Nice try, but no dice

Some news agencies (ooh, nebulous blamee! You know what you're in for here ;) ) have been reporting more people turning to fiber arts like sewing and knitting during this recession 'to save money over buying'.

That's a stupid statement that can only come from someone who doesn't knit, sew, or otherwise make things for themselves.

The simple fact is that an individual can not compete with a large corporation where manufacturing costs are concerned. You're saving labor costs? Big whoop. Labor costs are a very small part of a soft product's cost. Furthermore, you are often competing with workers making less than $1 a hour and working on machinery that pumps out clothing far faster than the best hand knitter or seamstress could. And forget about getting ahead on materials. You've got to pay retail; the big manufacturers are buying such huge quantities that they can get massive discounts.

If you want to save money, you don't make it yourself; you go to Wal-Mart.

So why are more people knitting and sewing (assuming that is the case)? Because it's a stress reducer. I knit and spin a lot more often when I'm stressed, because it helps relax me. Furthermore, you've got affordable luxuries, another way to take the edge off. When you don't know if you'll have a job in a week, a new TV doesn't seem like such a good idea. $10 of yarn, though, that isn't such a big deal, especially when you're looking at at least 10 hours of stress relief and entertainment.

I was right!

Over the summer, I called bullshit on the old "whatever group that isn't us makes intentional mistakes to show only God is perfect" crap.

Someone kindly directed me to this article, specifically the second on Humility Blocks. End result of research: it is crap!
Amish do not intentionally put a mistake into quilts, and are aghast at the idea that they would or would think they would need to.
I lambasted the idea towards Navajo work last time.
And the article there talks about how experts in Persian rug and that history also believe the Humility Boof to be BS.

So, enough with the racist crap, fellow artisans.

You know what I hate?

The old "Navajo/Persians/Amish/Islamic Artists/whatever group isn't us always put a mistake in their artwork to show that only God is perfect" BS. It's the definition of glurge, in that something that's supposed to be 'sweet' and 'inspiring' is actually amazingly racist.

1. It's completely out of touch with reality. Example: A Persian rug has a few hundred thousand knots in it. Hell yes there's there's going to be a mistake in it somewhere. There's no need to add a fake mistake.
2. It accuses the other group of amazing ego. They think they could make something perfect and Godlike, so they chose not to.
3. With some groups, it's a major projection of Western Christian belief on others. For example, why would the Navajo feel the need to show only God is perfect? I know little about their religion, but enough to know that they have multiple deities, and perfection is not a requirement. Just the idea itself reflects the Western belief that perfection is desirable and the goal that must be aspired to in any endeavor.
   
4. With some cases, it's disrespectful and denigrating to the actual work. Again with a Navajo example, an odd bead in a piece of beadwork is not necessarily a mistake. Often they are intentionally added to mark some event that happened in the maker's life, which might be minor or major.
5. What group hasn't been accused of this at some time or other?

Suffice to say, every time I hear that troupe, I want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon.

Zealots ruin everything.

During my last chain store visit, I was frustrated to discover that prayer shawls are going the way of the WWJD bracelet: something that had good meaning and intention when it was limited to a small group who believed in it, moved into yet another brainwashing technique, and is now on its way to becoming meaningless commercial fluff.

I suppose first I should specify that I'm talking about Christian prayer shawls, not to be confused with the Jewish Tallit or any other article of religious clothing. A Christian prayer shawl is given to someone during a time of hardship. The very original seed of the idea was a wonderful one. The idea was to mindfully knit a comforting items for a (preferably specific) person in a difficult time in their lives, keeping them in mind while working. It was to be a very spiritual, meditative practice, basically a physical manifestation of a prayer.

Well, it went wrong almost as soon as it started with The Prayer Shawl Ministry. Yes, I am aware that I'm saying the people who first codified the idea are doing it wrong. You know why? 'Cause they're doing it wrong. As soon as just about anything becomes a 'ministry', it becomes a failure at its original purpose. Why? Because the focus is no longer about helping people in need; it's about 'spreading the word of Jesus'. Only last I checked, the 'word of Jesus' was about loving and helping people. If you stop concentrating on loving and helping people in favor of talking about it, you've failed. It's a terribly tragic spiral. People are the message, and if you've put aside the people in favor of the message, you've put aside the real message.

In the case of the Prayer Shawl Ministry itself, almost immediately the focus was no longer the people in need, but rather the shawls. Prayer Shawls became yet another way for churches to get face time, and giving aid to people in pain was a convenient side effect. Many makers are not mindful, but rather crank them out, just thinking or praying for the recipient "when they come to mind" as one maker put it on Ravelry. Some churches keep a stock of them back to hand out whenever they're 'needed', which can be anything from a tragic accident to a birthday gift. It doesn't matter who gets them; it only matters who from what organization makes them. So, basically the original idea is in the toilet.

