A long time ago, I was talking about my anxiety in re: teaching styles. About how I'm a "chalk and talk" kind of person: I'm good at organizing knowledge and conveying it, but I'm not always so good at the kind of spontaneous "active" student-driven stuff that is the fad now.

And I get anxious about that - especially now, as we're to have "peer reviews" coming up - where our colleagues sit in our classes and later on tell us what they think our strengths and weaknesses are (and it makes me feel vaguely ill even to think about that...). And I worry, because we are all different people, and one person's "strength" might be another person's weakness. And I worry about getting conflicting advice, and trying to follow all of it, and winding up doing worse than before.

It's like an old story, called The Animals' School. I referenced this before (in that earlier post I was talking about), but could never find an online version to share with you, and now I have.

I LIKE that fable. I think it is pretty representative of the problems you get when you try to shove people into one-size-fits-all solutions. And my problem is that I tend to listen to everyone's advice, and I wind up either like the duck (tolerably OK at everything, but no longer good at what I used to be good at) or, worse, the squirrel (trying too hard to be something I am not).

I have to admit, philosophically, I cheer for the prairie dogs, even if I personally tend to react most like the duck.

I first saw that fable in Ann Wiseman's "Making Things" book - one of those great messy sprawly craft-and-art books that came out of the 1970s. (I've been slowly finding and buying copies of the books I loved from the library as a kid: I have "Making Things," and both the Woodstock Craftsman's Manuals, and a very 1970s book on toymaking, all ones I remember fondly from my childhood. There's an interesting ethos in those books: the emphasis is more on having fun and expressing yourself than making stuff that's PERFECT, and I wonder some times if some of the whole Martha Stewart thing (where stuff has to be "just so" and where skill and perfection trump self-expression) has taken some of the fun (and maybe some of the therapeutic value) away from making stuff.

The Woodstock manuals, in particular, are pretty wonderful: very 1970s crunchy back-to-the-land, but lots of good information on how to do stuff yourself. And very empowering, in the sense of saying: if it works for you and makes a pleasing product, right on! That there are no "rules," no "quilt police" or "printmaking police" or "needlework police" or anything like that. And there's also a stronger sense of making do with the supplies you have at hand, rather than having to run out to Chain Store X for This Particular Brand of Glitter in That Specific Shade of Green. And I wonder if we've lost some of that...if the rise of commercialism (for lack of a better term) in crafts has taken away some of the sense of independence.

For example: you rarely see any more a person making a quilt out of patches from worn clothes. Oh, I'm sure it's still done, but it used to be much more common. And it used to be common to piece patches themselves...if the green you wanted to use was in two small bits, you sewed them together and then cut the piece you wanted. And you didn't worry about the bias or straight of grain - you just used what you had.

And don't get me wrong - I LOVE the wide availability of fabric. I LOVE being able to take a fresh new piece of fabric where I'm sure I'm going to have "enough" for what I want to do. I LOVE being able to mix and match colors at will, not as dictated by what's in the scrap bag. But I also think that old "make do and mend" philosophy is an important part of our heritage as crafters, and I think perhaps we need to honor that more...and maybe go back and read the older books from time to time. And be grateful for what we have now, but also realize that if we had to, we could go back to the way before...)

Anyway. This has been kind of rambly but I'm sure there's a link between not pushing yourself to be something you're not (and losing the good parts of yourself in the process) and also celebrating that really, craftwork is at its best (IMHO) when each person does their own thing, whether that's making super-matchy perfect quilts, or making vibrant exciting quilts like some of the quilts I've seen by Black women in the Carolinas, or by making simple soft quilts that a baby would love, or making incredibly complex quilts with a million pieces, or making quilts out of old wool samples from suitmaking...