Then and now

In between when I last disappeared and now, I reached the not-exactly-young-but-not-old-either age of 35. I have a few concerns about this age, but overall I’m in good shape, and with some degree of wisdom from all the things that I’ve done and seen. When I was a teenager – and here I should note that I was not particularly good at being a teenager, and didn’t really like it – I told myself that I just had to wait. I believed that when I reached 40 I would finally have grown into myself. And I think that will be true.

For my birthday I chose to take a tour of the Real Ale Brewery in Blanco, Texas. That’s me and Jeff there after the tour. The tour was 40 minutes long and given by the head brewer – good stuff! Lots of information, lots of future plans. About halfway through when we were standing in the midst of those giant tanks you can see, I thought I might pass out from the heat and steam. But I did not, and I was rewarded later for my tenacity in the tap room.

You people might not know this, but I like beer. I don’t like cheap beer. I only like really good beer, the kind found in Belgium/the Netherlands and Bavaria and microbreweries and people’s basements.  The kind where monks are involved, or people experiment with ingredients and chemistry. The fun kind. Beer is a side effect of my interest in (a) medieval monasteries and (b) supporting local community industry (microbreweries). Besides, meeting the people who make stuff I like – a lot of fun! Whether it’s beer or earrings, , there’s something irreplaceably awesome about meeting the person whose effort went into creating something they feel passionate about.

The weekend previous I went to visit my mom, and my other birthday present was to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. You people might also not know that I love Agatha Christie. I started reading her mysteries around the time I was the age in the picture there (7 or 8). I’ve read everything she’s written. More than once. Including non-mysteries. My favorites were Tommy and Tuppence, but I’ll take any of ‘em. It was lovely! My mom can testify that I squeaked happily through the whole play.

While at my mom’s I took pictures of things that I remembered growing up that remind me of why I do the crafts I do. The first picture of me as a kid (with my brother) features me wearing a light blue eyelet dress my mom made me for an aunt’s wedding. I thought it was the absolute coolest thing ever to wear a dress my mom had made me (I also loved that ridiculous bow in my hair). It was like magic, that she could do something so awesome. She made me a few other things, which I thought were similarly cool. So you can see why I wanted to learn to sew – to my young mind it was one of the summits of accomplishment. There was also crochet in the house. The doily above adorned my room while growing up. I recognize that doilies are not acceptable for people to love these days, but I always did like this type of lace.

The above piece as a rather deft bit of thread crochet that my mom has framed. This piece and the one below were absolutely my favorite things besides the antique upright piano. What I can’t show you, unfortunately, are the cape my grandma crocheted for a baby me that I tried to wear much more often than my mom wanted me to, the vest she made for my brother’s beloved stuffed panda, or the elaborate crocheted dresses that adorned the small dolls in her home. I tell people I’m apathetic about knitting, and that’s true, because no matter how useful knitting is, it was not the thing that sparked my imagination as a little girl. When you’re six, you don’t know crocheting is a seventies thing that no one thinks is cool anymore. You like what you like.

This last angel piece is a rather interesting one. I always thought it was filet crochet, but now that I’ve taken a good close-up look the pattern appears to be threads woven into netting. Anybody know what kind of craft this is? I’m stumped. It looks unbelievably tedious.

Anyway. I’m 35 now, but the past sneaks up! Sometimes I’m still an energetic and mischievous seven. It was a good age, of playing cars with my brother, reading anything I could put my hands on, and summers at my grandparents’ farm running around like a mad chicken. Good times.

The crafting skills, they are not new

So in Austin, if you are not familiar with our fine (hot) city, we have many unique phenomena – the Alamo Drafthouse, various Kerbey Lanes, BookPeople (the only bookstore whose religion section I don’t laugh at), the Town Lake Trail (we like our walking parks here) and the largest Whole Foods anywhere (80,000 sq ft), among other things. One other thing we have is called Half Price Books (also a chain). It’s book recycling – you buy cheap books and you sell them back. The prices you get for selling them back are pretty poor, but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  But it’s the prices for buying that get it done – I walk in intending to fetch one book and walk out with a metric ton most of the time. They shamelessly feed my book addiction.

