Craft Brunch

Happy October!!

Yesterday I had the happy fortune of having brunch at a cafe here in Austin with a friend.  After noshing, I provided what I hope was a relatively decent explanation of crochet for a friend who wants to learn the art.  Sunday Brunch is my favorite meal - husband and I often had brunch on Sundays at a cafe down the street when we lived in Manhattan, and I’ve continued to love the idea.  And sharing crafting is one of my favorite things to do.  It was a *great* Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday’s get-together was occasioned by my friend Paula’s receipt of a crocheting kit. Paula would like to make a blanket eventually, but when she wrote me last week all she had was yarn , a hook and completely confusing directions for making a granny square scarf.  It is true that providing directions for crochet is hard:  crocheting is essentially the art of making various types of knots into a piece of cloth using a single hook. And at the moment, Paula is in that really interesting stage of trying to get the feel of manipulating the hook and yarn together while not having the whole thing fall apart.  I remember that stage well, and in fact Paula’s beginning efforts yesterday were a great deal more effective than my own a couple of years ago.  I know she doesn’t think so, but she’s never seen how I started out. Although she now knows my little “secret” that I only manage to create a “real” slip stitch about a quarter of the time, I did hopefully manage to show her how to do a chain stitch and a single crochet.

Jean Railla, in Volume 4 of Craft, talks about how one of the important aspects of today’s crafting movement is how many crafters & artisans are intent on spreading the love of DIY around.  So many of us post tutorials, tips & tricks on our websites to share what knowledge we’ve gleaned about our crafts.  Even on Etsy, in a lot of cases you can not only buy a crocheted object but the pattern as well.

Crafters are usually not a jealous bunch - the point is not knowing but doing: making stuff & creating something, not keeping our proprietary knowledge squirreled away.  When it comes right down to it, someone else’s version of my craft isn’t going to be the same anyway - I’m sure that they will add their own unique elements to it, their own style, their own sense of self.  They won’t choose the same yarn or color, and they’ll probably tweak it, improve it.  I like that, and I do that myself to others’ patterns.  If I provide a pattern for something, I don’t even care if someone else makes it to sell - if it works for them, great!
Crafting is a skill:  something to learn and to get better at, something that provides a medium for expression, something to take pride in.  Crafting is also a pasttime:  something to do when you’re bored, something to spend time doing when you read or watch a movie.  Crafting is friendly:  passing on skills, connecting at craft fairs, reading and writing blogs online.  And hopefully, it’s enjoyable most of all.