Why I Make Stuff

A ramble: not organized enough to be called an essay.

One of the things friends have asked, or doubtless wonder (if they've not asked) about me is why I knit, sew some of my own clothes, quilt, make "critters," crochet, bake cakes from scratch, etc. Most of the stuff I make could be more cheaply bought (if not of comparable quality) or more quickly obtained some other way.

I guess part of it is that I simply like the process. I like the fact that I can more or less lose myself in a project, especially something like making a skirt, where you have to concentrate at a certain level to get things right. I think I've said before that I believe handwork that requires concentration occupies the "worry centers" in the brain (it's like a competitive inhibitor, for you biology fans) and prevents a person from worrying as much - or at all - about whatever's been bothering them. A great deal has been made about the supposed meditative power of knitting - even one of my aunts, who normally shows little interest in me beyond the fact that I'm not making as much money as her children, nor have I managed to successfully marry (and therefore, her parenting job was apparently better-done than my mother's) remarked recently on knitting and how there is a lot of talk about how it lowers one's blood pressure. I suppose so.

The main reason, I think, though, that I make stuff is that it's something Other. It's something totally different from what I do all day long, and I need that. As much as I like teaching (and really, there are few things more rewarding than a good day teaching, contrary to all the bleating I've done on here over the past semester - I just didn't have as many good days as I'd've liked), it's still a relief to do something different, something engaging a different part of the brain. Something that doesn't require me to talk or to use my jargon or to deal with other human beings. The other part of doing something Other is that it allows me successes at times when my work life may include some failures. I may not connect well with the students on a given day, but I can make warm socks. I may not get a paper accepted to a journal, but I can match fabrics well in a quilt. (Sadly, this doesn't generally serve to do away with the hurt or the uncomfortableness of the failures, but it saves me from feeling like a total waste of oxygen). It also gives me something I can point to, and say "I did that." It's something tangible, and everything else I do is so intangible - until it gets published, research is like a tree falling in the forest when no one's there. With teaching, it's even more intangible - sometimes the students with really good things to say are absent on evaluation day, or they don't make comments but then come back semesters later with a good word. And unlike Christopher Morley, I find I can't live for a year on a good compliment. I need more successes - more tangible successes - in my life than that.

I also do the things I do because it's a way of honoring the past, I think. When I put a Shetland lace-stitch in a sock, or when I use an old, old quilt pattern, I like to think I'm carrying something traditional forward into the future. I may be the only one who sees or who recognizes the significance of the pattern, but that's enough for me. I also like making things that I can think, "If my grandmother were here - or if my great-great grandmother got here through some kind of a time-warp, she'd understand what I was doing." So much of what I do is different from what went on through history - as I told a friend while working on my Master's project (looking at mycorrhizae in mine soils; it involved growing corn as "trap plants" and then examining the corn roots), "If my ancestors came back from the dead and saw me doing this, and I told them, 'I'm growing corn but I'm going to uproot it after 20 days' and they asked me why, and I told them 'It's so I can earn money now, and so I can get a job in the future to earn money, so I can buy food and stuff,' they'd just look at me and go 'But if you let the corn grow to maturity and produce ears, then you would have "food and stuff"'" That what I am doing is basically pretty divorced from the gritty reality where people grow their own food and build their own houses and have their own livestock. And I admit, in some ways that's good - I'm glad I'm not the one to butcher and pluck chickens, or for that matter, the one responsible for growing enough tomatoes and canning them to last through the winter - but it also leads to a sort of loneliness, I think. A sort of existential loneliness, a "why am I doing this" sort of questioning, a feeling of being adrift. Being able to make stuff - being able to deal with the raw materials and the process and to bring a finished item into being, moors me a little, brings me down to a more real place.

I also wonder if there isn't some kind of genetic memory, something passed down through the generations. As I've said before, I can sort of imagine a Scots ancestor sitting in her dooryard knitting stockings, or an Irish woman knitting by the peat fire (although I don't know, my Irish ancestors were called "gentleman farmers," so maybe they had better than a peat fire). Or a German mother knitting a warm pullover for her son to wear while hunting. I'm sure a big part of my fiber working comes from my mother - who knits and crochets and sews and quilts and from whom I learned to do all the same - but I also kind of think that maybe there is a "creativity gene" or a "need to make stuff" gene that some people have.

Also, to be honest, I enjoy the raw materials. I enjoy the feel of a good "oily" wool through my hands. I love the beauty of handdyed laceweight yarn as it works up into a shawl. There's a real pleasure from working up a sockyarn at a tight gauge and feeling the nice firm-but-soft fabric that results.

I'm filled with delight in a quilt shop, surrounded by those bolts and bolts of color, and I tend to lose all control and imagine fifteen different projects with fifteen different color combinations and fabric lines, that I must make NOW. And in a good dressmaker sewing shop, I see the fabric and think, "I really need more summer skirts" or "A jacket - a simple little unlined tweedy thing - would be just what I need." I'm less likely to do that in other shops (bookstores being a notable exception). I can walk through almost any mall in the nation and keep my wallet in my purse. But a quilt shop - even a small one - or a shop carrying yarn - even the Lion Brand and Bernat lines that are available "everywhere" and really aren't all that wooly - makes me want to obtain, to build up my stash, to start all kinds of new projects. I love trying out different types of yarn - I have a few favorites, but mostly I like the novelty of brands or combinations I've not tried out before. I love having a whole palette of quilting fabric on hand so I can dip into my stash and make new combinations, I love trying out new colors and new lines.

I also love patterns - one of the sanity-enhancing exercises I do during tough times is to pull several quilt books off the shelf and just look at the patterns. And think about how some of them would look in different colors, how some of them would work with fabric I have on hand or have seen in a catalog and wanted. Or, I take down back issues of knitting magazines and read through them again - thinking about yarn substitutions and contemplating whether I like patterns I once rejected after all.

All of this - looking at the raw materials, looking at patterns, also looking at the things others have finished on their blogs - feeds me. It provides the joy of starting a new project when I'm really too busy to start one (or have too many unfinished things on hand) and it gives me the happiness of "shopping" in my stash for new ways to use things at a time when I'm too concerned about money outflow to think about spending more.

I suppose all of this does serve to "lower blood pressure" or induce relaxation or what all the articles so breathlessly say about the renaissance of knitting. However, I don't think any of the articles I've seen successfully plumbs all of the reasons why "making stuff" is so important to the sanity of those of us who do.