On a recent trip I wandered through my usual sections and came to rest (literally, on the floor) in the craft section. And I found this antique book on needlework:

I have been paging through this book quite a bit lately. It was not the only elderly crafting book that was there, but I liked it the best.  This is a printing that quite succinctly describes the rise and fall of crafting over a century:  originally printed in 1882 when needlework was quite common, and reprinted in 1972, 90 years later in the midst of another surge in interest for handmade items.  Both times? Clearly marketed to women.  Being me, I LOVE seeing how people once thought of these things, and how they think of them now. Now, craft is often about the rather energetic reinvention and occasionally factually deficient musings of the young, when you consider

• the zeitgeist-intensive feel of Faythe Levine’s Handmade Nation, or
• the young hipsterish (it is! it totally is) coolness of Craftzine and Etsy or
• the in-your-face third-wave feminist (but craft-heavy) feel of Bust magazine (home of Debbie Stoller of Stitch and B*tch) or
• the tidal surge of youthful Japanese-and-Scandinavian-influenced design or
• the “craftivism” of eco-consciousness – reusing everything, redefining materials, considering the source, consciousness-raising and occasionally ever-so-slighly preachiness of this whole “green” thing or
• the “new domestic,” statement-making, tech-heavy leanings of author and craft icon Jean Railla.

I like them all, and think it’s an interesting movement, and one which certainly has personal meaning, given I’m still young-ish myself and started crafting at 19. In the end, though, reading things like this, I am afraid I’d have to opine that many modern craft skills don’t approach what they did 100 years ago.

I have half a mind to try out some of the crazy stuff in here. China ribbon embroidery?  Alencon lace? Surely it wouldn’t take too much longer than what I already do? I take that back, it would. Some of the examples I’ve seen with my own eyes are some pretty crazy complex stuff. Consider those examples of antique crochet I found and posted (which I’m now framing).  I know from just looking some of those would take so much time for such small decorative items. They are things I would barely have time for now, not being so much a lady of leisure as a lady of oh-my-goodness-how-am-I-going-to-get-it-all-done.  I persist, but … WOW.

There are a lot of things referred to in this book that are names and things I have never heard of before.  For example, a crochet tricot referred to as “fool’s crochet” (above.  Any of you ever heard of forfars?  I know gingham and linsey-woolsey, even, and various other sorts of cloth, but many names of cloth and other fabrics have certainly not stuck around.  Sometimes it’s the fabric itself which has not stuck around, and for really good reason – I found a reference to penguin cloth – which is, yes, penguin skin used for making ladies’ outerwear.  Lovely.  There are a lot of references which are NOT very, um, feminist.  Ladies are referred to as requiring delicate, dainty items at all times, and to being dainty and delicate themselves. So, how many of you are delicate and dainty and require handmade lace on your undergarments?  Not many? That’s what I figured.

So, how many of you would like to take on the task of open fibre in Honiton Lace (above)?  The instructions refer to bobby pins, a process that seems sorta like tatting but isn’t, and knotting of fine silk fiber.  A bit of netting work, obviously, and some tricot from what I can see. How long do you suppose this would take, for just a few inches of intricate lace?  I bet if you had to make this, suddenly you would (a) use this as a removable piece instead of something sewn in, (b) be very careful with it, (c) not have a lot of it, (d) treasure it like you would jewelry.

Aha! The recent invention of elastic!  What did we all do before our pants were made of elastic, allowing us that extra bite of dinner?  It doesn’t sound that common, or that durable, in 1882, and it seems all to be made of India rubber. Pretty rare stuff.  I do love the reference to “narrow frilled cotton” cords of elastic “employed for underlinen.”

