with my hands.

Things I’ve either made or written over the years.

Craft + DIY = Punk?

| Betsy

Below is the most visited post in my archives, one from March 23, 2004 called Why Craft = Punk Rock. In 2004, I was living in London, getting my MA and had just started writing and researching about craft and community. It was before all the press and essays and was a true time of discovery. It was the beginning of the press frenzy and interviews at the start of UK’s finding craft as a subversive act.

Fast forward 5 years, and I think of all the places craft has brought me and all the wonderful people it has allowed me to meet. I never would have thought that the tenets behind this post would influence, well, everything that followed. Everything. Where did your craft spirit originate? What gives you fire in your belly? As I’m in the process of changing gears, looking for work* that helps women find their creative spirit in developing countries, I’m reminded of this post below. And I’m wondering where this new journey will take me, who I will meet, and held safe in the knowledge that my belief in the power of craft and creativity is real and deep and pure.

*

Living in London, I’m constantly amazed by the fact that the so-called ‘subversive craft scene’ is non-existent. In the U.S., it is everywhere you look and it’s not so much a ‘call to arms’ as it is an expression of something I/you/we can do with our own hands to make our own lives as well as the lives of others a little bit better in the chaos of life around us.

Currently I’m helping out with an event called V&A Museum here in London.

There is a press frenzy surrounding it 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

*Yep. Got any ideas of anyone who might be looking to hire someone with these interests? Get in touch!

Giving Permission and Paying Homage.

| Betsy

There is something about the delving into the past that is magic. Not the pulling rabbits out of hats, disappearing, shackling yourself underwater to a safe and then appearing at the surface magic. But magic in a sense more real. I found this magic the other week on the morning of July 4th walking through the cemetery of Christ Church in St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. My father and I went out to take photographs before it got too hot, and as usual, I was enchanted by its beauty and Spanish moss. Like all places of history, the South evokes it’s own individual memories in the way it takes you back through time making you crave lemonade, riding on horseback and hoop skirts.

This type of magic is infinite, and it holds with it a special kind of freedom. It holds a freedom where your creativity can move and writhe and grow and dream. I think this freedom is given to us by the past and the way in which it frees us from worrying if what we’re doing is cool or hip or meaningful or if our peers or families or friends will like it. It frees us from the “will it be enoughs?” by reminding us that we are on a continuum. That what we do today will always be eclipsed by something flashier or hipper tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean it still won’t stand to the test of time.

This type of magic gives us freedom to go forth without fear and create without the status quo in mind, allowing us to listen to our hearts and dreams instead of what’s on the front pages. It allows us to realize that we are okay and good and valuable just as we are right now, in the midst of all the dreams and hopes and creations of our ancestors. The past is truly our permission giver instead of our peers, as it knows that what you are thinking and doing and making will have been done in some sense before, you are just paying homage. I’ll take that magic over a good card trick any day.

The rest of the cemetery photos are here.

Foreign. (Film, Immigration and Old Familiars.)

| Betsy

In 1985, I got 3rd place in a school art contest with the theme “Safety.” It was a painting of a policeman stopping traffic, and to this day, I think it only won 3rd place because it marginally had something to do with safety and wasn’t off-topic. Last Sunday, twenty-four years later, I picked up a paint brush again. Although it’s not for a contest and has little to do with safety, I’m pretty happy with the preliminary results.

We watched The Visitor as I tried to retain the bounce of the brush on the canvas and stay in the lines I had drawn- while also paying attention. Although I’m not sure if it was the painting or the film, somewhere along the line I started tearing up. I’m not really sure which was the culprit, and think perhaps it was a little bit of both. The film is about the unlikely friendship that arises from an equally unlikely introduction and deals with issues of belonging, home, identity and immigration.

As I’ve done work in the past with refugees, my heart went out to the people everywhere who are in those back rooms in detention centers or airports or live in fear of being denied asylum or what have you. And since I hadn’t painted for so many years, I also felt that rush of release you get when you tackle something new and unfamiliar, that unbridled freedom of seeing where your hands may take you is always an adventure. Although canvas, paints and brushes are benevolent things, there is still a sense of escaping your safety zone as you push toward new skills.

