Author: Betsy

a book is a book is a book. or is it?

| Betsy



Ever since I can remember, books have always been my frequent companions. As a kid, books would tuck me in bed late at night and I would devour their pages until I couldn’t hold my eyes open…many times I would wake up in the middle of the night with a book on my chest having fallen asleep while trying to finish a chapter. As a matter of fact, this is one ritual I’ve never ceased, even when camping and I have to share the light with any and every moth in a three-mile radius.

Even now, I always have a book on hand in case I have a few spare minutes and my hands are tired from needlework. Some people escape in books and forget about the rest of the beat of the world, but I always have seen books as a way to obtain closer intimacy with others. By understanding the words of someone else you’re subtly asked to think as someone else, and it forever allows for new points of understanding and questioning and deepens our compassion for when we close the book and come back to the so-called “real world.”

When I was little I figured I would either work with animals or write, falling in love early with the life of James Herriot. As I got older and the sciences turned out to be my academic nemesis, I wondered what I was to do.

Decades later, I’m still not entirely sure…having at one time or another called myself a sign painter, barista, consultant, secretary, knitter for hire, feeder of sheep, housesitter, bookseller, cake deliverer….and that’s just the highly abridged list. I guess I never really stopped asking questions once I picked my nose out of a book after all.

As I look at turning 33 in two months, I wonder what’s to become of us seekers and searchers and travelers in this world of taxes and health insurance and mortgages. Maybe we’re a dying breed, maybe we just need to unionize, maybe we’re meant to ask and seek and create each day anew looking for others who see the world the same. I’m sure you know the type, or maybe you even are the type….if you are, do
let me know what you think the best course of action for us searchers is…

Above is the cover of my first book, Knitting for Good!, to be out later on this year. Many thanks to the good people at Shambhala, who helped edit and tease out the words when I was too close to them. Using knitting as both an example and as a metaphor, the book was written to help people engage with their creativity in different and new ways by using their creative interests to better themselves, their community and this world.

It is my greatest hope that some night, maybe some night soon, someone reads my own words and uses them to help better figure out how to navigate their days or rethink their own sense of compassion or just read them and understand. Whether at bedtime, or by flashlight in the wilderness, or for a few minutes on the bus, or sitting with a cup of tea, it is my greatest hope that you, too, will find wisdom in books… and then use them as a guide instead of escape.


Currently on my bedside table (there is always a massive stack which I pull from depending…):

Kiss and Tell
Creating a Life Worth Living
Regarding the Pain of Others
Mindfulness in Plain English
The Corporate Rebel’s Productivity Guide
Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper- Case Closed

Here’s to happy reading, and hoping my cat doesn’t decide to knock my tower of books over on me as I sleep.

curiosity may have killed the cat, but not craft.

| Betsy

I was drawn to a recent craft research post that covered several different issues I’ve been thinking about lately.

I think that there is a barrier in thought between the US and the UK regarding craft. My post from yesterday regarding hierarchy was written without knowing there had been a discussion on the very same issue on both craft research and museum blogging. And I believe we are speaking about different hierarchies: one between art and craft and one from within the craft community itself.

In having the opportunity to work both in the US and UK, I can attest to the two extremely different modes of thought between the two. But that’s hardly surprising given the way that history allows for divergent paths (and one notably longer than the other)- it is only now that there is a craft revival on both shores that we are clearly able to view the gaps.

On craft research, Mike Press notes that “Its not so much that our concerns (this side of the pond) are hugely different- it’s just that we are driven by a different set of issues which arise from the politics of academic inquiry in the UK.” Out of curiosity, what politics exactly? My biggest concern lies in the fact that I have been told that as someone who wanted to research crafts in the UK, it “wasn’t important that I learned how to knit” by someone whose opinion I hold in high esteem. My reaction was nothing but shock as, from my perspective, in order to better understand what I’m looking into (in my case, largely textiles), my research is only richened by being familiar with the very craft I am studying.

I think the main problem I have with craft at the moment is based on audience. It is my goal to write somewhere between the academy and the “hobbyist,” because if I just focus on one or the other, I’m missing out on a key piece of this cultural inquiry. Going straight from an academic perspective, I run the risk of not only alienating those that I create with but also rich ethnographic insights which I might not be able to garner elsewhere. Going straight from a craft perspective, I run the risk of sounding “happy clappy” (to quote a futher craft research post by Georgina and not taken in any way seriously by anyone from inside the academy.

This is in no way an attack on craft research, a blog which I am very excited about. I just have some questions. When Mike says that craft is usually considered “domestic, working class or just plain thick”, I wonder about the definition, because ‘thick’ can either mean stupid or as it is sometimes used in narratives “a rich description.” Because to me, craft is what it is because it is ‘of the people’ instead of being born from the academy. It has found its way into the cultural conscience not only because its creations historically tend to be utile, but because before the Industrial Revolution it was a common way of life. Modernity has turned craft on its head.