Another example, this one of Tambour Work.  I should mention I don’t know what that is, but it seems to be sewn-on cording with embellishments. One last thing here – many of the drawings in this book are woodcuts. For me, that is amazing, because that takes SO MUCH TIME, and this is a THICK book, and there are A LOT of illustrations. Not to mention the book was probably typeset by hand, in a quite lovely and readable typeface. Some, like the Honiton Lace, appear to be a reproduced photograph, which given it was 1882, I haven’t any idea how they did that.  Not sure where exactly reproduction technology was at that time, but the whole project of illustrating this book, I can guarantee, was a feat. That tells you the popularity of needlework craft, that so much time and expense would be put in to producing this thick book. But what else could you do?  There was no (gasp!)… internet.

I hope you’ve enjoyed.  I’m still going through the book, I read bits of it at a time and try to figure out how stuff was made, or just sit there and chuckle, gasp and look oddly at the various entries, depending on what they are.  I learn a lot about what craft once was, as opposed to what it is today, and how it was viewed.  I find, in so many cases, that peope don’t know how women and their work was truly viewed, and assume the negative incorrectly, and that sometimes we are the ones responsible for downgrading and despising our forbears handiwork far more than they did.  I can see easily the value that was placed on this work from the expensive resources devoted to it in materials and time, and the research into new materials and techniques, and the effects of long-valued traditions, and other things. I know from other sources the high prices this handiwork commanded, and the elite circles to which it sold,and the profitability that it generated that kept many families afloat and attracted mechanized industry’s interest.

Okay!  End soapbox before I really get going on twentieth-century misogyny and how it colors our view of the past. Gee, I wonder what I used to write about in graduate school? I should go teach women’s studies classes just so’s I can get it out of my system sometimes.

Ta for now Miriam

Mission Espiritu Santo – Part Dos

More from my mission trip this weekend. I couldn’t leave it without showing you some of the mission, because it really is quite beautiful, and all I could do yesterday was talk about fiber. I’ve been thinking about dyeing things all day. So here’s another mostly picture post, just to show some of my trip. Oh, and sheep!

Maybe you remember me saying I love Gregorian chant? Well, here’s a bonus – I found a rare CD of Gregorian chant performed there in the Espiritu Santo chapel! It’s called, appropriately, Gregorian in Goliad and is not really available so much, it just happened to be available because of the place. I’ve been enjoying it very much. I told you I had the perfect trip.

First, animals with hooves! I may have mentioned impromptu sheep herding yesterday? These fine fellows had escaped their pasture on 183 and were trying to wander down the road. A quick U-turn and stop in front of them, and they turned around and wandered back into their field.

Sitting on a cool, breezy porch, sipping blue cream soda, watching the sky. The (newly painted!) mission sanctuary through the arches.

A couple of details. On the left, an exposed piece of wall left over from a wall that no longer exists. This wall was once part of the living quarters of the monks – walls sheltering rooms now open to the sky where young pecans grow. On the right a canon and cacti growing in a carved gourd, familiar elements of this life.

This sort of arched passageway says “monk” to me – whether it’s the interior passageway around the courtyard of a cloister, or an outdoor breezeway like this. I’ve always dreamed of having something like this as part of my house, a deep passageway of shady calm.

When I walked out of the fiber lesson, this is the sight that greeted me as the sun started down toward the horizon. This tree, with inch-long thorns and resident spiders, is one they use for dyeing fabric. The chapel, well – it’s still in use, and in fact was refurbished, refurnished and re-painted using historical dyes and patterns four years ago. You can even get married here if you’d like.

This was my favorite photo of the trip, just a homey, simple scene. Cotton is a bear to grow, a bear to pick (thorns, bugs, etc) but it’s beautiful on the stem or dried. And the quality of light that day just was amazing. I think I would be a happier person if I could choose the quality of light for my life.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my little tour!