Words can hardly express the sadness I felt watching as wool was turned from fleece to spun yarn ready to knit.

There is a year waiting list for this production house alone, given the fact that everywhere else in this country has shut down.

Given the age of the individuals currently running things, in 20 years, there will be nothing left if no one takes to the challenge of working hard for little pay given the current state of cultural devaluation. What is the incentive to work long hours for non-adequate pay?

Meanwhile, machines from UK factories get broken down to sell or destroy. Textile production is heightened overseas. Farmers continue to lose money, leaving some to burn or compost their fleeces as they are given almost nothing for them.

I’m in the process of preparing my first fleece, washing it so i can hopefully spin it from the fleece as carding it will take too much time. In working with the materials and seeing how labor intensive it all really is, I am in awe of the individuals who continue on with agriculture and enlivened to see how change can occur.

But sometimes, just sometimes, watching the whole process is almost too heartbreaking to continue. However, with frustration and sadness, ideas erupt and problems are tackled. Atleast that’s what I keep telling myself, hoping I’m right. Because if I’m wrong, then the whole craft resurgence has been hollow, as the industry that allowed it to occur falls into disrepair.

This morning I wrote the following in an email: “The words that keep me going were written by Faith Gillespie in the book “Women and Craft” (1987, Virago): “Our turning to craftwork is a refusal. We may not all see ourselves this way, but we are working from a position of dissent. And that is a political position.”

The term craftivism was actually started by the Church of Craft, as they had craftivist workshops. After reading about what they were doing, I looked craftivism up online, and there were 2 links to it, and nothing about the idea behind it. So I decided that there needed to be more of a resource about how craft and activism are collected.”

What (I thought) I didn’t include was how I also come at crafts and activism through an ethnographic lens- by documenting my own process and ideas. Craftivism is more to me than just an action, it’s a way of choosing to live. It’s about crafting not only items for the common good, but also ideas.

It’s bizarre having an “-ism.com” because the notion of craftivism isn’t mine. And even more bizarre because so very often it is various “-isms” that cause so much strife and argument. After writing this email, I decided to go back and look at what I had written in a very early interview two years ago. Ridiculously, it rendered the email I had sent not 12 hours ago incorrect, making me again realize how life has a way of making you forget the particulars:

“I first heard the term at our weekly Tuesday craft nights. I was talking about the relationship between craft and activism and my friend Buzz said, “the end result would be craftivism.” It sounded good, so it stuck! Later on I looked up the term on the internet and discovered that the Church of Craft does some craftivism projects, too. At heart I’m an activist, just not the poster-waving, screaming kind of activist. This winter I knitted a lot of scarves for the homeless and realized I was taking great care to make them perfect, because after all, someone besides me or my friends was going to be wearing my creations. There was a point when I fantasized about making scarves for every homeless person worldwide. Although I knew that wasn’t actually possible, I realized that everytime you create something with your own hands and give it away, you’re being an activist, whether it’s warming the homeless or fighting consumerism. By making something you are standing up in the face of this overly materialistic society, it may not be as obvious as waving a banner, but it’s still subversive in its own right.”

That’s what I wrote just when I had started this site. I was also asked what I planned to do here in this very space, to which my answer was:

“The main idea behind craftivism.com is that it would serve as an information site for people interested in combining their craft with their activism. Ideally I’d like to have interviews with people behind various projects that I believe are already craftivist, as well as pictures of different craftivism-related things people see out there in the world around them. Building a community around craftivism is crucial to me because it’s through other people’s voices and opinions that great ideas are born. By being able to post a picture or a link or an essay you might be able to turn a lightbulb on in someone’s head, your finished project could be a jumping off point for someone else. I like the idea of people becoming inspired by one another.”

What I said then still rings true today. Because it’s not a word or concept of my own making, it’s one that is free to be used and run with. What I would like to do more (and see more of) is collaboration. Because all too often, so many of us are out doing our various projects solo when sometimes they could be even stronger when worked on with others. Imagine what goodness we could create if we invited each other more into our lives and thought less about egos and genres and elitism and if it’s craft or if it’s art.

Imagine what could happen when you start coloring outside the respective lines and allowing yourself the freedom that is so often restricted by little but your own memory and vocabulary. Because after all, sometimes things get skewed as time goes on.

Dictionary.com defines activism as “The use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause.” This is the definition I have often been presented with the minute I mention either craftivism or activism. At the mention of these terms, some people rear up and want nothing more to do with the discussion. When such a negative definition is so commonly applied, it isn’t hard to see why feathers are ruffled by even a whisper of activism.

But my own definition of activism lies closer to this, “Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change” from Wikipedia. It continues with “The word ‘activism’ is often used synonymously with protest or dissent, but activism can stem from any number of political orientations and take a wide range of forms, from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, simply shopping ethically, rallies and street marches, direct action, or even guerilla tactics. In the more confrontational cases, an activist may be called a freedom fighter by some, and a terrorist by others, depending on which side of the political fence is making the observation.”

Activism (or craftivism) is less about a call to arms and more about a call to act for change. Although there are negative ways one can bring about change, the majority of activists I know are working for the common good, attempting to bring about illumination instead of darkness. By negating a construct and stripping it of its positive intent, the more commonly used definition only breeds fear and unwillingness when in fact every time you make a conscious choice, you are being an activist. In choosing to buy one brand of yarn instead of another due to the way it was produced or by choosing to ride your bike instead of drive, you are being an activist.

The past two weeks I have been living in rural England on a small-scale farm. I can’t think of a time when I have been more inspired or been taught more lessons or been shown so much hope in such a short span. I have been connecting and meeting individuals who continue to farm despite all the obstacles in their paths. After all the governmental and financial restraints have been agreed to, there seems to be little reason to continue an agrarian lifestyle.

