north carolina.

Because this tends to be where I live when I’m not in England, although one never knows…

the start of summer, the end of burnout.

| Betsy

I saw my first firefly Friday night. It blinky-blinked its tail once before disappearing around the corner of my red brick apartment building. In that split second, I was reminded of how life in general is the best when comprised of a multitude of beautifully perfect blips in time. Those seconds that we might miss if we were to blink.

Last summer I returned back to the American south for two weeks, vowing to never spend another summer here where the air is thick with humidity, your pores consisently expel the heat and time seems to slow down because it’s just too damn hot. And yet, here I am, one year later, back in the American south.

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But as I constantly have to remind myself, ‘everything is possible.’ And in this jobless annoyance, I’ve been paying more attention than ever to the possibility that new doors may open if I actually open my eyes.

I’ve been wearing flipflops everyday even though it requires vigilance on keeping my toenails polished and non-chipped. The flip-flop-scuff sound that they make on the asphalt as I walk around town reminds me of the summer I lived at the beach and would take refuge in the roar of the ocean after the sun went down.

I’ve been applying for jobs that are never quite the perfect fit and writing and creating at weird hours and attempting to get hip to the idea that this summer malaise has just begun and will linger until late August at best. In my downtime, I’ve been reading about others who are also stuttering and watching as time flits past and soldiers on as they remain paralysed against an invisible force of inertia. Just when these stories seem to make me feel even more powerless, I discover one that is full of hope and strength and power-rending all the former tales of sorrow useless.

The kids on my street are out of school for the summer and lately they seemed to be delighting in leaving tiny bicycles in the middle of the street, creating an obstacle course for my big car. Hearing them yell and play outside reminds me of the last day of school each year, when we would tear out of our classrooms screaming in excitement that at last freedom was here. The time for swimming and running barefoot and catching fireflies was at hand.

What is it about fireflies that sets my imagination free? I wonder if its the irridescent glow that shines so bright for a second then disappears only to reappear again seconds later in close proximity, but never in the same spot twice. Lately as I continue to read tales of creative burnout and lack of energy, I just want to close my eyes and wish upon the burnout bearer a moment by the edge of the woods at dusk.

If you find yourself in the concrete jungle far apart from the woods, then I bestow on you an extra second to look up at the stars tonight. A moment where you look up in the hope that a shooting star just might pass, that wild crazy sense of hope that has probably been hidden since you were a child, a blip in time where everything seems right and kind and possible.

I’ll admit it, summer is my least favorite season of the year. But somehow, throughout time, it continues to endear itself to me in the tiniest and most astounding ways.

summer volunteering PSA

| Betsy

As you may or may not know, Chapel Hill is a very dog friendly town. They go where people go, except for restaurants with no outdoor seating and grocery stores. It’s nice.

Most of my friends have dogs, and somehow I end up at the dog park with them atleast once a week. Last Friday, however, I did feel like a dork when a woman with a golden retriever sauntered up to me and asked,’ Which dog is yours?’ All I could reply was, ‘I’m a friend of that dog over there,’ turning bright red and deferring to my friend whose dog we were watching romp around. The women got quiet after that, I guess because it seemed wierd to play Auntie Mame to my friend’s 4-legged companions?

After realising that I wanted to try and get my PhD, and that if accepted it would most likely mean living in various locations for a number of years (doing research in various places), I’ve been looking into fostering dogs. Even if I am not granted a place on a course for 2005 (or 2006!), I move great distances with such frequency that for the time being, owning a dog is not the best option for me- or a dog.

I grew up with dogs and after I went away to college did some sporadic volunteering in various animal shelters in order to still be around puppy love. There are few things more heartwarming that spending a little extra time with a dog or a cat who is desperately craving attention. I still get warm fuzzies everytime I think of the time I entered a shelter enclosure in Boone full of month-old puppies, and giggle at the thought of their squirmy, unfettered joy of human contact. A few were trying to untie my shoes, one was peeing with excitement on my sock, several were trying to lick my face, and the remaining puppies just vying for TLC.

The other day I was hanging out with my friends’ Australian shepherd mix, Nestle

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and was thinking about how it never ceases to amaze me just how much pets enrich our lives.

In recent local news, there was the Sanford puppy mill bust, which is simply abominable.

