why handmade.

Aside from what you can make with your hands (and who creates with them), why is it important?

Craftivism and Donation

| Betsy

The other week I mentioned writing about the 3 –tions* of 1 –ism, the donation, beautification and notification. I’ve been thinking about donation a lot lately, as I’ve been a baby-hat-making-factory-of-one lately, as you can see in the photo below.

Therefore, I’m going to tackle the first -tion, donation. Initially, this was what craftivism was to me. Making and giving to others in need. Over time, what craftivism is has expanded, becoming more of an umbrella term. But, at the beginning, there was donation.

donation

This is the quietest, most anonymous form of craftivism, as it’s something that you can do by making something at home and then dropping off what you made at a local hospital or charity or popping in the mail to one. Unlike the others actions, this one is quiet on purpose. There is no need to attach your name to it or your style even, it is a powerful act nonetheless, making for others.

One of the most important aspects of this action is not in the making itself, but in the planning to make. It’s to be mindful that you’re donating 1) where there is a need and 2) you’re donating what they’re asking for or at least something suitable for that need. I.e., what good is knitting something for the homeless if the item is made of yarn in a color that shows dirt easily or a design that’s likely to catch on things and stretch out? Or crocheting regular-sized infant hats for a charity that works with preemies? Or sewing mats for dogs out of a fabric that is handwash only?

Sometimes when charities request donations they will give guidelines on 1) exactly what they need, 2) how they need it to be labeled, and 3) what they need it to be made of. Sometimes they don’t, which may mean that before you donate, you call the organization and ask 1) if they’re taking donations and 2) what exactly form they need to be delivered in/mailed.

Crafters are a helpful lot and the minute any disaster happens, an inevitable effort starts up to help them. Most of the time, these efforts are done well and mindful of what the community needs and it goes off without a hitch. However, sometimes people are so interested in helping others that they start initiatives for causes that already have too many quilts, blankets, hats, etc. This can be quickly amended by asking first.

The efforts out there that people are making to fill gaps where needed is amazing! Chances are great that there is a charity somewhere that can benefit from what you like to make. It just may take a web search on where this charity is and how it can be reached and even a little retooling of what you make (adjustments to size, materials, etc.)

Ever make something that looks funny when you put it on? And you don’t have the heart to throw it out? This is not an excuse to give it to charity. With the exception of perhaps mats for dogs, the items that you donated may very well be cherished by their owners and something of value and pride. Therein, make sure that the work you put into the item is the same amount of work that you would put into making a garment for a loved one.

1. Donate what’s need to where it’s needed.

2. If your charity of choice doesn’t take what you’ve made/want to make, get to Googling, there’s always someone in need of your talents!

3. Donation does not equal cast offs. Just because you’re donating to a cause where your donation may be anonymous does not mean that quality should suffer.

*ETA: Spring 2015: I’ve switched from “-tions” to “tenets!”

Craftivism Reminders from a Cat and the Buddha

| Betsy

It’s officially spring, but I’m watching the snow fall outside, the biggest snowfall we’ve had all year at three inches and counting! Even though it’s just gone 8am, I can hear the voices of neighborhood children yelling outside as they play in the last visit of winter this year.

bobbinbuddha

I snapped the photo above in my bedroom the other weekend. I found it particularly amusing as sometimes I find that my cat teaches me as many lessons as the Buddha as I go along this thing called life. She teaches me to take a minute and just sit there for the pleasure of just being able to sit there for pleasure. She reminds me that it’s perfectly okay to take naps. She confirms that snuggling is really the best thing ever when I’m feeling a bit lonely. In short, she reminds me what it is to just be in the moment.

I started craftivism.com because, at the time (2003!), I was passionate about both crafts and activism. And I still am. People have asked me why I did it and where was I going. And I guess I was inspired by the “just be” attitude about craftivism, i.e., the notion that if you wanted to make crafts that were political and not crafts that were utilitarian, just do it. So I did it.

I was also inspired by passion, what drives someone to do something most of the time. If you and I aren’t passionate about the same thing, fine. I just want everyone to be passionate about something. And for them to hopefully take that passion and see how they can use it in the service of others and to change things for the better. Because that’s what our crafts can do and our hands can make, they can help others while also changing things!

