craftivism: wee, yet mighty!

into the urban, out of the house.

"My best friend has claws for hands and X-ray eyes to see
(His name is Paul)

My parents think my robot's trouble
Motherboard and CPU control the way Paul thinks
My program was written fast and might not be bug free
(He's four feet tall)"

Barcelona's song "Robot Trouble" has been stuck in my head for awhile. Besides the fact that it's adorable, I like it because it's about robots. And the song provides the best soundtrack to view Jessica Hutchinson's knitted robots. These little dears going out on their own to find their place in this world not only demonstrates how I feel about knitting and modernity, but also evokes my favorite construct: home.

In placing the robots in various situations "out in the real world," Jessica places knitting outside of the home, and by photographing the robots wandering around modernity, she highlights the ways that needlecraft may seen alien in the urban. While endearing themselves to us as they bravely venture into unknown territory, her creatures also elucidate how we view crafts such as knitting in our cultural conscience as something safe, because they make you question them before embracing them.

While clicking through the collection, I am reminded of my own travels and questions about belonging and the sense of home. Is it a place? A person? My dear friend Katherine and I used to have rambling talks about the definition of this tiny word that has so much impact while wandering around London, both thousands of miles away from our so-called "hometowns." One day she noted that for those of us who wander, perhaps "home" is less defined by bricks and mortar and more by a feeling that we carry with us and share with others. I think this is the definition that I hold closest to my heart.

the subtle secrets of summer.

After waking up early and a long drive from the coast of Georgia, I took a nap when I got home. I awoke to the sound of firecrackers pop-pop-popping in my apartment complex. While in England, the sound of firecrackers means the approach of Bonfire Night (and the pedestrian wariness to avoid being the target of bored schoolkids), in the United States, fireworks mean the onset of summer.

Ever since I was a child, summer has been hell. The paleness of my skin meant lobster-rich sunburns, always wearing a t-shirt when swimming, layering on the sunscreen like liquid armor against my sworn enemy, the sun. I was corralled inside between the hours of 11 and 2, when the sun was the most brutal, as all the other kids played in the sun, amazingly getting browner instead of redder.

It wasn't until recently that I began relishing the season. Delighting in the moon's relief after sunset, where it's still somewhat blistering, but the crickets and cicadas emerge to make it more like a fairytale than an oppressive blanket of heat. At the beach this past week, I was lucky enough to watch the full moon arc over the ocean creating large swathes of light on the encroaching tide. After my family had gone to sleep, I crept out on the balcony alone to watch the moonlight dance on the water, the only sound the crash of waves on sand.

This past week I ate tomato, cucumber and onion sandwiches washed down with sweet tea made by my grandmother and got sentimental as she put a fried green tomato on my plate at dinner. We went to Christ Church near Fort Frederica, where I bounded off with my drugstore camera (I forgot my own) to take photographs of the decaying cemetery and the live oaks that never fail to make me lose my breath at their beauty. As I got lost in Southern Gothic thoughts, surrounded by creaky rusted iron gates, tombstones that had long lost their words and vines ensnaring the canopy, I would occasionally come across my mother and grandparents oohing and aahing about the grandness of a graveside angel.

As a child, the 1946 production of "The Yearling" was my favorite film, and ever since, I have held a certain reverence for the South. Today I drove along Highway 17 on my way north, stopping along the way to take a few photographs, at places like the Smallest Church in America (photo not my own):

and driving down sandy roads in Macintosh County that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular. In parts of the drive it was like time had been forgotten as I sped past small sheds at swamps edge and herons creeping along the roadside.

Now and then my thoughts drifted off towards my grandmother and how during the week she had slipped in bits of textile knowledge into the conversation. Along with telling me the secrets to buying the freshest fruit, these snippets of conversation were ripe with knowledge that would never quite be the same if read in a book or newspaper. One afternoon she whisked me into her bedroom and told me all about the intracacies of her needlework that was hanging on its walls, secrets that were held more dear after I had spent the previous few hours reading about the effect of oral tradition on antebellum quilting.

Here in my apartment, the firecrackers have stopped, and there is no seaside to lull me back to sleep. In the morning, I will wake and not find coffee made by my grandfather hours before or hear my grandmother tell me what fruit is fresh in the fridge ready for breakfast. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to wash away a newborn love for summer and its quiet yet heat-stifled beauty, tinged with the kindness of family and the sweetness of strawberries.

tea always helps when i'm thinking too much.

Ever since realising last week that I'm going to be hanging out in North Carolina for another year and not returning to academia right away, I've been a bit of a mess. And by "mess" I mean I've been looking at all my options dervish-style, not that I've been hiding under the covers eating biscuits. Even though the latter option seemed momentarily appealing, I've been reading too much online regarding the recent death of musician/artist Andy Roberts to consider it. Andy was an acquaintance of mine, and I have been reminded this past week (as he was in a coma for several days) of the influences people can have on others, even though it may seem trivial at the time.

