craftivism: wee, yet mighty!

'but you've got too much to wear on your sleeves...'

For the past week, I've been wandering around London listening to 'A Year of Seconds' by The Standard. When I get back to my laptop, it's nothing but "Kissing the Lipless" by The Shins. I've also been openly redeclaring my love for satsumas and sesame snaps, so things aren't totally bleak.

All the hustle and bustle of London has me thinking in patterns as well as words. It seems like every time I sit down I'm talking with someone about contemporary crafts, so walking around the city is somewhat of a wordless reprieve. I turn my somewhat decrepit tape-playing walkman up loud and watch the drama of the city unfold around me as my feet stepstepstep one foot in front of the other without any forethought.

Passing women in saris, men in coveralls and children in school uniforms, I find my mind racing with all the color combinations and textures, curious about the origin of all the cloth displayed before me. Was any of it handknitted? Produced in a sweatshop? Inherited from a family member? When I was younger, my mother used to always warn me to be careful of what I was wearing as it projected a persona. As an adult, my outfits generally consist of something donned in a hurry as I'm perpetually late and in a rush. On grey days I'm most often to be wearing color in a futile attempt to beat the drabness into submission. Although when it's nice out, I don't mind the way hot pink gleams in the sun .

But I'd like to think that I'm not the only one that notices the kaleidoscope of the city as I walk from place to place in outfits that may or may not add or subtract to the explosions of color I see rush around me. Spying patterns in clothing, buildings and rubbish while my walkman keeps me to a steady beat with my mouth shut and my eyes open. Once I'm back at home again, I take out my wool and knitting needles and daydream* about what I will make next after taking in all the sights and secrets that the city continually offers up.

*Lately my daydreams have been about what I'm going to create for knitpro Needlecraft Art Show, whose deadline has been changed to June 1st! Oh, the possibilities!

the soundtrack of spring.

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.

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.

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.

what's in a name?

Sometimes I think that there is a danger in definition.

Even though it's not something I've ever really mentioned here, I began this blog a few years ago because I really believed that there is a special kind of energy created when craft and activism are done in conjunction.

While it's seen me through many different moves, thoughts, periods in politics, I was really just curious if it was possible to promote an idea without really self-promoting via the wonders of the internet. I'm happy to note that now instead of just two links (here and here, there are over 300. There's even a formal definition over at Wikipedia!

Lately I've been wondering what different directions I want to go in on here, so if you have any ideas, feel free to get in touch.

Even though I write alot about different places/projects to donate your various efforts, craftivism (to me, atleast) is about more than that.

It's also about using your talents as a way to note your dissent, approval, frustration or other various emotions in a mode other than bog standard marching with placards and yelling.

The quietest forms of protest will always win my heart and my love. Because they find a way for us to rethink and reexamine our own thoughts.

So you can imagine I was more than pleased to come across the work of Patrice Lehocky of Takewrning.com.

The way that

becomes

reminds me of the myriad ways that craft and activism will always be intrinsically intertwined. And reinstates my adoration and belief in quiet acts of protest.

I heart storytime.

I tried my hand at writing in a real paper spiralbound notebook today. All I could really manage was the word "FOCUS" in bubble letters and a weird cartoony comicy piece about the conversation I was eavesdropping on. I know it's considered a bit gauche, but I couldn't tell if the guy was spilling his relationships issues because he was in some sort of coffeehouse therapy session or if he was dumping the person he was talking to. In a word, it was gripping. In the end, the lack of histrionics led me to leave. To my defense, it was a public place and he was really loud.

And he actually used the phrase, "there are a lot of men out there..." line which had me wanting to chuck my coffee all over him. I thought such witty repartee was left for films alone?

Anyway, lately I've been trying to pin down what is so enticing to me about the world of crafts. I mean, on the one hand, who the f*ck cares? It's just a bunch of people with varying sizes of needles and string! But on the other, I think that a lot of this stems from an interest in the experience of women.

We've made it til the 3rd (some say 4th, some say post-) wave of feminism. Now what? To we keep creating waves until they are backed out to sea or start upon making some new definitions and metaphors?

I don't know about your personal work experience, but mine has been mostly uneventful. Most of my work experience has centered on work in secretarial positions. A lot of phone answering, filing and sitting on my ass. While finding the actual work (or complete lack thereof) banal and time-wasting, I was often fascinated by the personal dynamics of this mainly woman-dominated sphere.

In one particular office of 9 women on a university campus, I was constantly enthralled by the drama that ensuing in these women's lives, these ordinary women who came from differing socio-economic backgrounds, age groups, marital status. No one was a supermodel or high profile particularly, just a group of women working in an office with lots of beige decor and a few plants thrown in for good measure.

One woman (who had retired just before I got there but was a frequent visitor) lost a battle to cancer, another was suddenly diagnosed with weeks to live if both of her breasts weren't removed within days. Stories emerged of past battles with cancer that were previous kept under wraps. I was there throughout the operation, the chemo, the picking out of wigs, the grit, the strength, and the tension-breaking laughter. Watching all of these women deal with this in such a small work environment was fascinating.

Its pure ordinariness made it sublime.

I still have that sense of awe everytime I'm around people knitting or otherwise crafting and as their hands methodically work, their stories start tumbling out of their mouths.

This picture was sent to me by an amazing woman in New York state who spins wool from her own sheep. The above ewe in question is named Sophie.

Sometimes I feel like I inhabit someplace firmly inbetween flaneur and voyeur. But one things for sure, I never get enough of the stories that unfold around me.

past? or present?

One of the most important bands in my life has got to be Huggy Bear. Their album "Taking the Rough With the Smooch" made me finally realise that I wasn't alone and that real art (craft?) doesn't have any formal constraints even though you may think it does.

So with that album title in mind...

As for the absence, well, lately it's been all about two things: moving (again!) and libraries.

Currently I am at a very temporary abode surrounded by stacks of craft supplies, books and stripey articles of clothing. Besides working on my near-constant plan of world craft domination, I am knee-deep in storylines, research proposals and random xeroxed pieces of paper.

Happily, Craft Revolution has evolved, giving credence to the hope that people will start thinking a little more and consuming a little less. If you're entirely ready to put this thought into action, then you could do no better than having a little fun with microRevolt's knitPro. It is my new favorite thing, as I just used it to show how I could knit Colonel Sanders, so watch out!

It makes me unduly happy to see all of this interdisciplinary thought between art, craft, politics, materialism, ad nauseum- because it's not about getting back to basics, it's about learning from the past in order to chart your future.

Which is why I've had my head down researching the past lately. Because nothing gives me more energy and inspiration than taking something that at first seems so humbling (mainly knitting) into a larger conceptual mode of thought.

My old housemate was from Northern England, and I remember coming home one evening and hearing this really strange folk song which to my ears appeared to be sung by the oldest and most tone-deaf people on earth. Well, they were old and tone-deaf, but they also kicked ass. It was a video about the handknitters of the Dales. Many times I passed the book, (The Old Hand Knitters Of The Dales by Marie Hartley & Joan Ingilby, 1951) on the kitchen table immediately thinking about the aural assault that I heard that night.

Like I previously was scared by my local co-op by all the hippies* on the front lawn, I finally realised that just because it at first seems a bit creepy, that generally the problem is that you're just not looking in the right place. Once I finally braved the mass of hippies, I discovered the best steamed greens and vegan double chocolate cookies in the world. And likewise, people like Clara Sedgwick have now become my crafty heroines instead of Lily Chin.

Go Clara!

*Okay, all hippies aren't that bad. Just a bit scary to me en masse.