The current craft resurgence in the US owes a lot to stateside modes of feminism, and in my view, predominantly Riot Grrrl. Echoes of this can be seen in the UK, especially in some of the larger cities where Riot Grrrl had some sort of presence in the 90s. The fact that the author of this week’s earlier Guardian article regarding the subversive state of craft, Eithne Farry, used to be in the band Tallulah Gosh, is further proof of a possible connection.

The struggle we are all now having and hashing through is in regard to the definition of craft. While, I, too, struggle with this issue, one of the most important things to remember is that at its root, craft is not a “system of thought.” Craft was born out of a need for things, which separates itself from art. Now that we now longer have that need and can buy products formally made at home at the corner shop, the revolution really begins.

the dividing line.

| Betsy

coffee.gif

Part of the following is an email response I sent to someone very talented and bright, regarding divisions she noted in the craft(ing) community:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought a lot about your email and the divisions from within the craft(ing) community.

It makes sense that this division should be happening now, as craft has been popular (well, indie-popular) for several years now. Whereas at first, it was like, ‘Holy hell! Marble magnets! That is the most awesome thing ever!,’ where everyone was experimenting and not selling what they made and everyone urged everyone else on.

Then, I remember one case in particular, where someone posted in an online forum that someone else “stole” their idea. Suddenly an idea that was shared in order for people to learn and create became a protected trademark and selling point- and the moment was born where people realized that, yes, there is a market for this kind of thing! People like buying handmade instead of mass-produced! Eureka!

Somewhere along the way, an invisible line has been drawn between the “professionals” (those who sell their creations) versus the “hobbyists” (those who craft mainly for fun instead of profit). We’ve come to a place in the craft resurgence that the “movement” is big enough to sustain multiple groups and cliques and levels. There are the crafty superstars the ones many of us know by first name: Heidi, Leah, Melissa, Susie. There are those that network at craft fairs like Bazaar Bizarre and Crafty Bastards and those that blog and those that hate Debbie Stoller and those that don’t and all of a sudden this little craft world seems almost unrecognizable from the days of “Oh! My! God! You knit too?!”

And it’s a good thing. In order for things to flourish, there must be growth, but what about when people feel left out? It is a bit of a worry when I read on various blogs that individuals are scared to submit something to this site or that zine because it might not make the cut. It’s not necessarily a worry that people are feeling insecure about their creations, but a worry that people are finding themselves detached from a community instead of part of it.

The punk rock aspect of this new craft revolution is that ultimately there is no hierarchy.

As “women’s work” is continuing to be reclaimed and redefined, there is no reason why we, the perpetuators of this so-called movement, should start thinking that we are less important or less talented than someone because we are in it for a different reason. We are defining and molding how craft will be viewed in the future, and ensuring that there even is a future for traditions once seen as antiquated and out-of-date.

Just as we can dare to create things without a pattern, we, too, can create our own definitions of what it means to craft.

decorating DIY.

| Betsy

This is what greeted me as I was going to get some coffee the other day:

homeland.jpg

There’s something similar about the state of the car and the state of the union. Rusty. Patchy. Old-fashioned.

But it seems that the political tide is somewhere betwixt and between right now, like the boot of the car. Mixed. Both colors (parties) fighting to take over the whole of the trunk.

Photos from Massive Knit’s event Tuesday.

sand.

| Betsy

In what may be the worst photograph ever posted here, I bring you sand:

IMG_0049.JPG

This particular sand is part of a parking lot near my house. While walking home recently, I came across this vacant lot covered in intertwining lines of tire tracks and foot prints, making it look almost like a painting or a piece of fabric instead of a lonely strip of sand.

This is why I prefer to walk instead of ride a walk, why my eyes are always darting from side to side as I’m driving down the road, because quiet beauty is so often overlooked.

The pattern created at random in the parking lot twists and curls in myriad patterns and weights, making ridges of sand that reminded me of low tide at the seaside.

Lately it seems as if I’m going on all these different divergent paths like the sand depicted above, creating cacophony instead of a forward moving front. But, when I stop and take a moment to really look closely, I see that instead of looking at the big picture and taking it for what it is (waves upon waves of sand), I was paying too much attention to the individuals tracks and trails.

Stepping back, its uniformity and oneness is again revealed.

And all these paths I’m taking (craft, art, sociology, theory, thinking, making, doing, photographing, writing) converge into an act of progression and embracement of DIY and individualism. I keep moving forward because I am not alone in thinking this way.

I recently came back to a post I wrote over two years on why craft is punk rock. And I still believe that correlation rings true.

And for a recent article on craftivism, please see here.