I'm heading to the beach until Friday tomorrow morning, as my whole family is there and I need some time to write and work on my proposal and figure out what direction I honestly want to take next. It's a little over 3 weeks until my 30th birthday and if I'm not going to return to another thankless and pointless job, I'm going to have to make a new gameplan and brainstorm some new routes. Some of my more illustrious job titles in the past have included: stable cleaner (summer job, I got to ride horses everyday), bill processor, outreach worker (I got to take wayward London kids canoeing!), secretary (5x), cashier, data processor (200+ pages of data about trees) and organic grocery store barista.

It would be nice to actually hold a job title that I adore, and would be the best birthday present that I could ever imagine. However, if I sit and daydream about all the jobs I could be doing instead of working towards it, I might as well head back to the stables I started at when I was 17.

However, I do know that I have a political cross-stitch series in the works along with a project documenting the recent craft resurgence. Tenatively called Work/Shop, it is my aim to collect 2 photographs from the participants (one portrait, one of their workspace) as well as a paragraph about themselves and their work. I've been thinking about it for months now, and have finally decided to start working on it. So far, I have a list of people wanting to participate, but if you know anyone who might be interested, please get in touch!

The aim of this project is to put a face to all of the craft businesses that have cropped up- because although I 'know' many of the artists in question, I may not necessarily recognize them on the street. Thanks to the internet, a robust community has been created and allows for the opportunity to circumvent the mainstream and directly support someone's pocket instead of a already gigantic company's coffers.

While I hope that the craft community can continue in perpetuity, it may just burn for awhile and fade away. No matter what happens, I want to document "my community" as it exists now. Because I do think it's important for people to realise that by making art/craft and daring to step away from the 9-5 vacuum, we are influencing others and making a mark on the cultural landscape.

friday dispatch v7.0

Some weeks it seems like I just blink and it's Friday already. And I'm still stuck in this jobless quagmire, daydreaming about full-time flaneury and Walter Benjamin while keeping my head in the real-world that is more than full of pointless and thankless jobs.

Happily, things are the job front are not as bleak as before, or maybe I'm just fooling myself. Regardless, here are the Friday links, v7.0:

*Das Erste Weiner Gemuseorchester is proof that what is in your vegetable bin might also produce some amazing music.

*Although I couldn't get some of the videos to work, I was astounded by the wealth of information over at emplive.org's Riot Grrrl Retrospective!

*I am completely in love with the cuteness that is Jotto and can hardly believe no one has ever shown me this before.

*Ditto for Rawr.net. Even though it hasn't been updated in awhile, that doesn't mean that there aren't still loads of adorable monsters!

*While my love for Walter Benjamin, Mr. T and Roland Barthes is highly documented, I rarely express my blatant adoration for Alain De Botton, do I? His Consolations of Philosophy is one of my favorite books in the world. I still need to read Status Anxiety, though!

*If you're melting in the heat, try making a few snowflakes.

*When you're unemployed, nothing makes you feel more inadequate than celebrity gossip, which you can read a host of places, like The Bosh.

*Living stateside, I miss reading the paper version of The Guardian. Happily it's online, and you can learn more than you ever wanted to know about globalisation here.

*You can plan your next road trip here from the comfort of your cubicle!

*Lots and lots of textiles links from the Textile Society including one right near my backyard!

sew what?

Joblessness has led to insomnia.
Insomnia has led to reading.
Reading has led to thought.
Thought has led to wishes of artistic autonomy.

The other day I bought this sewing machine for $5. It needs to be reconditioned, but that doesn't mean I'm any less in love with it. Mint green reminds me of my childhood and carefree afternoons spent running around my backyard with our black lab, Missy, playing tag and devouring popsicles.

But it's no longer 1985, it's 2005 and I'm drinking loads of tea with valerian and spearmint and chamomile. Reading lots of artists statements and wondering at once why anyone does anything, then knocked back with the notion that creativity sets the world in motion, creates the beauty all around us.

When I finished this small cross-stitch piece last week, I started to come up with more political art ideas. It's a cross-stitch of a screenprint of a stencil by Banksy, the pattern made possible by knitPro. With every stitch I made, I kept thinking about all the history and sweat and toil that encompasses needlework's past.

I have some larger pieces in mind, but lately have started to doubt my entire line of synchronicity between art and politics. But, I know that I will press on, and hopefully won't end up covering my walls with frame after frame of weird political art hybrids, stacking up like dolls on the Island of Lost Toys.

The man I spoke of the other day is still in grave condition in London, and I've thought much in the past few days about dreams deferred by coincidence. And how delicate everything really is, as well as how beautiful.

concentricity.

About an hour ago, I found out that an acquaintance I met in London was hit by a motorbike yesterday and is in very serious condition. So I'm sitting here in my apartment, soaking up the sun that is filtering in the windows, feeling the sweet breeze of the ceiling fan above, feeling somewhat ill.

During my tumultous teens and early 20s, I lost so many friends and acquaintances that I became numb to most of them. What has struck me about this is not only the goodness that he possessed that will be greatly missed, but the way that information is passed along so quickly via the interweb.

