modernity + sociology.

This could also be called “all things nerdy.”

Full Circle. (Kinda Sorta)

| Betsy

I first started really thinking about knitting and its relation to community and theory when I was in graduate school at Goldsmiths College and therefore involved with the Centre for Community and Urban Research, headed by Michael Keith.

During that year I fell in love with ethnography and Walter Benjamin and felt literally as though my head was cracked open. It was the first time that I understood that I wasn’t the only one who was fascinated by the dance and beat of the city, or hell, even knew there was an almost audible tone separate to each city. Or energized by discovering how people interacted with their communities and totally infatuated with the pulse that was almost palpable on the streets of London whether it was early morning before setup at Spitalfields Market or trying to maneuver around people in Oxford Circle or lost on purpose on the streets surrounding Brick Lane.

One of the first books we read that year was The Fall of Public Man by Richard Sennett. I remember talking about the book excitedly with my friend Katherine in our favorite coffeeshop across from the college. When I started talking about my dissertation topic, on knitting, community and DIY, I was wondering if I was actually onto something or had taken one too many long walks on the Thames alone.

I was well surprised when I read that earlier this year, Sennett wrote a book about crafts, simply titled The Craftsman. And I was even more surprised when an interview I did about my craft book, Knitting for Good! was on the same radio show this week as an interview with Sennett on his craft book! The second I found out, I was immediately reminded of the day we went around the table at the Centre and told our advisor (mine was Michael Keith) about the ideas we had for our dissertation…many of them based on the theories and books we had read during the previous year. I still remember several of me peers saying, “Knitting?!? Really?!?”

Four years later, Sennett and I are interviewed about crafts on the Wisconsin Public Radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge along with Handmade Nation’s Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl. The show, “Reconsidering Craft,” can be listened to online here. What a strange, small world.

Rediscovered The Faint this morning. Just what I needed.

welcoming the familiar and the familial.

| Betsy

So it’s almost Thanksgiving here in the U.S., my most favorite of holidays for reasons like snuggliness and hugs and warm sweaters. Tomorrow I head to the Georgia coast, which means a few extra special things like late night talks with my grandfather when everyone’s asleep, knitting with my grandmother, long solo walks on the quiet beach, watching the sea for the dolphins that always come at dawn and dusk.

And if I’m extra lucky, it also means spending an hour or two walking around and taking photos of the Southern gothic beauty of the Christ Church grounds and hearing all the family stories I never tire of even though I know them by heart.

After all the food has been eaten and the football watched and the whiskey consumed and the naps had on Thursday, it will be Black Friday. There are many sites online with coupons for the shopping day to end all shopping days like here and here. Many sites that help you with your day after Thanksgiving bring-on-the-holidays spendiness.

But what about actually celebrating Buy Nothing Day instead? Not just participating in the no spending activities, but actually enjoying the day itself? What about taking a day to enjoy all the things around you that don’t cost money?

How many more shirts do you really need? In this world where we are lucky enough to be able to drive to the store down the street and choose between 30 different brands of peanut butter, why spend a day off fighting just to consume more? You could be listening to old family stories again, remembering them for when you’ll be the only one to recite them, or curling up on the couch with an old blanket and your favorite book.

What about choosing not to buy new new new, and enjoying the tiny wonderful things that are on offer nearby, at arm’s length, and for free instead? What about daring to enjoy what’s in front of you instead trying to replace it for a new shiny moment? What about daring to be okay with what you have instead of looking for more? These tiny notions of rebellion and resistance are where life is to be enjoyed, honored and fully lived.

p.s. you are awesome.

| Betsy

Lately, I’ve a bad case of the “enoughs.” I’m not brave enough, smart enough, thin enough. I’m not pretty enough, tough enough, cool enough. I’m a million different things, but not “enough” of any of them. Whenever the “enoughs” strike, I’m forced to realign where I’m going and how I want to get there. (See a post from the last time the “enoughs” hit here.) The “enoughs” are not discriminatory or unique to me, battling the “enoughs” is a part of being human. They’re a part of humanity that we don’t often let the world see because in this age of bigger and better and richer, to not be enough of something equals failure. But I am enough, even as I battle the “enoughs!” It’s only in the battle and admission of it, that we can gain ground.

It is in the swinging and struggling and searching and attempts to achieve against our own negative thoughts and those of others that we learn the compassion and the empathy and the depth that it takes to be fully alive. And ironically, the very battles that make us more human and more understanding and more compassionate are the very battles we tend to hide, only wanting to show our best sides and behaviors. The giant flaw of this logic being, of course, is that it’s our weakest sides that make us who we truly are.

It’s our vulnerabilities and quirks that help us foster closeness, not just our strengths. Our fight to be “enough” and fear of not adding up lock horns and call a stalemate. What a wicked irony that what can connect us best is what we fear disclosing most, as without disclosure we’re only sharing self-edited versions of ourselves, not actually our selves at all?

I was reminded of the trick to silencing the “enoughs” this morning when a friend of mine emailed me a link to the work of micro sculptor Willard Wigan. As a result of severe dyslexia, Wigan can neither read nor write, but he found a teeny tiny outlet for communication and creativity outside of those cultural expectations. He battled the “enoughs,” ignored the constructs that got in his way and embraced his skills, allowing for a landing just where he was supposed to be. I’ve met some people who could neither read nor write who tried to hide it, ashamed of the fact, when disclosing it would have led to creative problem solving or help instead of mockery.


And why yes, that is Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston duking it out in a boxing ring smaller than the head of a match. Refusing to ignore his creative side and refusing to believe others who doubted his intelligence, Wigan has discovered an incredible talent and an unending font of patience via his artwork. He makes sculptures, sculptures that are so tiny, that he has at least on one occasion, inhaled his work and had to start all over again. In fact, his sculptures are so amazing that I can’t stop sneaking a peek at them as I’m typing, trying to get my head completely around their awesomeness. (I mean, really, when was the last time you saw sculptures of Snow White and her seven dwarves showcased inside the head a pin?!)

In allowing himself to step outside of what was culturally expected of him, Wigan took the path towards becoming enough and found his life’s work on the way. In daring to look outside the mainstream construct of enough, Wigan redefined it by devising his own limits and goals instead of letting others set them. He is a reminder of how to follow your own path even though you don’t know where your next step will fall, in the belief that that net will appear. He is a reminder of how we are all enough– despite cultural definitions. we just need to heed the urge to seek it, fight it, and trust its wisdom.

You are enough, you just seek it, find it, define it own your own terms, in order to keep the “enoughs” at bay.

1. For the disbelievers, you can verify it here.
2. A big thanks to The Guardian for including me on their techonology blog roll today!

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

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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.