Craft III

So, as I was saying, I think I've vented too much and given my readership--representing an astonishingly small fraction of the human population--a warped view of what goes on in this monkey's mind most of the time. Or not; perhaps there is a little too much truth in it, and I really am agitated most of the time. Hmmm.

Ah! A segue!

One of the things that makes me less agitated, happy even, is doing stuff with my hands. Whew. I've arrived.

Craft. Websters defines it:

Noun: an art, trade, or occupation requiring special skill, esp. manual skill: the craft of a mason.
2. skill; dexterity: The silversmith worked with great craft.
Verb: to make or manufacture with skill and careful attention to detail.

PBS has actually been pretty entertaining lately, what with their National Parks shows and now, even better?, their series called Craft in America. I am receiving much justification, unneeded, but still, for my inclination to learn to do stuff with my hands, from scratch, even though it's completely unnecessary in our world.

And I like that about myself! That is an area where I think I'm doing just fine. Of course, it doesn't keep me from lamenting at times about my desire to master something, be it handquilting or making pie crust. I want to become an expert at something before I die. Until I become an expert at enlightenment, that is a requirement for 'true' happiness. If I live out my life span I'll be irritated if I didn't learn to do something or know something well enough to pass it along.

So I'm getting to it. I make a pretty good pie crust, but there are secrets I have yet to unlock in the seemingly simple fusion of fat, flour, and moisture. I don't think I could walk into the kitchen at this moment and get it right without the recipe. Even with the recipe, there are mysteries. Where was the wheat for this flour grown? Did you know that wheat grown in different regions has different moisture content? Did you know that the Toll House cookie recipe was developed using a local flour that has a different moisture content to most of the flour used today, thus frustrating scores of bakers who can't get the formula straight and end up with flat chocolate chip cookies even when they follow the recipe? Flour moisture, the necessity to keep things super cold and not overmix the dough--which you'll only know you've done once the pie comes out of the oven--these things make making pie dough difficult to master. But when you do, it's worth it. I'm getting there.

Then there's other stuff in the kitchen. I like making things from scratch. And I can get it really wrong. Mostly, though, I get it right, and the effort is worthwhile. And each success makes me want to know more, and I find myself loving shows like America's Test Kitchen and coveting cookbooks that teach you a thing or two. And, no matter how trendy, I'm intrigued by the idea of working my way through Julia's Art of French Cooking. Hells yah! An excellent meal is one of life's accessible treasures. If you can't afford to go to the finest restaurants, or live where there are none, you'd better get in the kitchen and make some noise with the pots and pans.

And why stop there? If you like food, you'll like it even better if you grow it yourself. I fussed over my tomato plants like I never fussed over my children. Pruning them, gently tying vines to carefully placed stakes with scraps of quilting fabric. And I ate delicious tomatoes all summer and fall. And when you make something with food you grow yourself....

Which brings me to effort. People ask me how I have time to do all the stuff that I do. And when they ask me that, I think about what I do and it really is a lot. But it's only natural to make time to do the things you really enjoy, right? I don't even think about it, but all the extra stuff I do--make things from scratch, raise animals, grow a garden, quilt--I might have started doing subconsciously to keep myself from freaking out. I'm self-soothing without fully realizing it. There was a scientist on the radio the other day talking about how craft is a natural anti-depressant; that she has seen people get the same positive effects from knitting as they do from medication, only with a scarf as a side-effect as opposed to things that are 'mild in most people'. That has certainly been the case for me. When I make soup and bread for guests, or a quilt for a friend, I think about those people--what they mean to me, their pleasure as a result of my effort, and my pleasure as a result of that. Good stuff!

And there's something else about effort. I discovered a while back that most of what makes people great or even good at something is the fact that, like Woody Allen said, they showed up. They put in the effort. If I ever want to see one of my quilts hanging up at Quilt National, I'd better put in some quilting time. My latest quilt is a simple design but I've decided to hand piece it. Doing it on a machine would be much faster but less accurate (unless I spend the time to master the machine). And I wouldn't learn how to do it. Remember that I am always preparing for the apocalypse at some level, and I want to learn how to quilt when there is no power to feed my sewing machine. I've seen improvement in my stitches--I can stitch a little faster, my stitches are smaller and more even, and I know what to do when I come to any variety of seam situations. This I like about myself--I could just buy a blanket. Instead I buy fabric, cut it up, and try to stitch it back together to make something a little more interesting. I don't know why, and I don't really care why. I'm glad I found it. I'm glad I take the time to do it. And while I do squawk (inwardly, silently) about not having the opportunity to do it all the time, which is what it would take to get as good at it as I'd like to be, I'm making peace with pragmatism.

And then there's this--I don't feel like I have 'something to say to the world' that can only be expressed through some quilt that I make. Thus it's no real tragedy that I'm not wealthy enough to stay home and make quilts all day. And thank goodness! The pressure from sitting in a studio and having to make something cool is more than I could bear! This is how I know that I'm not an artist. I guess. It's all kinda complicated really. Right now I'm more interested in technical mastery. But, as I sit here thinking about it, I might just want to be a quilt artist. With cooking, I'm happy enough to master someone else's recipes. Lord knows there are enough of them. And I'm happy enough with the music in the world to not have the urge to make the effort to learn an instrument (though I'm sure it would be really fun!). But with quilts...I see quilts in everything. Watching that crafting show last night, I loved so much of what I saw, but had the desire only to use those ideas to make quilts as opposed to making things out of glass or beads or iron. I should not ignore that!

I wonder about my artistic leanings. Just how original do you have to be? What is the difference between a pretty, well-made quilt and one that hangs in a gallery? I think I'd like to find out. There are several things that have attracted me to quilts for a long time. One, they're pretty. Two, most of them are made by women, and mostly by women who had precious few other ways, or no other ways, to express anything about themselves. Three, they're functional. But what really gets me is that the women who made them back in the day didn't have to do anything more than sew together scraps of clothing and flour sacks to be thrifty. They were using relatively rudimentary tools and had bad lighting. There were no books filled with inspiration, quilt stores, or army of rulers. Just a bunch of scraps in limited colors. So why not just cut them into squares and sew? The effort they took to cut them into sharp points, to match seam-to-seam, to work out the often-daunting geometry (!), to recreate flowers and people and all the other stuff. Why make it so difficult when they didn't have to?

I know why. It's the same impulse that drives me now.

As I sit here, I've acquired two boys. It's impossibly cuddly, and cuddly and accurate typing don't mix. Good day, dear reader!