An interesting essay that I originally saw linked on My little mochi.

I don't know so much about companies ripping off crafters' designs - though I have heard of such things happening - but I do kind of agree with the writer's assessment that the Outside World sometimes has some odd ideas about crafters - that they're "potty" or worse. And the nay-sayers, the people who roll their eyes and mutter, "Yes, but you could buy FIVE sweaters at the Wal-mart for what you paid for the yarn for one..." (but of course, those sweaters are probably made by child-labor in China). Or the people who kind of verbally pat us on the head, and say "isn't that cute" like we're five years old or in the "Home." Because, of course, Craft is not Art, and if you're not making big bucks off of it, you must be sort of crazy to do it.

She comments that one reason why crafters "lock themselves away" to create is to avoid the influences of those very people.

I've said many times on here that I'm happier working with "stuff" a lot of the time than working with "people." Oh, don't get me wrong - I like people. But people have the funny habit of not always behaving in predictable ways. There is all this stuff going on under the surface that other people aren't always privy to, and sometimes that stuff comes bubbling out, and just like a pot of chili boiling over on the stove, bystanders get smacked with hot bubbles of tomato sauce...

And it's then that I long for the quiet of my craft room, and my fabric, or my yarn, or something that is predictable and that won't talk back.

I also think - just as Anne at the now-defunct Creating Text(iles) once said that people in academia need "3-D hobbies where we make stuff - I think that people, especially introverted people, who work with people a lot, need time where they can work with stuff that doesn't talk back, that doesn't have its own counter-agenda.

I mean - yeah, I can look at yarn and imagine "this is what it WANTS to be" but I've never really had a yarn or a fabric "fight" what I want to do with it, to the extent that I've had people fight and talk back about Helpful Suggestions I've made.

I also think for me it's a welcome break to be able to be non-verbal. I mean, I like writing (duh, obviously I'd not have had this blog for 5+ years), I like teaching, but there are kind of times when I run out of words. (I've been accused of being a "poor conversationalist" some evenings - when what's really true is that I've just already spoken my alloted quota of words for the day, and I just feel like I have no more. Or that I'm tired of talking. Or whatever.) I have a colleague who writes poetry and fiction and I once commented to him that I couldn't do that on my time off, that I needed to be non-verbal. I don't know that he understood what I meant, but I do think that's true...it's a different way of expressing yourself.

And on some days when my words don't seem to work - and I think everyone's had days where it seemed like everything you said was misinterpreted, or you couldn't say anything very well, and it's kind of a relief to come home and sew or knit and find that at least ONE channel of communication seems to be open.

She also talks in her essay about the "need" to craft - the need to create. That it's something we can't not do. And I also think that's true. The one time of my life when I wasn't really actively crafting - I was an undergraduate in college, I was living in a small apartment in not-the-safest area of town (so going out after dark wasn't much of an option.) And I'd get done with my homework and reading for the next day, and it'd be like 8 p.m., "too early" to go to bed (hah. Not "too early" some of THESE days). And I'd be there, all at loose ends. I'd feel like, there's something I'd usually be doing now, and I wouldn't quite know what...it was like something was missing.

I finally figured it out - my mom sent me some embroidery stuff and I started doing embroidery again. And that made all the difference. And then I started crocheting again after I found the little yarn shop in the town. (And to think...they had knitting lessons I could have taken, but I "wasn't interested" in that at the time).
When I started grad school I had already learned the lesson: no sewing and no crafting make Erica something something. So I took up quilting (because I was in a larger space, and I had room for a frame) and later took up knitting.

And I've never looked back. I think everyone has something they do that helps keep them sane. In my case it's the knitting and the sewing and the critters and the quilting. Don't get me wrong - I love reading, reading is a big part of my life. But it's still VERBAL. It's still dealing with human communication and miscommunication, misunderstanding can be a part of it. When I'm really sort of frozen and when everyone around me seems mired in miscommunication (or are deliberately pretending they don't understand, I've seen that too), what I need is just some color - some quilting cotton or embroidery floss or some bright yarn.

Another thing I've learned is that for every interest that some people have passionately, there is a group of people who either knows nothing or cares nothing for that interest. (Some knitters call non-knitters "muggles." I don't know about that; it sounds a wee bit derisive to me. Because I recognized this summer...when I was at the Sugar Creek Arts Festival watching the clogdancers, that there's like this whole world of clogdancing out there that I know NOTHING about...but they have meetings and conferences and competitions and they trade music and dances back and forth and people do research and history on it....and you know, it makes me happy to think that there are people out there who are passionately interested in something I know NOTHING about, that there's this whole secret unseen world of clog dancing. And crafting is kind of like that.

I mean, I could do without the detractors, the people who think of people who make stuff as one step removed from the Crazy Cat Lady. But I don't mind that there are people who don't totally understand why I knit, because I realize there's stuff they do I don't totally understand.)