All that astute thinkin' after reading one NYT article? Man, this ain't no run-of-the-mill blog on crafting -- this blog serves as a snapshot of you and your past-times, your passions, your friends, your family, and your never-ending creativity.

You may want to try a little arm-twisting to get those non-believing, naysaying friends to pop over and see what's happening in this part of your life. I'm sure once they give it a shot they won't be disappointed. You can preface it as, "If you skim my blog, our real-life conversations can be about policy reform. I'll leave the knitting chats for Joy, etc." :)

I think that Debbie Stoller has a great viewpoint on this in the intro to Stitch-n-bitch...which I as a long time crafter avoided getting 'sucked into' for a few months..I felt jealous and upset like-what are all these hipsters doing crafting all of the sudden! I've been crafting since I was 3!?!? But then I sat down to read her book in the bookstore one day and started crying...... Anyway I'm paraphrasing here but her point seemed to be that for women of today to embrace the 'typical domestic' arts of the past was not something that was to be hidden and ashamed of doing, but something to celebrate our rich heritage and history of and proclaim in public! Yipes I'm no English major but you get the idea. Gotta register for the NYT so I can read that article-yippee!!!

I haven't got any profound thoughts to offer, but I have found that the "face" of craft has definitely changed and the notion of crafting has become a really "cool" thing to own up to. I do have a few friends who still think, "crafting? blech, like doilies and stuff? Not interesting to me," but most friends/acquaintances I talk to about crafting get intrigued and all impressed that I actually make things. This probably was not the case of the long-suffering housewife of yore...

thanks for your thoughts, everybody! i completely agree - the face of craft has changed, and lots of people i know are impressed. i think i also a few people who, despite progressive politics, are stuck in some pretty old ways of thinking and in a subtle way would/do take us less seriously. but really, i mean, if they can't stop and smell the cilantro, who cares what they think? ;)

i also want to clarify that *of course* i don't feel that way about folks just because they don't read my blog -if it doesn't interest them, it doesn't - it's not like i'm over at a golfing blog every day just because i like the person who writes it.

amen sister.

as a fellow nyu law kid who stumbled on your blog today when i realized that studying for fed courts is about to give me an aneurism (but if i get up from my desk i will end up spending the next two hours either knitting or trying to find something tall enough to stake the tomato seedlings that are taking over my windowsill), i have taken lots of crap/ confusion/ bewildered if not full-on disgusted looks from our classmates when they realized that i actually celebrate being crafty.

it's just a shame i only discovered your blog (great work, b.t.w.) a week before graduation...

ha! i had actually written in my comment above that those progressive-but-not types tend to end up in law school, but then deleted it. ;)

thanks for the props, heather - good to know you're out there. i've sent you an e-mail. since my legs lost feeling an hour ago, how could i not?

Hey! I just came here through the You Grow Girl referrers. Because I just couldn't let it go... YGG isn't a blog. One section of the site contains a blog but the site itself isn't built as a blog.

I brought up some of the stuff you've mentioned here in my interview for the article because I also think about it a lot. The thing is, it requires a hell of a lot of knowledge, learning and doing to become adept at any of these skills (gardening, knitting, sewing etc). They're experiencing a trend push right now but I'm not sure that has made much of a difference to how they are perceived in the general public. Incidently back in the late 90's they were saying that "Gardening is the new rock n' roll" ...but that went nowhere. It took every other craft/art to become trendy before the media swung back around to gardening.

Anyway, I have grappled with this issue myself for many years. I've been "making stuff" my entire life but it was always, in a way, my shameful little secret. How can I be a strong independant feminist and derive so much enjoyment from the "domestic arts"?

It took a lot of maturing to get to the point where I could reconcile it with my politics. It took exactly what you said, the understanding that knowing how to do stuff for myself... these lost arts and forgotten skills... ARE a part of my life philosophy and my politics. And like I said, it's not as if this stuff is light and fluffy nonsense. They're skilled arts that require commitment and dedication (especially gardening if you want your plants to thrive and/or live.)