Thank you for the lovely comments on Hiawatha. As I said, it's the most complex (and largest!) thing I've ever knit. I'm awarding myself a virtual "Knitter's Merit Badge" for that one.

****

Today I'm going to talk a bit about books I personally find inspirational. Most of you are aware I'm a child of the 70s. I grew up in a small town in northeast Ohio. I first started doing crafts (and really being aware of the library) probably about 1975-76 or so (And the Bicentennial didn't hurt; don't forget that there was a big wave of Americana-fashion, including handcraft, at that time).

When I was a kid, we took weekly (sometimes twice weekly, in the summer) trips to the library. While I hewed pretty close to the kids' shelves when it came to fiction (and my first foray into "adult" fiction, at 13, was pretty startling: I inadvertently picked a book with fairly graphic sex scenes, and although I knew the mechanics of "baby making" at that point in time, I really wasn't ready yet to contemplate the idea that it was something people did for fun. [I was a pretty innocent and sheltered child, I realize now, considering that there ARE 13 year old girls who have babies...] I was, at least temporarily, driven back to the likes of the Chronicles of Narnia, which were safe in that respect.)

Anyway. I did spend a lot of time in the "grown up" crafts section, because although there were some good books in the kids' section (I remember in particular, "Steven Caney's Kid's America" which was a wonderful gallimaufry of things, ranging from how to make corn dogs to the rudiments of handwriting analysis), it was smaller than the adult section and in some respects my interests and skills had passed beyond play-doh and paper things.

I remember summers as a kid; we didn't have air conditioning (except in my parents' bedroom;; my father was prone to migraines in those days and sometimes he needed the a/c. On rare occasions, when it was very hot at night, my parents would let my brother and me "camp out" on the floor in their room with the a/c running.) Most of the time we got by with open windows (this was Northeast Ohio in the 70s, which are now considered one of the cooler-temperature decades, at least in recent years). When it got really hot my mom and brother and I would go and hang out in the basement (my father would either be teaching summer classes - in an air-conditioned building - or he'd be at field camp, in the mountains out West). I remember taking books from the library down there and reading them or doing crafts from them, or going through my mom's impressive stash of craft and women's magazines (back in those days, you could pretty well count on Women's Day or Family Circle having a craft project or two; the Easter and Christmas issues often had many).

Remember that this was the 1970s. The first "new wave" of crafts - sort of a hangover of the Hippie era and also a strong dose of back-to-the-land/Little-House-on-the-Prairie/Americana movement.

I still have a soft spot for the books of that era. They were among the first craft books I remember reading.



I've tried to accumulate copies of the ones I remember. I have four of them - both the Woodstock Craftsman's Manuals (which are also a great period-piece read as well - I can almost smell the patchouli), "Handmade Toys and Games" by Jean Ray Laury, and one of Ann Wiseman's "Making Things" books (she had at least two; I've only found the one).

There were others, I know...there was a small book of decorated toys and dolls (heavily embroidered) by a British writer (it was NOT Erica Wilson, and it was also NOT the Winsome Douglass book that Dover reprinted). And Jean Ray Laury also had a book of dolls - mostly just photographs but some interviews with the dollmakers.

I loved these books. I particularly loved the chapters on Quiltmaking and Needlepoint in the Craftsman's Manual 2 (I never saw 1 until I bought it as an adult; for some reason my public library had only the second volume). These two chapters had the same author: Carol W. Abrams.

I kind of wonder what became of her. I think it would be fun to sit down and "rap" (in the 1970s sense) with her; she seems a bit of a kindred spirit to me.

She also wrote the chapter on Embroidery in the first Craftsman's Manual.

Remember what I was talking about with Robert Farrar Capon's discussion of appreciating the created world because of its "glorious unnecessary-ness"? Well, Abrams has a similar attitude, about threads:

"The colors! The textures are indescribable - smooth shiny silks, nubbly synthetics, metallics, cotton flosses, yarns in wools and blends in a good variety of weights, tapestry wools, crewels in earthy shades. Touch them, smell them, rub them against your face, lay them next to one another. Revel in their presence, their substance.

(emphasis mine).