So I’ve decided to try my hand at fostering as a way to not only help socialise animals who need a little extra attention, but also as a way to keep animals in my life. There are some possibilities in the works now, but if they fail, then I will be signing up for shifts at the local shelter.

Happily, my move uncovered several charity blankets I made last winter for a local animal shelter and then promptly lost in the shuffle. This website will help you find a shelter who could use your knitting/crocheting/sewing prowess by creating warm blankets for lost and lonely dogs and cats. The site holds a wealth of information, including appropriate patterns and blanket sizes.

But if needlework isn’t up your alley, this post is a little reminder that it’s almost summer and the time to be outdoors taking in the sunshine. And what would be a better way to spend a few free weekend hours than volunteering at your local shelter? Because even if you can’t currently own a pet, that doesn’t mean you can’t help one.

what you get when stuff adds up.

| Betsy

So I’m all moved into my new summer digs.* I am happy to report that, yes, my next door neighbor is a drum teacher. Even though it’s loud, tiny children trying to play drums sounds cute reverberating through the walls. I’m trying to repress the memory of not being chosen to play the drums in 5th grade, I was told I had no rhythm and was assigned to the cello.

I’ve probably never told you, but I was classically trained in voice (10+ years), piano (10 years), and -the everhip- handbells (5 years?). Despite being all music all the time from 5-18, the only time I ever really play anything is when I come across a piano…but only when no one’s listening. I also sing a lot in the car, this has been in my repertoire a lot recently since I’ve been travelling so much…which brings back me to the recent move.

One good thing about this move is that it has forced me to limit my supplies for the summer months. Instead of having myriad craft projects to choose from, now I just have a small drawer. Instead of annoying me to no end, I’m pretty excited about the fact that this summer I will be forced to finish projects that more often than not just get rotated around and around as I float from project to project.

The once mighty craft supply area has been downsized to the tiniest it’s ever been (I’m also trying to come to terms with acrylic…)

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This summer I am aiming to deal with my own materialism and excess, facing my inner packrat and breaking that unnecessary bond I have with useless things. While I was moving yesterday I went through all of the things I was bringing to the new apartment and reassessed if I really needed it, if I really was going to use it.

The bizarre thing about downsizing is that now that I’ve stored all of my non-necessary crap, I’ve been looking for gifts for other people on my frequent thrift store trips. It’s almost as if, in getting rid of all my own excess, now I just want to make all of my friends and loved ones laden as well.

Even though ebay has taken over the world, there’s nothing quite so thrilling as coming across an amazing dress or clock or painting or necklace in the dizzying racks at your local thrift store. Throughout the past decade, my wardrobe has always been augmented by charity shop/yard sale/stoop finds. While it began in the height of grunge in the early 90s, now I can’t imagine not incorporating second-hand clothes into my closet.

Although people often eschew thrift shop clothes as inferior, they often forget the most important aspects of secondhand clothes: that with a little effort you can find incredible handmade one-off pieces for next to nothing, and by supporting such shops not only are you more often than not giving back to the community but you are also recycling goods as well.

For a recent bridal shower gift, I combined a Home Ec textbook from 1951, Family Meals and Hospitality, that I found at the local Value Village bookshelf with some handknitted drawer sachets filled with lavender from an aromatherapy pillow that had long gone ignored:

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This summer, I am a turtle, with all my belongings fitting in a small 4-door car. And I think I like it, becoming unfettered by boxes of unread papers and photographs of individuals whose names escape me. For the next 12 weeks, as long as my car air-conditioning works and all the windows are rolled up so I can singsingsing til my heart’s content- I’ll be good to go.

*Moving makes me grumpy. Luckily, I discovered scrawled on the side of one of my boxes by my friend Anna, Throw Rocks At Boys, written at a London post office while in a queue to mail boxes back to Chapel Hill in September. While I’m not an advocate for violence, this game was especially cathartic. Try it, you’ll see.

Also making things better is listening to SNMNMNM. But then accordions never fail to make me feel better, especially when paired with adorable lyrics.

on the road again.

| Betsy

Some days I feel like a professional mover. I am moving, yet again. Long story short, I am moving somewhere for the summer. I may stay past August depending on what happens in the PhD department.

