why handmade.

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

Stitching for Ourselves: Remembering to Make Time for Us.

| Betsy

Last week was heavy on the “refresh” button. I’m sure you know those weeks, where it all feels like every second is another chance to hit “refresh.” Refresh. Drink some tea. Refresh. Do a little work. Refresh. Go say hi to your co-worker. Refresh. Drink some more tea. Refresh. Refresh. And so on.

This weekend was one of waking up early, doing laundry, cooking for the rest of the week, scrubbing grout, doing more laundry, vacuuming (getting out the crevice tool!), buying groceries, and running errands. A weekend away from the refresh button, and largely away from technology entirely.

Now it’s Sunday night; I find myself creeping back to technology, wondering where the weekend went, then remembering when I see my clean house and the cooked food in in the fridge.

And I wonder if perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I love stitching so much; it marks our time. It shows us in no uncertain way that we were there, we had a quiet moment with our thoughts (or with our friends and/or family) where time was marked and there was no wondering what we did with that time.

It reminds us to take some time for ourselves, doing what we want, instead of plodding along solely doing what has to be done (like most of my weekend) and what we think should be done (hitting refresh waiting for a response in our favor).

While you may be with a group or by yourself, either way it’s still very much just you and your work. Marking time in a very literal way. It shows us quietly how time moves on, no matter how hard we try to hold on to it. Even if we must pick out stitches, the yarn feels different never to be the same again, the linen bears the holes, nothing is ever the same again as it once was.

It’s a moment. It’s a breather. It’s “just one more row.” It’s feeling the thread as it get pulled through the aida cloth. It’s a microcosm of where our mind should be all the time. Not hitting refresh expecting something that may never come, not spending our time solely crossing off to-do lists.

But while we’re stitching, we’re there. Active, but not harried. Making something from nothing. Bringing forth new work into an old world. As the new week begins, may you find time to do work just for you this week, to remember that time is passing, and slipping, like a needle through cloth.

Also, if you haven’t already, The New York Times magazine this week was the Inspiration issue. Brilliant stuff. Thanks for the heads up on that one, @kirstinbutler and @percolate!

A Place to Gather: Modern Irish Craft

| Betsy

Stunningly beautiful video on modern Irish craft. I strongly suggest watching it in full-screen view. Features basketmaking, glass blowing, and woodworking, among other traditional Irish crafts still done in modernity.

You don’t know whether you are going to be good at it, you have to become good at it. So whether a person has determination to learn, whether they have the burning desire to learn to make baskets, is the real thing.






Found via morning Percolate email this morning; shared by @orlaithross and @CraftsCouncilUK over on Twitter.

Craftivism: Party of One

| Betsy

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of emails where people have been frustrated about not having a group to ‘do craftivism’ with. As someone who sent emails just like that until a few years ago, I can tell you, being frustrated is seriously not going to get you very far.

However, action will. And if you really want to call yourself a ‘craftivist,’ it’s not about joining a group or creating a circle or whatever. It’s about YOU wanting something to change. It’s about YOU wanting to make the world a better place. It’s about YOU wanting to make yourself a better person.

You could knit a blanket for soldiers or your sick aunt or homeless dogs or homeless people or refugees or a local family whose house burnt down. You could make a tree cozy for that tree in front of that really ugly abandoned building. You could xstitch a headline or a quote or an image of something that grabbed you and resonated with you about change/changing the world. You could then post it in your bedroom or place it on a park bench or downtown.

Because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you foment change and/or healing. Like I stated above, to be an activist is to create change. To be a crafter is (in a fundamental way) to heal/soothe/bring joy/teach others. Whenever you combine those two, you are a craftivist.

It’s about bringing light and joy and beauty in your life, the lives of those you know, and/or the lives of those you don’t. There’s no one way to ‘do craftivism’ or be a craftivist. If someone tells you different, then they are actually practicing some other -ism, because it sure as hell isn’t the one that I’ve been writing and talking about all these years.

Sometimes craftivist pieces heal you in the making. It’s important not to overlook that, I think. Because changing you is its own kind of activism, because it’s about not accepting the status quo, it’s about taking the reins and taking charge of your own actions. Because as you change, you become an evangelist for change in others, not only by your words, but also by your actions.

If you’re improving things along the way and including craft in this change, you’re being a craftivist. You’re spreading the good word, in a non-confrontational way, and letting people decide if they want to get on the bandwagon or not. With your enthusiasm, you’re empowering them to make changes and maybe even eventually include their creativity in with those changes.

So, take heart, and don’t get discouraged if you are the only craftivist around. That doesn’t mean you can’t act, it means you have even more reason to act! You have more people to inspire with your actions and have more work to do than those of us in towns with craftivist groups or collectives. Activism brings change. Craft brings healing. Craftivism brings healing change.

