascinated by the emails I get from people in regards to their pure love of various crafts. Some of them are confused about what I’m trying to do here with this blog or in various work I do. I want to be a resource for people that want to help other people with their various crafty endeavours. Maybe I’m helping to fill that void, or maybe I’m just taking up more space on the interweb, I’m not sure most days.

No, everything I make doesn’t go to charity. but some of it does.

The other part of my crafty dream is that everyone becomes conscious of all of their actions. By asking things like: Do I need this? Do I want to support this company? How can I help? Where does my passion lie?

It is all quite emo and I’m sure my parents would conclude that I’m now a hippie.

But it’s about more than that.

My background is firmly entrenched in punk rock. I was always cutting and pasting my own little zines (and then hiding them under my bed because I felt they were crap) or daydreaming about playing drums in the next Bikini Kill.

But I never felt like i was good enough at anything really to make my mark. It was only when I started learning to knit, crochet, embroider, screenprint, make books, felt, etc etc that I regained my own sense of self and that fire that punk rock put in my belly when I was 16.

Craft to me is very punk rock and it’s hard to read article after article about how craft is just for ‘grannies.’ I love my grandmother who knits, she is kickass, but I’m also inspired daily by the way that punk rock influences my own brand of activism and craft. craftivism, if you will.

Who knows, maybe you feel the same way, maybe not. But I can never ignore how punk rock shaped my crafting. I owe my creativity to it, and it’s so not just a trend. And some days I get homesick for people who understand that.

xo

*Yep. Got any ideas of anyone who might be looking to hire someone with these interests? Get in touch!

“Making.” “Seeing.” “Being.” Boldly.

| Betsy

When I was in 10th grade in 1990, one of our assignments was to do a report on an artist, someone we admired. I remember that everyone else chose people like John Lennon or Jerry Garcia, and I chose Keith Haring, who I had read about in Sassy magazine. That was the moment when I truly realized that people are emboldened and intrigued and excited about pushing the envelope, speaking up for what you believe in, for following what makes your heart skip a beat and question the big picture all at the same time.

In 1996, Keith Haring: Journals was published by Penguin Putnam in a building I would work in 5 years later. Reading his journals, while in one sense voyeuristic, gave me the permission and planted the seed to create without fear or worry. I think lately I’ve been caught up in so many things that I forgot that fierceness and joy that comes with not being afraid or worried. Somehow I got wrapped up in external chaos that had me doubting and unsure and therefore, idle. I stopped listening to me and got caught up in the thoughts of everyone else leaving me apprehensive and afraid. So, in case you might need this reminder, too, I thought I’d share the bit from one of his entries from October 1, 1979, I have circled, with a star:

THINKING ABOUT BOXES
WHAT DOES IT MEAN
TO MAKE “GOOD” ART?
MEANING IS A
PRESUPPOSITION OF FUNCTION.
WITTGENSTEIN.
WHO CARES IF YOU DO
OR DON’T. SOMEONE
IS IN THE SUBWAY
TALKING TO THEMSELF.
TALKING ABOUT
TALKING. TALKING
ABOUT NOBODY
LISTENING. WHO CARES
IF YOU “MAKE” ART.
WHAT IS “MAKING”?
SEEING IS MAKING
ONLY IF SOMEONE
IS SEEING. THE PERSON
IN THE SUBWAY
IS SCREAMING, “NOBODY
IS LISTENING,” BUT
EVERYONE IS LISTENING
AND SEEING AND
MAKING AND BEING.

Thirteen years later after making that star and circling those words, I come back to them as my cat always picks his Journals to knock off the bookshelf when she’s hungry. Morning after morning, I pick up Keith Haring’s Journals and put it back on the shelf, even though I haven’t opened the book itself in over a decade.

Yesterday I decided to not put it back on the bookshelf, and this morning I decided to have a look at the passages that had moved me back when I was 21. This passage jumped out because it speaks to how everyone “makes” and “sees.” Elementary? Yes. But I think sometimes we forget the importance of “making” even if we think no one is “seeing” it. Because just like the person screaming on the subway, we all have deep currents of thought running underneath that are, from the outside, invisible.

Therefore, we never know who truly “sees” our work and how it resonates. We only see the person screaming on the subway or hear “Nobody is listening” in our own heads. We forget that our creations have nothing to do with either of those things. They have to do with the “making,” which leads to our “seeing” the deepest and most loveliest truths of “being.” We “make” because we “see” through the cracks and perceptions of “being.” We “see” because we “make.” So we step can forward fearlessly and safely into that place and create, knowing that it allows us to truly feel the depth and weight and joy of “being.”

Ladybug, Ladybug Fly Away Home…

| Betsy

The video below came in my weekly roundup of news from Elephant Journal. I think it’s made me love ladybugs even more than I already did. When I was a child, I used to squee in delight whenever I found a ladybug catching a ride on me, slowly pottering its way up my arm or down my leg or circling my wrist. If my mother was around, she would sing the nursery rhyme as we watched it go this way and that until we decided it was time for the ladybug to go along on its merry way. Then came time to pick it up gingerly and place it somewhere safely on the ground.

Now when a ladybugs hops a ride on me I no longer (audibly) squee, but still take a moment to watch it plodding along past freckles, moles and the occasional scar wondering where it’s off to on its grand adventure. Have you ever seen them en masse like this? Absolutely breathtaking. And yes, it, too, made me smile…and softly squee.

5D and EX1 Lady Bug Swarm from Michael Ramsey on Vimeo.