I finished the hood last night, and I willed myself to pick up alllll those stitches for the button band. (It turns out it works out to roughly three stitches for every four rows - which seems to be kind of a standard "this is how many to pick up for a button band")

And I got thinking a little more about this thing we do.

I think humans are animals that need to manipulate things. We've probably survived as long as we have, and been as successful as we are, because we know how to do things: Homo sapiens.

Thousands of years ago that might have meant chipping out stone knives, or making bolos out of round stones and reedgrass. Or making baskets or clay containers to hold water or gathered seeds.

Later, that grew to include building shelter (Or maybe the shelter came early on; some anthropologists suggest that early humans may have woven "nests" out of tree branches). And making clothing.

At some point, we got good enough at the food-finding thing to start devoting a lot of time to understanding the world around us. Art flourished. (Oh, I know there was early art - Lascaux and all that - but a lot of that seemed perhaps more aimed at a mystical or symbolic purpose. I'm talking about art in a more experimental sense, as in "what would happen if I mixed these pigments" or "what whould happen if I played with perspective in this way?")

Still, most ordinary folks made a lot of their daily stuff: clothing, brooms, bedding, furniture. And entertainment was something "made" by its own audience, in most cases: people singing around the piano, the little "entertainments" that some families would get up, playing cards, that sort of thing. You could also argue, I think, in many ways, that reading was an entertainment "made" by its audience - you imagine what the characters and settings look like, if a book is being read aloud the reader may choose to use different "voices" for different characters or read in a voice unlike his or her natural speaking voice.

Gradually, as the Industrial Revolution became more and more industrialized, people became able to buy, mass-produced, things that were once handmade - clothes, furniture, eventually even entertainment.

Don't get me wrong - I love the fact that I can go to ArkivMusic and order music by just about any composer who's been recorded. And I love being able to put a dvd in the player and watch someone else's interpretation of "Hamlet" or "Anne of Green Gables."

But sometimes I wonder if in 21st century North America, we have gone too far to the extreme of letting others do the manipulating of the environment for us. A lot of us (I include myself) work at jobs where we don't really "make" things in the traditional sense - I cannot point to anything I have done and say "I brought that object into the world." While it's true I do research - and I think some of my recent happiness has been related to the fact that I'm doing more research, and in its own way, research is a "making," it's not tangible in the way a chair or a violin or a loaf of bread is tangible.

But when I sit down at the end of the day and pick up the knitting that I'm working on - or when I sit down at the sewing machine - or when I take up a needle and embroidery floss - things feel right. I am making something I can point to and say "I did that." And in many cases, the things I make have some practical use: sweaters keep you warm. Quilts are warm to sleep under. An embroidered dishtowel - while it's true it wouldn't NEED to be embroidered to work, it is prettier and it makes the kitchen cheerier.

I tend to think that making things is therapeutic. Part of it is, I am sure, the sense of control that one gets over a small corner of the world. I read somewhere that one of the reason small children like toys like dollhouses, or those little cars, or the little farm sets, is that it's a world they can control, where they make the rules and they make up the storyline. Because, so often, children are kind of at the mercy of others: they are told when to eat and usually what to eat. When to go to bed. They sit in school for hours and are told what to do. But then, during playtime, they get the freedom to be in control for a while, in a world they normally have little sense of control over.

And I think adults need that too. I often look out at the world and see a certain chaos - there is really very little I have control over. (And one thing I have learned finally is that the only PERSON over whom I have any control is myself.) But when I sit down to knit socks, I have control over the yarn. I can make it do more or less what I want (within the Rules of Yarn, of course). I can choose the colors and pattern for a quilt, I can choose what stitch to use and what colors of floss for embroidery. I have choices, often more than I have in my daily life. And the consequences of my crafty choices tend to be small, unlike consequences in real life.

(I remember once a quilt shop owner remarking to me that I obviously didn't have "fabric fear" because I was gleefully choosing fabrics from a quilt from several different lines - she said she had a lot of people who came in and just bought all the prints from a single line and made a very matchy-poo quilt because they were afraid of having colors that didn't look right. And I looked at her, and I said, "Honey, if the biggest problem I have in my life is that colors in my quilt don't match, I'm very blessed." Well, I didn't say "Honey" - I'm too shy for that - but the phrase sure sounds better with it, doesn't it?)

Anyway. For me, the crafty stuff I do - and also, you know, the blog I write here? - is kind of a safety valve. It's a tiny corner of the universe I have control over, where I make the rules, and where the consequences are comparatively minor. And I think that - having something that you have control over, that is apart from your work-life - is an extremely important thing for one's mental balance and happiness.

And now it is the weekend. If things go well, I may have the button bands done tonight, block the thing, and get it sewn together this weekend. (I've temporarily postponed doing Oscar - again, I have control over my deadlines when I do crafts! - in the interest of finishing the sweater that's on the needles.)