So as Richard Jenkins’ character learned to play the drums in “The Visitor,” I picked up a paintbrush (a little easier than playing the djembe). While his lesson was tied up in a messy storyline fraught with modern problems and frustrations, mine was unfolding quietly with a dog curled up against my side. The result? A pleasant and kind reminder in the liberation and joy of letting yourself go and learning something new.

Other lovely things of late:
*Savta Connection (a group urban knitting in Tel Aviv)
*Discovering the activist anthropology department at UT-Austin
*Interview with Syrian musician Kinan Azmeh (who speaks of those back rooms)
*Art Yarn’s Call to Action for handmade knitted or crocheted strips for an exhibit at Manchester Craft and Design

And as for me, I’m being kept busy:
*Preparing for a group show at The Scrap Exchange in Durham, Domestic Spaces (March 20-April 11)
*Excited about my first trip to Portland for the Handmade Nation West Coast premiere, April 2-6th! I will be on a panel called Craft Perspectives on Saturday, April 4th, which I’ll be posting more about later. For now, you can see more details <a href=”http://www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org/hmn/programs.html”>here</a>!

The Courage to Enjoy.

| Betsy

I have these lyrics on my desktop right now:

I can sense it
Something important
Is about to happen
It’s coming up.

It takes courage to enjoy it
The hardcore and the gentle
Big time sensuality.

We just met
And I know I’m a bit too intimate
But something huge is coming up
And we’re both included.

It takes courage to enjoy it
The hardcore and the gentle
Big time sensuality.

I don’t know my future after this weekend
And I don’t want to.

It takes courage to enjoy it
The hardcore and the gentle
Big time sensuality
Sensuality

Lately I’ve been posting videos instead of photos. Here’s one more video as I’m way behind on my photo taking and editing…

The lyrics and video are from Bjork’s first solo album, Debut, the song “Big Time Sensuality.”

Over the past few days, I’ve used “It takes courage to enjoy it, the hardcore and the gentle” as a mantra. Humming it as I drove around town, hearing it in my head at work, keeping the words in mind in yoga.

I guess you could say I’ve been meditating on the word “courage.” In many ways I think that for a long time “courage” for me, was nothing but a simulacrum. It became distorted and disjointed from its original meaning. How for so long I thought I was brave and strong, when instead it was nothing but a well-crafted facade cobbled from bits of my past.

Somehow I’ve gone from Woody Allen to Diane Keaton, still charmingly neurotic yet less annoying. I listened to this song by Bjork over and over and felt that resonation where even though you wished you could apologize to everyone who has seen your not-too-hot sides and reintroduce yourself and hope for better endings, you’re okay, really okay, just where you are.

Writing this book, and then talking about it has meant putting something tangible into the world, instead of just into the ether or as part of a group effort. It meant staring down old playground fears and worries that kept me awake all the while thinking that I was being courageous. It meant okaying and forgiving so many negative and damaging years, and finally putting them to rest so I could focus on the recent good ones.

It meant realizing that without all the years so close to self-destruct or implosion, I wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate and adore what was on the other side of the coin. Maybe it was all down to that “fake it til you make it” mantra that puts a shine and a smile to everything.

As the simulacrum crumbled and I was left out in the open, I wondered why, honestly, we tend to see feeling fear as a failure or weakness. Isn’t a part of courage feeling fear and pushing through it? If passing through fear leads to courage then we are all both cowards and heroes, as you need to feel the fear of a coward in order to be brave and your actions noble. It, too, is the other side of a double-edged coin. No one ever says that courage is needed both in loss and in victory, that even though the outcomes are opposite, bravery was there the minute you stepped in the fray.

It takes courage to enjoy “the hardcore and the gentle,” both the rough and the smooth. Courage to feel, courage to fight, courage to love, courage to give without expecting reciprocity. So here, at the tail end of 2008 and the fresh start of 2009, I wish you courage.

May you have the courage to enjoy.

Also, the amazingly inspiring Nancy McNally (who makes the most wonderfully beautiful peace cranes) passed along an article about a new campaign to get artists in schools and in our communities. You can read more about it here and vote for the idea over at Change.org over here. Thanks for spreading the word, Nancy!

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.