* Pebbles & Sunshine *

As I was sewing a button back onto my skirt today, I recalled that back in the 1950’s, boys would often peek into a girl’s sewing basket to decide whether she was marriage material. I’m glad that’s not the case anymore because not only do I not own a sewing basket, my skills pretty much dead-end at buttons.

Come to think of it, that’s most of the women I know. I grew up in a culture where money, career, and status were all that mattered. Housework, schmousework. If a woman earned enough, the theory went, she could pay drudges to do everything for her. So lawyer, doctor, or scientist it was for us. No wonder I didn’t learn to do the laundry until I was sixteen.

But having discovered the joy of fiber arts in the last few years, I’ve come to rue my upbringing quite a bit. It’s ironic. I’m sure that half a century ago, feminists were dreaming of the day when we women could command 50K a year as professionals. But I have to wonder whether they realized that the price was an entire population of women who can’t even sew buttons.

Back to my skirt: It’s not pretty, but the button is on and it’s not going anywhere. Besides, I’m already married. :D

I’m an avid crafter, and I’ve heard that there’s a lot of disdain in the art community for crafters. I admit that I have to laugh a little. See, I could be an artist but I don’t really want to. Why? There’s something in me that balks at creating something whose sole purpose is to be admired from afar. To me, something is so much more beautiful if it has a practical use. Let me explain a little.

First of all, it’s a fine line between the two. Certainly, when imbued with creative energy, crafting becomes an art. Similarly, every art can sink into routine mediocrity, making it a craft (Thomas Kinkade comes to mind, lol). However, there’s one one thing that distinguishes traditional crafts from arts: Crafts have been made into an exact science. So long as you follow the directions, you’ll come out with something acceptable, if not very unique. This lack of originality is what makes artists scoff at crafters. To them, art is something bigger, something containing a piece of the human spirit that created it. I absolutely respect this view — I love art and I think that on the whole it enhances human civilization (though some individual works really make you wonder).

But at heart, I’m a crafter and I think the case for crafting is rather more compelling. See, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that there’s a reason why some ancient pursuits were made into a science and others weren’t: They were useful. What does a painting or a steel-and-glass sculpture do for the basic human needs of food, shelter, and clothing? Not nearly as much as an afghan or sweater.

In other words, the crafts of today are the arts that our ancestors considered so important to their well-being, they formalized them for posterity. From that viewpoint, I think crafting is the more meritorious of the two, don’t you? :)