crafting at the end of the world

Most of the texts I get these days start with some form of “been thinking of you.” I’m glad my cis friends are worried–I’m worried, too. Despite making up less than 1% of the population, trans people have become one of the new fascist movement’s grotesque fixations.¹ I have been listening to what this administration said they were going to do to trans people and immigrants and refugees and poor people and anyone affected by climate change, and I believed them. Now that it’s happening, the old feelings of personal helplessness from the first Trump administration (and from many of Biden’s decisions around covid and foreign policy) bubbles up again. 

So, I have been crafting. Piecing together a quilt; finishing the various knitting projects languishing under my bed; scrolling Ravelry (my only remaining social media) for new patterns; and looking for books on the cultural history of fiber arts and craft.

This is escapism, in part–as I told the owner of my local craft store, when I’m sewing I can’t look at my phone–but not in whole. One question I’ve returned to over and over again since the covid lockdowns started: what good is it to obsessively watch news roll in all day when, in that exact moment, I can do very little about it? A corollary question I have now: what is the utility of being scared 24/7 when I could just as easily be scared by the news once, in the morning, and know what I’m facing today, and what I can do about it?

All this to say: sometimes I feel like the world is ending. I am crafting anyway. I cannot make the Social Security servers safe, but I can still have a pieced quilt for my grandma by the end of the day. I believe craft is still important, even ~in these times~. 

I mean craft “broadly construed,” a phrase I often ironically write in my notes when I’m trying to remind myself that whatever term I’m using is meant to encompass multiple definitions or fuzzy categorical lines. (See my bookshelf, organized by genre, with a label “theory: broadly construed.”) Craft as in handicraft, fiber arts, the ways people make things with their hands; but also craft as in the art and technique of writing, cooking an elaborate meal, baking a simple loaf, magic. 

I am turning to the varied meanings and utilities of craft because I love the strange–queer–associations that spring from overlapping definitions. I love knitting with soft wool and turning the perfect phrase, throwing spices in a pot to see what happens and making quilts that require mathematical precision. I love the gender subversion of craft: how good at math one has to be to design a sweater; how good writing requires quiet thought and careful examination of one’s emotions; how, across time and cultures, textiles have allowed women to earn their own money to run their own lives. 

 But most importantly, craft connects me–to God, and to other people. Even if I am quietly piecing a quilt, alone at my desk on a Tuesday night, the careful repetitive motion both encloses and expands my attention. Encloses, because if I don’t concentrate I’m liable to do serious damage with the rotary cutter or sewing machine; yet expands, because as I line up each piece and stitch them together I am participating in the same work, the same motions and concentrated attention, as generations before me. This expansion of my attention feels akin to what I experience in liturgy–the work of the people–one of the reasons I still go to church. This expansion feels like prayer. 

The connection to people is not only spiritual, though: my commitment to crafting means that I drive to various places a few times a month so I can sit in a circle and knit with other people. It gives an easy topic of conversation with the people I meet in the prison I volunteer at: there is a lot of boredom in prison, and crafting is one of the few diversions allowed. It lets me practice asking for help and admitting I am wrong–skills I do not like to use, but which are crucial to building the kind of solidarity we will need in the times ahead. 

This is a new series of letters around craft. They are notes toward a theory of craft–broadly construed–and what it can and can’t do in our world, the tools craft gives us and their limits. I hope they won’t all be as serious as this one turned out to be, but who can say!²

Three Things:

-Freeman’s Creative, my favorite local craft store

–Syme’s Letter Writer by Rachel Syme | a fun coffee table-ish book about how to be a good pen pal (but so much more)

-This one-skillet meal that was so good and so easy—I stirred in spinach at the end and it was the perfect weeknight meal

Texas forever,

CJ

1  There’s historical precedent there.

2  At an MFA workshop I told a visiting writer in all seriousness that I wasn’t good at writing humor, and he didn’t believe me due to the fact that I was wearing a particularly loud Hawaiian shirt at the time. What do serious writers wear and does it preclude the sweater with Paddington on it I bought last month??