How we structure friendships and networks of trust via words only using keyboards and jpgs. How much it has enriched my life as well as introduced me to so many amazingly kind people due to little more than a beautiful coincidence. My inbox is full of incredible stories, notes of kindness, reminders of strength and interspersed missives from people all over the world. While not only reminding me how the world is full of beauty, it also reminds me how people can touch our lives without really knowing it.

So, even though I don't say it often enough, thank you.

xo

friday dispatch v6.0

Cross your fingers, knock on wood, spit...all of those things you do for good luck. I will be doing as I rewrite my research proposal. I have to write another one, so if you see me hunched over my laptop drinking coffee at the co-op, please wake me up if I have fallen asleep, okay? I need to start from scratch, review past and current research in my field, conduct a literature review, and read lots of university-written guidelines.

But seeing that it's Friday once again, here are some links:

*You can never know too much about fruit in my opinion. Lately I have been obsessed with strawberries and mangoes.

*Admit that her "How to be an Artist" poster made you dream again. Go to Planet Sark.

*Ever since I signed up for the free daily email at Daily Om, checking my email every morning has made get in touch with my inner hippie.

*As well as doing political needlework, lately I've been working with old skate photos. These old Powell-Peralta ads are wonderful! (And this has nothing to do with a recent Sony release, either. Although I did finally see Stoked last month!)

*Be forewarned that if I am ever in a band, I will make it my mission to go on stage wearing knitted full-body outfits like these guys:

Only with more hot pink and less beardy.

*Fall in love with the work of Ham and Enos. And then go make your own art.

*Even though I've never considered moving there before, The FACT Centre makes Liverpool look enticing.

*Sites like that of the Billboard Liberation Front never cease to make me happy.

*Same for the work of Ron English.

*On a less controversial and happier note, this site makes me happy because it's called "Lionel Richie Worldwide Headquarters." Go Lionel go!

I can't stop listening to Ted Leo's cover of Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone." Hot damn!

p.s. Firefox is doing weird things to the sidebar. I'm working on it.

here comes the rain again.

This summer marks the 14 year anniversary of my first independent music purchase, Yoyo Recordings comp, Throw:

The fact that I am actually reminiscing about the passage of time makes me break out into a cold sweat. Suddenly, my mind conjures images of my dad's friends cornering me during holiday parties telling me about how they weren't quite sure how they ended up an accountant or stockbroker instead of a ship captain or national Scrabble champion.

Then I turn on the television and am bombarded with diet ads and Bob Greene telling me it's "never too late!" What if you wanted to circumvent the party from the beginning? Not because you wanted to be unruly or angsty, but because you had a better party to attend? Everytime I hear that it is "never too late," my brain reassembles it to scream, "why did you give up in the first place?"

I feel like we have come full-circle from 15 years ago when I was loving my green Chuck Taylors and swathed in flannel and rabbiting on about new releases on this great new label called Kill Rock Stars. I hadn't start to care about politics yet (outside of every 7th graders devotion to Greenpeace), but was loving the repercussions of a Republican-era, the rebellion of art and music.

When Dubya was 'elected' in 2000, there was talk of taking solace in the fact that whenever our country is under a conservative regime, creativity flourishes. There were some spits and starts, but nothing really like what I saw taking place in the early 90s. In a fit of summertime remembrance and nostalgia brought on by boredom, I have pulled out my old Nirvana and Bikini Kill and Hole albums and have begun to remember that sense of hope that I had when I was 15.

I have tacked old skate photos on my home office wall and shutout all the bad memories of jaded people wearing ill-suited clothes babbling about ill-suited careers. (The above photo of Sam Cunningham (who is still skating!) is from the August 1988 issue of Transworld. Even though I was horrible at skating myself, skating has never ceased to inspire me.) Because as I scream out lyrics from my teenage years in the solitude of my home, I'm not trying to relive high school. I'm trying to revive some semblance of faith that there is a creative bounty on the horizon.

the start of summer, the end of burnout.

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.

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.

friday dispatch v5.0

Hooray! It's Friday! Again!

*The work done at Cloth of Gold warms my heart. But then again, creative collaboration is one of my favorite things.

*Go read This magazine, if you don't feel like perusing the site carefully, I suggest reading this article.

*H-net is good for anyone with a computer interested in the social sciences.

*So is Sage Publications, loads of other nerdy soc sci reading. Thanks to Sage Journals online you can dork out on your desktop, especially useful if you are currently sitting at a desk with no work. Use those brain cells!

*If the thought of reading academic works makes your head hurt, go read about celebrities at Pink is the New Blog!

*Create a Favicon for your website. (No I haven't made one yet...but one day....one day...)

*While I may not like big companies, I did enjoy learning about the history of the Tater Tot.

*Wash away the corporateness of that last site with a visit to the wonderful Microcosm Publishing.

*Ever since reading a recent post over at Sheep in the City, I can't stop thinking about sushi cupcakes.

*43 Folders makes me happy. The post about writer's block has been especially helpful recently!

Go listen to Airiel. Jeremy is rad.