Get Crafty Hip Home Ec

1 The Joy of Doing It Yourself Getting Crafty To wrap a soft, chunky, hand-knit scarf around your neck, to cover yourself with a well-worn quilt, its patches of fabric lovingly stitched together, to slip on a simple hot-pink skirt that you sewed yourself is to know the power of crafts. What's so satisfying about crafting? Maybe it has something to do with all the transformations that occur. When we craft, we make something from nothing. We take a pile of yarn and knit it into a sweater. We rip up old beauty magazines, repurposing the images, to create collages. Bananas, eggs, flour, and maple syrup become a sweet breakfast treat. To craft is to be in touch with the extraordinary aspects of life. What I'm talking about is alchemy. The seemingly miraculous change of a thing into something better (thank you, Webster's Dictionary). Think about the last time you made bread from scratch. First there was flour, yeast, and water. You mixed them together, let that mixture rise, then you kneaded it, and baked it. A wonderful chemical reaction took place and you had something entirely new, bread. How amazing! Part of the joy in crafting comes from knowing you made it. When you bake bread instead of buying it, you are not a passive consumer but a creator. You feel empowered. When you build a bookshelf rather than head over to Ikea, you actually know the idiosyncrasies of the wood. You know how many screws it took to make it sturdy. You get to choose the exact color of the stain. At the end of the process you say to yourself, "I made this!" Doing it yourself is also relaxing. In fact, recent studies have shown that brain chemistry during knitting is similar to when doing yoga or meditating. This doesn't surprise me; I find the repetitive process of knitting soothing. Each stitch is like a mantra. And when I cook, I enter another dimension, a place of quiet enjoyment and sensual pleasure. Chopping, kneading, mixing, stirring are as calming to me as sitting in the lotus position and trying to empty my mind. Plenty of women craft as a way to deal with the stress of their careers. Kari, a twenty-five-year-old environmental engineer from Tennessee, started knitting as a diversion from her often-demanding job. "In my line of work, projects can take twenty years to complete," says Kari. "This can be frustrating. Knitting, on the other hand, is a very methodical craft that has a clear beginning, middle, and end." Two years ago, when Kari's friend bought her wool and a few patterns, she was a bit nervous about whether she actually could knit. She always felt creative but had a hard time expressing herself. "I am no good at drawing," says Kari, "so I felt like I wasn't truly creative. But then I started knitting, which gave me the proof I needed." Artistically, Kari feels that she tapped into a new side of herself. She says: "I've been working really hard for the last two years to stop identifying myself by my job. Now when people say to me 'So, what do you do?' I'm able to answer smoothly, 'Well, I read a lot, and I've been knitting this hat. . . .' It's really freeing to step out of your profession like that and to present yourself to others as a more rounded person." Simply by learning to knit, Kari managed to change the way she sees herself. I initially met her on Glitter, the getcrafty.com message board, where we discussed the joys of knitting. When I finally met her in a bright, loftlike cafe in downtown New York City, she was a whirlwind of craftiness, wearing a funky business suit with Swedish Army leg warmers, red clogs, and a white wool hat that she had knit herself and then put in the drier for a felted effect. Whereas she once felt like a boring engineer, she has blossomed into an artistic force. Kari recently has branched out into making her own clothing. "I hate shopping foRailla, Jean is the author of 'Get Crafty Hip Home Ec', published 2004 under ISBN 9780767917209 and ISBN 0767917200.