Crafting and You: A Survival Guide

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

The yarn room--or, where I slept. Or, heaven. 

This past Christmas, the Mister and I headed up North to spend the holidays with his (adorable) family. A lot was crammed into seven days--lots of baking, lots of egg-nogging, and plenty of Nick and Nora Charles-ing (all in the the yuletide spirit, of course). Also--and this is the key to our little story here--his mother taught me how to knit. And with that, set off a chain reaction which vibrates still. 

Of course, it doesn't help that the Mister is an artist who comes from a family of the most prolific crafters I've ever met--I get lots of encouragement in that arena.  And don't be fooled, I'm no stranger to a crafty urge or two. My natural thriftiness combined with hoarder-like qualities towards certain goods (check: interesting bits of paper, weird buttons, all string) meant that I kept a well-stocked sewing kit and a modest collection of knick-knacks and stamps. 

But cross-stitch my heart and hope to die, that was all child's play compared to now. My little apartment looks like the frentic daydreams of Zooey Deschanel were woven into the vestiges of a Martha Stewart catalogue. My de-stressing routine most commonly involves a glass of red wine and a craft or two--it seems the busier I get, the more delight I take in homemaking. I made all my wrapping paper and gift tags for the year, using recycled cardboard and tissue paper. For my birthday this year, I got no fewer than four kitchen appliances as gifts. If you've reached the stage in your domesticated life where people think "cookie cutter" when your name comes up, you're doing something right. Or wrong, I guess, if you really hate cookies. This is but the tip of the iceberg; I have many projects ongoing. 

And oh yeah: I have a yarn basket now. I keep it next to my knitting chair, which is across from my sewing nook. In other words, it's getting worse. 

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But I'm not alone.
Young women across the blogosphere are bringing it back to basics, scaling back their material acquisition and swapping it out for a down-to-earth, DIY spirit. Call it the Newest New Woman--not only is she adorable, candid and ready to bake tiny little cakes inside of Mason jars, she's also a self-made business woman with an interesting and vivid background in a creative, unusual field. In other words, she's you or someone you know! 

Anthropolgie: taking advantage of our desire for simplicity

As Bitch Media's piece "Better Homes and Bloggers" by Holly Hilgenberg discusses, these figures pop up often in the ever-growing forest of DIY and crafting blogs, but don't be fooled. These are lifestyle narratives first--carefully edited slices of life presented by savvy ladies hip to the language of the New-New Woman. Taken from afar, they form a constellation of apple picking, early morning trips to the farmer's market and other aspirational lifestyle choices that seem effortless on your computer screen but elusive in real life. 

I happen to love those blogs--those mentioned in the piece who I didn't already frequent have mostly made into my daily queue--but I admit that their curious place in our culture hadn't gone unnoticed. In one light, all these homey, humble blogs are doing is painting yet another unattainable version of womanhood that most women struggle to mimic. Since it's such a pretty fiction, you might look at the pieces of this half-life think to yourself, "wait a second, why don't I spend my Saturday mornings making my own beeswax candles in my restored Maritime farmhouse before making a tarte out of the berries my husband and I picked in our backyard?" 


And this may be the future of marketing. Most of the bloggers are fairly transparent about their sponsorship deals, and so they should be, but it doesn't change the fact that these blogs are monetized through ads, sponsors and free samples. It's the softest of sells--these bloggers become such a common fixture in your browsing that their recommendation carry a weight similar to a friend's endorsement. They share their lives with you, after all, why shouldn't they share their taste? 

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Right about now, you may be noticing the pattern--these women, amazing and entertaining as they are--are also vaguely troubling. After all, didn't we work this hard to avoid these little boxes of correct, feminine behavior? As Hilgenberg writes: 

...a broader interest in and resurgence of domesticity predates lifestyle blogs by many years. At the close of the 1990s, both newspaper articles and alternative media like Bust magazine heralded a “new domesticity,” suggesting that the gains of feminism had freed up the modern women to actually enjoy things like cooking, knitting, and even ironing...