The best thing about moving is the ideas you have before moving: how you’re going to decorate your new place, how you’re going to stock your kitchen, how this time you’re going to finally designate a space for “work.”

The worst thing about moving: actually moving.

So I’ve decided to take it easy this go-round and load up the Honda with the necessities: clothes, yarn, books, music. Sometimes I feel like some sort of eccentric urban nomad, but then realise that that would be giving myself too much credit.

I also realise that everytime you move you can never move the most important thing: your support network of friends and family. If only I could pack them up, too, into assorted boxes my life would be complete.

Writing about the ethics and politics of craft has made me realise that this whole kooky aura around the idea of craftivism lies in decision-making. Why am I doing what I am doing? Could someone benefit more from this scarf/doll/afghan than me? Do I really need all these craft supplies, materials, excess?

Each time I move (which is often), I am reminded of why I keep what I keep. And how with the power of the internet, I can hold people dear to me closer than ever before.

Now that I’ll finally have a “workspace” in my new digs, I have no need for it. These days my so-called “office” (for complete lack of a better word) is my laptop, headphones and a hot cup of coffee. But I am sure that it will be filled with reams of paper covered with scribbles of stories and queries, skeins of yarn peeping from behind cabinets, and book after book after book.

I have some new projects in the works as I’m trying to crossover from a blog that was created to promote an idea I believed in to something with a bigger scope. I feel like I need to take a step back and look at it all from a wider angle. Because while this whole ‘craft thing’ is tiny, I believe that embracing it has reminded many people of the power of uniquity.

By realising how easy it is to make our own wares, we have simultaneously come to realise that not only is this allowing us to reconnect with our creativity, but also our issues with abundance. In a world of too many choices, we have finally figured out that every decision we make holds power and helps to create change. The thought of people out there making conscious decisions about the way their money and time is spent enlivens me to no end.

I think I’ve gotten to be quite an expert with this moving thing. One day, one day soon perhaps, I’ll have more than just a workspace to fill and more to work on than a laptop that’s heavy. But until I find that place to alit my wings, I will continue to be making each choice carefully and with the best intentions.

the soundtrack of spring.

| Betsy

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Lately soundtracks have been on my mind.

The past few weeks my head has been full of the sounds of The Decemberists, Edith Frost Sebadoh and Silver Scooter.

And I’ve been thinking about the soundtracks that permeate our lives. How they change over time and vary with our surroundings.

I’m back in London for a week and am remembering how whenever I think of the city I think of trains and when I think of North Carolina I think of chirping birds outside my window.

I never quite made a conscious decision on the matter, but somehow the sounds of trains and birds have imprinted themselves onto my brain as sounds of comfort and home, independent of one another, each denoting different locations.

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While North Carolina makes me want to run around barefoot in the grass and drink sweet tea at weekend cookouts and make pretty things, London makes me want to urgently create due to its raw energy and constant grind never ceasing to inspire me with its contrast of decay and renewal.

Even though the birds and the trains and the things I create change, the music I’m listening to rarely does. Even though in my youth I listened to nothing but loud and screamy bands, I’ve been listening to prettier music as of late, music that is best described as bittersweet. Because instead of overarching sadnesses that so often belong to youth, I’ve grown into loving the bittersweetness that prevails more often than not as youth passes. And come to enjoy the flipped sides of coins and the greener side of the grass.

While may this may seem completely inconsequential and ludicrous, I see in it a perfect analogy to my feeling about the world of craft lately. Due to the resurgence of handmade crafts over the past few years, I’ve seen so many people flourish and grow.

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But lately, I’ve seen more than a few people whose work I admire very much begin to doubt their own consequence and strength. Begin to burn out because they don’t believe that what they are doing is worth their time or energy or money. And all I want to do is whisper to them that it’s not all in vain that their work is important and valid and not inconsequential.

But that’s the power of soundtracks, isn’t it? That sometimes we forget to listen to the birds or the trains or the music or our own inner voices and just hear the negative soundtracks that we started to record in our fragile youths. And we forget that all we have to do is simply change the tape and put on something new.

So I guess this entry is for anyone out there who feels burntout and tired and unoriginal and drained and boring. And just a tiny reminder to remember why you started making art in the first place.

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