As we send all of our textile needs to further shores where people are paid less to work more, resources that the small-scale producers have relied on since the Industrial Revolution have vanished, leaving them trying to fill in the gaps. And as it becomes more and more difficult for small-scale farmers to survive, traditions and methods are lost in the name of technology and progress.

But there is a sense of activism in the air here as people strive to continue to produce wool and fleece as they once did when all the factories where up and running and could take in small quantities of fibre to be prepared. Out of love and determination, activism is alive in its most positive sense- as individuals try and band together to keep traditional methods afloat despite myriad setbacks. In watching their strength and learning from their dedication, I am reminded again and again of why I am not ashamed to call myself an activist.

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If you happen to be in Chicago this Thursday, you might want to check out Crafty Culture: Feminism, Activism, and the DIY Ethic, a panel discussion about the possibilities of craftivism. Awesome.

Here’s Shannon’s, fourth and final correspondent post. I wonder, too, how to implement the action of craftivism into more aspects of my life and always welcome discussion. And I hope that I never stop living my life strongly and fiercely and truly and bravely as Shannon, who is so inspiring to me!

My favorite season is almost here. Halloween, Samhain, call it what you will, these are the days when the wind blows and blows until it tatters to shreds the veil between the living and the dead. It is the New Year for witches, the time when we get to cackle and fly and otherwise rub our hands with glee; the spirit world where we love so much to walk is upon us!

And of course, the children love it too. The whole world is given over to imagination for a night, and they get to be whatever hero (or monster) they have been dreaming of becoming. Alice made her own costume this year, all from scratch. She will be a little witch, specifically Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service, a girl at the verge of adulthood going out on her own for year to discover how she fits into the world. So fitting…

Opal will be, for the second year in a row, a cheerleader. Dear girl dreams of merging into a world that I cannot fathom… Anyhow, her costume is an actual cheerleading outfit, only from a different school! Like Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, she will be rooting for the “wrong” team. When she wears it to her school (which is serious about it’s team loyalty, aka nationalism-in-training) we are suggesting she say she is an exchange student. How do the kids do it? They can reveal their secret worlds so unabashedly.

Some old songs (you know, from the 80’s) tell us that “every day is Halloween.” They berate us for stifling the urge to give ourselves over to wildness on all nights but this one. They warn us that playful spirit repressed turns into dangerous spirit, into monsters in the closet that can devour our well-being if we do let them out to cavort. What I will not give a voice creeps along the edges of my of my consciousness, latent and even hostile. But if I make a party for those Edge Dwellers I find that although I have to step very carefully, my walks are full of adventure!

When I travelled to Europe this last spring, I expected to see colorful people everywhere. I envisioned of foreign and exotic cities saturated with old world magic, secrets whispered in alleyways and cracks in the sidewalk, long played out histories reflecting off of urban facades. I was dreaming of course. History was present, sure, but not like I fantasized. People were people as they are everywhere, tired from the days work and the struggle of getting by, dressed conservatively, don’t want to makes waves, stir things up. Life is hard enough as it is. Only in Berlin, where I spent a tantalizing half an hour with my pal Marek, sitting across from a park, eating sandwiches and watching freaky people, did I get an inkling of carnival atmosphere. But Berlin is special, they say, a playground for outsiders.

So, I wasn’t disappointed that my imagining wasn’t real on those distant streets. I only felt a little conspicuous myself, a rainbow girl out of a song I used to know. I learned how to inhabit my self-consciousness so fully that it almost lost its discomfort. How to laugh in the faces of those who were laughing at me. It’s a useful skill, to be sure! However, I would have liked to experience these places when the streets were full of howls and monsters and sprites, when the tired people let their secret friends out to play…

This is my final column for craftivism.com, and I never got around to addressing that question that burns me up, namely how can craftivism (the action) be carried forward into our daily lives to create lasting change. You can be sure I won’t stop turning it over in the back of my mind, that I will keep jumping on the opportunity to discuss it with any willing party. But here, at the time that marks the cusp of the old year and the new, the sprit world and the world of the living, I issue a tiny challenge and a personal resolution: let us make Play a bigger parts of our lives, let us allow our myriad inner characters more recess, let’s dress up like our heroes and BE them, more than once a year!

Today I learned to weave on a peg loom, in a workshop with fellow craftspeople.

One of the most beautiful moments of the day was when one woman caught onto how the loom worked and kept coming up with one idea after another in rapid fire procession. There are few things more gorgeous than watching the face of someone become inspired- I adore the way that people’s faces light up and their voices crack and squeak and how they tend to say things like, “ooh…oohh…but what about this….” and then ramble down another tangent.

I played with color, and specifically, the colors of spring. I sat down at the table for a minute rearranging the colors in different orders trying to get the right ones to play off each other. I ended up with a small mat with varying stripes, layered in such a way as to represent things like the sky and the sun and the flowers and the grass that we tend to miss so much during cold dark winters. The pink yarn was so bright that it hurt my eyes to look at the skein, so I added a small bit- a bit to smile at when it’s snowing out and the ground is blanketed in white.

Who knows if it will work, but today in the studio, my eyes were thinking of vernal things. Amazingly, it’s still quite green here in England, although the leaves are starting to slowly change. Last night I took the dog for a walk through the fields and we bounded over great heaps of green grass that the sheep will hopefully get to eat soon as they move along through the farm. Today I had a glimpse of what autumn will look like soon, as I visited the little lambs who had errantly locked themselves in their shelter and used their boundless energy to get covered in hay.

So as the leaves begin to turn and jackets and scarves make their way out of the wardrobe, I made a tiny simulacra of spring in textiles using an ancient method of weaving to remind me in the coming weeks that spring, like hope, springs eternal.