Almost exactly the same thing: rejoice in the joys of creation.

I could never quite understand the theology - and I once attended a church where this seemed to be the preacher's intent - that said that the whole world was evil and bad and not worthy of our consideration because of human sin. I greatly prefer Capon's (perhaps heterodox) theology that suggests that sinfulness is not so much Deliberate Evil as it is a weakness, and that we are called to be co-redeemers of the world by loving it and wishing it were perfect. Not rejecting it. Not pining for something better - pie in the sky bye and bye when we die - but loving it here and now but acknowledging its imperfection and hoping for something better for it.

(I finished "Supper of the Lamb" yesterday. I will say it is as much a book of Christian theology as it is about cooking, so if you find that off-putting, it may not be for you. But it made me think, a lot, and I carried the bits and pieces of it I read around in my head each day and thought about them more. And for me, that's the mark of a good book - if I'm thinking about it at times when I'm not actively reading it).

Anyway - a lot of these 70s craft manuals are not pattern-by-pattern, stitch-by-stitch guides. They are more "here is how you do the basics of this thing, now go and do it, peace be with you." There's also somewhat of an anti-consumerist ethos in a lot of the books - you make things out of stuff that might be discarded (Wiseman is very good at this - recycling or asking for stuff like fruit crates that might otherwise be discarded). There's no direction telling you you need 18 skeins of Fabu-Fiber silk-and-wool topspun; instead, they say "use a worsted weight if you're a beginner, or soft string" (that's from the chapter on Crochet). Or they show finished creations and give a thumbnail of how to make them.

It seems, almost, there's more of an assumption that people were self-reliant, that they could figure stuff out on their own. Maybe even that "patterns were for squares" (though I hope not; I hate the whole "blind follower vs. innovator" dichotomy; it seems to say that some crafters are "more equal" than others).

I particularly loved the Handmade Toys book and was very happy to find my own copy, used. I remember first making sock dolls as a kid after seeing them in this book. And I was inspired to make my own toy mice after seeing the picture (on page 69 of my copy) of toy mice, "dancing the stately minuet." (I mean - how can you resist? I couldn't, as an eight-year-old girl).

(I see there are even some proto-amugurimi in this book: a toy cat almost like the "Chessie" advertising symbol, and a very Eeyore-like donkey made by a 10 year old girl. And that's another thing I loved about the book, as a kid: they showed what other kids had made. It was very freeing, it was like, "Look - what you can do is good, too! You don't have to be a grown-up to make this stuff!")

some bloggers seem to view these books a bit derisively. I cannot bring myself to feel anything but affection for them - these are the books that nurtured me into craft.

They are also SO earnest. I can't help but love the earnestness, the idealism - the sense that the bad old world would be less so if people made more and consumed less, if people took time to enjoy the created world, if people developed skills, if people spent time in quiet communion with their own personal muse.

It's probably because, deep down, I AM that earnest and idealistic. I do tend to think that creating - whether it's with yarn or fabric or paint or words or musical notes or food or wood or leather or whatever - is an important part of being, and something that centers us and makes us understand and appreciate. And that in a way, it's a sort of celebration of the world around us - a celebration of the created world and that which is good in it. (And I've also read some theologians write that in creation, the human is closest to the Divine - because creation is the occupation of the Divine.).

And so, from time to time, I pull these books off the shelf. They are good to look at because they help remind me of a time when I had what's sometimes known as "beginner's mind" - when I wasn't so hung up on perfection and it was more the joy of creating, of tasting and feeling and getting into the full sensory experience of the materials and what I was doing with them, rather than the finished project, that mattered. And also a time when I was less pattern-bound, less practical. And it also reminds me of the cool, dampish basement, with the washer and dryer and the boxes of fabric and yarn that my mom would sometimes let me dig through and pick things out of to craft with. And the train table (my father was, briefly, into HO-gauge trains and we had a whole big table for them.). And the cast-off toys that were stored down there - I used to sometimes secretly visit the ones I had technically "outgrown."

And as my "summer vacation" (such as it is) begins, it's interesting to look at these books again and think of the summers of my childhood.


What books do YOU find inspirational, in terms of craft or creating?