On my most dorky introspective days, I really want people to understand their place in the world and realize how even the simplest changes and choices can do so much! When you start to become aware that your choices equal power and can constitute, foment and effect change there is not only growth within you, but also in your community. Because whether you do something craftivism related for a charity across the world or just make something for someone you know and pass it on, you are changing things.

Therefore, for my next 3 posts, I’m going to talk about the 3 “-tions”** of craftivism, as mentioned in a tweet I made recently.

3tions

In short, why these three? Because:

*DONATION: giving to anyone but yourself (using your crafts to help others)

*BEAUTIFICATION: making your public surroundings less banal (reminding others that your city is your own)

*NOTIFICATION: teaching others about the causes you believe in (making pieces that speak out against injustice in its myriad forms)

These three “-tions” as it were as the three spokes that craftivism was built upon in 2003 and continue to be today. Maybe you agree? Maybe you don’t.

But, either way, just remember that your actions can bring change, even if they seem tiny like a cat and a buddha in a bedroom. They have lessons to teach, and those lessons, depending on how you want them to sound, can be big or small, anonymous or public, or loud or quiet. You just need to remember to look and listen to what your hands want to make and to what your passion is saying to you.

**ETA: Spring 2015, I’m changing the “three -tions” to the “three tenets,” because “-tions” just sounds weird.

Why Craft = Punk Rock (A Revisit from 2004)

| Betsy

This is repost from March 23, 2004. You can see the entirety of that post here. I still think that the “grandmother” issues is as important today as it was then. What do you think? Also, aren’t you glad I use “regular” punctuation now?

there is a press frenzy surrounding [knitting] 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

Craftivism, Activism, and Love.

| Betsy

Every Sunday I look forward to getting the Brain Pickings’ newsletter delivered to my inbox. I feel like every week there is something that resonates deep within me, and says things in ways that I could never quite pinpoint or elucidate on. This week’s was no different.

One of the posts mentioned was called The Science of Love: How Positivity Resonance Shapes the Way We Connect. To learn more about “positivity resonance,” please go check out the full post .

Perhaps counterintuitively, love is far more ubiquitous than you ever thought possible for the simple fact that love is connection. It’s that poignant stretching of your heart that you feel when you gaze into a newborn’s eyes for the first time or share a farewell hug with a dear friend. It’s even the fondness and sense of shared purpose you might unexpectedly feel with a group of strangers who’ve come together to marvel at a hatching of sea turtles or cheer at a football game. The new take on love that I want to share with you is this: Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people — even strangers — connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong.

…

At the level of positivity resonance, micro-moments of love are virtually identical regardless of whether they bloom between you and a stranger or you and a soul mate; between you and an infant or you and your lifelong best friend. The clearest difference between the love you feel with intimates and the love you feel with anyone with whom you share a connection is its sheer frequency. Spending more total moments together increases your chances to feast on micro-moments of positivity resonance. These micro-moments change you.

Don’t let the quotes I pulled from this post mislead you (entirely), as it definitely is a champion of “the necessary physicality of love.” And, I am, too. However, at the end of the day, I like to think of craftivism as part and parcel love letter to the world, as sometimes in your love letters you express anger or regret or shame or any number of negative emotions before you begin to roll over on your back and expose your soft belly underside, the squooshy, mooshy, lovey dovey parts that mend all things back together and show that, no matter what your discontent, love still remains above all.

Whether you’re making quilt squares to donate to charity or creating protest banners and leaving them in public places or making xstitch pieces to voice your anger or knitting mittens for the homeless in your spare time or realizing that crochet is saving your life… it’s all a love letter to craft, activism, and craftivism.

And, in that, there is infinite beauty and depth and heart and soul and love.

When I started all of this I did so as a reaction to the negative connotations of the word “activism.” I never knew that I was really wanting to connect “love” to activism more so than craft! Because each time we do something that helps others with our craft we are creating our own “micro-moments” of love in our own hearts that maybe we’ll either give to ourselves if we need it or to others. We’re cultivating and harnessing love and care as we open dialogues and our own hearts with what we make with our hands.