The New Domesticity. This is a version of womanhood where its denizens not only embrace the traditions of feminine pastime, but revel in it; where they don't sweep the impossible struggles of balancing a hectic modern lifestyle under the rug, but instead devote long, sustained dialogues to it; where they don't pretend like it's occasionally a relief to reach into our own cultural inheritance and create a thing or two from nothing. 

Plenty of companies and corporate monarchs have taken advantage of this upswing in the DIY market and our growing desire as consumers for a return to simplicity---Anthropologie, with its stores' interiors suggesting modern life would improve significantly if it only mimicked 19th century genteel farming and Etsy, hub of all things handmade and adorable, has soaked up a large portion of this goodwill. 

Chief among the so-called monarchs is Martha Stewart, who non-opinion on feminism and her own success as a woman entrepreneur is kind of impressive. "If I wasn't a woman," she said in one interview, "then no one would want to be talking about my struggle making it as a man in business." What Stewart's little world of artisanal cheeses and homemade jam presents is one of guilt-free feminine trappings, and her attitude reflects is something of a tiny revolution: it frees women to enjoy pastimes they might enjoy, if only that pesky ideal of liberation wasn't an issue. I don't mean to make light of years of struggle, but really. If you enjoy making cookies, then by gum, makes those cookies without fretting that your sisters will balk at your self-imposed exile to the kitchen. Isn't that what the goal of feminism really is--to give every woman a choice in how she lives her life, even if that choice involves doilies and darning socks? 

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Let me get academic on you for a minute.  (those who know me well will be rolling their eyes about now: 'only a minute? that I'd like to see...')

I've been reading Susan Frye's excellent work on the history of women's textile work Pens and Needles for the past week. In it, she explores the complicated intersections of women's visual and verbals histories. In early modern England, the "expressive art" of needlework and embroidery was prized in families of limited means, where a woman could improve and add to the material wealth of a household through their own labour. In other words, it was a important facet of a well-run household, a crucial element in what made day to day operations possible and sustainable. 

To be sure, women and textiles have always been closely linked in history, perhaps in pragmatic terms, but also with a reverence that approaches metaphor. Think of Ariadne and her thread, given to Theseus to help him escape her own logic-twisting labyrinth; Penelope and her duplicitous funeral shroud; Queen Elizabeth I and her gifts of embroidered binding; the historic value of the Bayeux tapestry. Images of many iconic women survive today with the distinct connection to this much larger history of weaving and dare I say, composition, most which survives from a time when this was the only education a young girl might receive. 

Frye argues to swap out any vestiges of for the history of knitting, needlework and embroidery as oppressive or reductive for an identity as as a living history. One of Frye's most persuasive points is that being involved in these works gave women the opportunity to become the author of their own experience. So often, their needlework would invoke narratives much greater than themselves through use of mythology and other iconic imagery. Then, much like their male counterparts in poets, mistrals and storytellers, they too chose to interpret their experience through a highly subjective outside source, reclaiming and reexamining it through their own lens. John Keats, are your ears burning? Good. They ought to be. 

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Me, modelling a bowtie I made for the Mister. 

What is it that soothes me so about the act of making something from nothing? Well, I like that it gives me a certain control over the final product. I like that every object I lovingly made by hand perfectly reflects my taste. And hey, while start up costs are high (why does rubber cement cost so much? it's glorified glue!) once you've got a well-stocked closet, crafting doesn't hurt the wallet--most times, if you're clever, you can re-purpose a lot of the things already kicking around your house. It even makes me feel like I'm reducing my carbon footprint--you're welcome, environment! But really, all this is built on one simple desire: I like to live a pretty life and being involved in that process makes the end result all the sweeter. 


There's a deep pride in constructing a thing out of parts, whether that thing is a batch of cookies or a lovingly handmade bowtie. It survives as a little record of your life, especially if you give that thing away--you've sent a little physical ambassador for yourself into other people's worlds. 

So perhaps what we can take away from this boom in the DIY world is that modern homemaking--in the truest sense of making yourself a home to be happy within--is really about something much more than living up to some archaic ideal of womanhood. It's about the incredible power in designing your own world and becoming the author of your own experience.

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