So, go forth and be crafty, in whatever way you want to be. You don’t have to call yourself a craftivist even, but do know that with your creations, you’re helping foment change without even opening your mouth. And that, my friend, is a very powerful thing, indeed.

Craft: Why Breaks Are Okay, And So is Re-Entry

| Betsy

Funny how life loves to throw you curveballs. Even more funny (in the ironic sense, unfortunately not the “ha ha” sense), when craft saves you once, and then saves your ass again.

And speaking of craft saving your ass, I bought Kathleen Vercillo’s new book this morning, Crochet Saved My Life: The Mental and Physical Health Benefits of Crochet, which I will be reviewing and sharing more about here soon.

If you look over here, you will see in the slideshow, a photo of the piece above when I was just beginning it. Several years ago. The photo in the slideshow was all “Woohoo! New piece! Yeah!” and then I started it, effed up some of the stitches (after showing it to Mr. X Stitch and Lauren O’Farrell in London in 2011, I knew most of it needed to be redone. Subsequently, the photo you see above is of a piece that has been redone, several times. Pieces of the aida cloth up towards the top of the piece are (in some cases) down to their last literal threads.

Fast forward to earlier this spring, during a talk in a class on Creative Dissent at the Corcoran, when I was talking about my own work. I mentioned that the series linked above is something I’ve been working on off and on since 2004. One of the students said the equivalent of “Dude, that’s a really long time.” To which I responded, honestly and without hesitation, “Yes.” If anything, this series has taught me how not only our lives ebb and flow, but our creative endeavors, do, too. And, sometimes, these two intersect in a cluster*ck of inaction, uncertainty, doubt, frustration, and, frankly, wanting to just effin’ quit. Not life, necessarily, but all its flourishes aside from sleep/work.

And if you’re like me, you end up eating little but toast and hiding all your work in boxes and watching really bad tv reruns. And then one day, your fingers start to itch and you wonder, “what ever happened to that piece I was working on?” And after the excavation of 4 other boxes, in the 5th box, you find what you were looking for. And the intersection between life and creativity bubbles up in your brain and you start stitching. And you realize that there are reasons for these creative breaks, and you understand why at some museums you see that 1 piece by 1 artist took 9 years. Because we are made to ebb and flow, we are made to create. However, sometimes things get so shite that you end up in Toastville using your boxes full of creative projects as a makeshift cat beds so the cat can look out windows. (Truth!)

So, again, I realize that while these breaks perfectly natural, it is imperative for them to be “breaks” and not a “full-stop quit.” I also realize that sometimes those “breaks” honestly feel like a “full-stop quit,” especially when you get to Toastville (or your equivalent of Toastville)! And that’s okay. We’re allowed to burn out, stop, take a break, go learn new things or just zone out for a bit. However, we need to also give ourselves permission to fall in love again. To realize why we began to stitch/paint/insert-creative-endeavor-here in the first place.

We need the break in order to refuel and recharge and remember why we’re here, what we love, why we make, and who we are. However, we need to give ourselves permission to take one in the first place. So, while you hopefully don’t make it all the way to Toastville, hopefully you will allow yourself to stop when you feel like it. And when you look back at that project that took 7 years when it should have taken 1 month, remember that break with pride, serenity, and joy.

I was there the day that the students were knitting (in some cases learning to knit!) to make this “Student Debt Blanket.” You can see them (they were awesome!) in the video below, along with their blanket:

Creative Protest: Studet Debt Blanket 1 from FoodFight on Vimeo.

Beili Liu’s The Mending Project, Wellington Craftivism Collective’s Pussy Riot Protest Fence

| Betsy

Last week, I came across this amazing video over at Colossal of Beili Liu’s new installation The Mending Project at the (what looks like the amazing) Women and Their Work Gallery.

As you can see from the video, Liu is “mending” cloth while sitting underneath hundreds of Chinese scissors, juxtaposing safety with violence, security with the unknown, and what can destroy with what can (literally) mend.

And from another project this week, one done in solidarity with the Pussy Riot Protest Fence done in Melbourne, Australia by Jacquie Tinkler, a yarnbomber and lecture at Charles Stuart University and Casey Jenkins, a yarnbomber and Craft Cartel member, another Pussy Riot Protest Fence by the Wellington Craftivism Collective!

While at first they may not seem connected, when I happened to look at both projects side by side, a striking connection did, in fact, emerge, when I carefully listened to these words spoken by Liu in the video:

I do think when we’re facing uncertainty and concern and that fear, or when we’re facing very difficult situations in life or in this world, the best thing we can do perhaps is something very simple. And if we can do it with persistence and calmness some change can happen.

I like the idea that “persistence” and “calmness” can foment change, as opposed to speed or anger. Steady pressure, fervent belief, process, intent; these things can bring groundswell, create shifts, deepen fault lines. Whether or not we are underneath hundreds of blades or stitching to fences, we are still helping “change””happen.” We are creating our own realities and paths and truths as we continue to sew, to stitch, to change, to mend.