As craftivists we are lucky enough to have a process in which to heal us, and a product with which to help others. We are lucky to have the time to let what we’re making sink in and resonate deep within us as we make it, and then lucky enough to have the chance and the freedom with which to share it. The process warms our own hearts as much as the products warm the hearts (and bodies and souls) of others. And, in that, I find infinite love and am happy that there are others that feel the same way.

Thank you, in helping to send your love letters out into the world in whichever way you see best. Thank you for creating more “micro-moments” from which to draw love, feel love, and be love. By willing to express your inner thoughts and then share them with the world through craft, you are creating the conditions of love and acting as a reminder that activism can be a 4-letter word, just one filled with joy instead of hate.

Forging Your Own Path In the Forest

| Betsy

When I was little, my grandmother used to tell me about Joseph Campbell. I’ll admit, I never quite got it; however, I kinda got it, in a that-sounds-cool-you-can-live-your-life-how-you-want-to-no-matter-what-anyone-says kind of way.

Lately, a reminder of this message has popped up in my inbox twice. Once via an email newsletter from Danielle LaPorte and then again via a daily quote sent by email from Elephant Journal:

The Danielle LaPorte post arrived in my inbox yesterday:

When the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, there is a stage in it’s metamorphosis where it is completely liquified. It is a “nutritive soup of enzymes.” Entirely unrecognizable. You can’t tell what it was, or what it will become. Soup.

Many of us are familiar with Joseph Campbell’s metaphor of “the hero entering the darkest part of the forest, where no one has entered before.” But what’s often left out of that teaching is this: “…and the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms.” More soup.

There will be a time, a passage when you don’t really know who you were, or are, or can be. It’s natural, it’s divine, and it’s the chemistry of beautiful, awesome change.

This passage can happen in big dramatic swells, as years of not quite knowing what you want to do; or seasons of confusion that aren’t quite depressing, but confusing enough to invite sadness in. This can happen in compressed bouts of uncertainty before you do something new or monumental.

While the full quote by Joseph Campbell referenced by Danielle Laporte actually had arrived in my inbox via Elephant Journal a few days earlier:

“You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else’s path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else’s way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.”

~ Joseph Campbell

And it reminded me of what happened when I started writing about craftivism. I thought I was bat-shit crazy. Like, seriously. I mean, really, comparing (at the time) knitting for charity in your house to activism where like people are yelling n’ stuff? Of course, as we all know, it wasn’t too crazy, and in fact, been done by people for many years.

However, at the time, I thought that using a new term to explain this was unnecessary as there were already plenty of new words in the English lexicon, who needs another? But, what I was missing was that there wasn’t a term that specifically embraced (and explained) this type of activism. That was what people caught on to, not the existence of something, but the naming of something.

So, when people contact me and ask, “How can I be a craftivist?” I generally have two answers:

1. The answers are already there. On Google. In history. You don’t need me to tell you. Not because I don’t want to tell you, but because you’ll be more fulfilled if you find your own path. If you find the best way that craftivism speaks to you. I want you to be excited to make and do and create and use your creativity to foment change. Your change, not mine.

2. See #1. Then ask yourself a few questions: What craft do I like? What cause do I feel strongly about? How can I use my craft to show people that this cause is important? Write these answers down on a Post It. Post it near your craft supplies. Have a think. Find your path.

Part of my path I think is to help you find your path. To help you see that you have all the answers, you have complete permission to make whatever you want, you have permission to make positive change. It’s part of my path not because I have all the answers, but because I don’t. Part of my path is to remind you that change is waiting for you to make it. Maybe we’re on the same path but in different woods. Maybe we’re on paths that will cross. (I hope so! Mayhaps then we could stop for a rest, make some cool craftivist work and meet for tea!)

But I do know one thing, that when we follow our own paths and go where there is no path before us, we become who we are meant to be. We just have to have the courage and the joy and curiosity to walk into the woods where currently there is no trail of breadcrumbs, where there are no footsteps to follow.

And we need to walk forward safe in the knowledge that we are making (literally and figuratively) our own paths because just as much as it may be scary, it’s also breathtaking as you can hear the crunch of the leaves under your feet, the sound of birds chirping, and feel in touch with who you truly are from the inside out.