Naturally, Lion Brand yarn is very happy to help you with your Prayer Shawl. They recommend Lion Homespun. Interestingly enough, it seems that most prayer shawls are made out of Homespun. So much for grass-roots and non-profit.

Suffice to say, I'm pretty disgusted, both in how this particular idea was corrupted into a propaganda scheme, and how that seems inevitable with anything spiritual in modern American Christianity.

Sometimes other people embarrass me.

Have you ever read something so stupid that you are embarrassed for the writer, even though you don't know them?
I've been getting that every time I see an article by Grace Hutton on Fiber Femmes. Every time she has one, she sounds like a flaming moron. Her articles are poorly researched, poorly thought out rants.
Take Predator Friendly -- Not Me. There are organizations out there that encourage livestock owners not to kill naturally occurring predators. There are areas with a near-natural wildlife balance where this is practical. She doesn't live in one; she apparently lives in an area where the black bear population is greater than the natural wildlife can support. Fine, predator-friendly livestock management is not a viable option for her. There's nothing wrong with that. But no, she has to go off on how the very concept is stupid, and makes herself look like a complete moron in the process. Some representative, but non-exhaustive examples:

1. She complains that yearly elk calf survival in Yellowstone is 14 calves per 100 elk cows, and obviously this horrible number must be because of predators.
1. Problem: Wild elk have an average lifespan of 10 to 13 years, which means the sustainable replacement rate is 7 to 10 elk per 100. So, depending on the number of males in that population and the adult lifespan for same, that could very well be a sustainable number.
2. Problem: Predation is not the only cause of death. There's also disease (sometimes transmitted, interestingly enough, by livestock), human hunting/poaching, lack of correct food, and so on.
2. She says that the Pennsylvania Game Commission advised her to bait her electric fence with bacon so that bears will learn this is not a place they want to be, and then states "Bear baiting and dog fights are regarded to be cruelty of the worst sort."
1. Hold on, so she's in Pennsylvania. Then what in the world does Yellowstone, a completely different ecosystem 1500 miles away, have to do with her situation?
2. 'Bear baiting' was the practice of using a bear as bait for dogs, not of baiting the bear. The term is sometimes used for a hunting practice of leaving bait for a bear until it has established a pattern of taking it, and then waiting for the bear to show up and shoot it. It has nothing to do with developing a negative association in the bear against your property.
3. She attempts to redefine predator to include parasites, so she can then dismiss the idea of predatory-friendly as ludicrous because it protects parasites. *eye roll*
4. And at the end of the article, we have a nice little appeal to tradition. Killing predators was good enough for her ancestors, dammit, so it's good enough for her, and anyone who "ignores the lessons of history" must be a moron. Ma'am, I'd like to point out that one of the lessons of that exact same history and those very same ancestors is that if you eliminate the natural prey sources and provide an alternative one, you're going to have closer encounters with predators, while at the same time if you eliminate all of the predators you're going to have a terrible time with destructive, unchecked prey animals.

That was bad enough, but then I looked through some of the archives at the site, and found an article that made me want to curl up and whine, and then take her hand and say "Honey, you're making a complete ass of yourself. "'Ethical' Issues with Wool".

The very first sentence: "Lately what is making me so mad my hair is about to catch on fire is the notion that there are “ethical” issues with using wool."

The article argues that there are absolutely no ethical issues with wool. That's ludicrous! I've previously ripped PETA a new one for their misrepresentation of the issues, but going to the other extreme is just as insane and irresponsible. Again, let's take some key, but non-exhaustive, points from this article.

1. "Most of the plant and man-made fibers require some powerful chemicals to dye them pretty colors. Wool on the other hand can be dyed permanently with food safe colors - - think Kool Aid and Easter egg dyes plus diluted vinegar." This one's my favorite.
   
1. Yes, you heard it here. There were absolutely positively NO dyed cotton or linen ever before the invention of industrial aniline dyes in 1856. Except, um, there were. Even today some of our cotton jeans are dyed with indigo. Plant fibers can be dyed very well with natural dyes and safe mordants.
2. Food safe dyes on wool do not produce results that most people would call "permanent". They are infamously fragile and prone to fading, not to mention generally starting in very pastel shades.
2. She brings in the cattle industry, and then denies that existence of factory farms that never pasture their cows. Not only is that delusional, it's not even remotely topical. Last I checked, cows don't produce wool.
3. Because short-tailed sheep exist and there is an "ethnic market" (her term) that desires uncastrated lambs, the issues of tail docking and castration without anesthesia simply do not exist. She's not arguing that they aren't as cruel as they seem to an uninformed outsider; she's saying that because it is not an issue in all cases, it is not an issue in any case.

Every industry and every fiber has ethical issues. Cotton is usually raised with massive amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. Even organic cotton requires massive amounts of water, which is not a problem in some areas but could be in others. Hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S. Synthetics produce pollution. Corn can use genetically modified plants, with the issues that come with them. Soy fibers are a biproduct of a food industry that pumps them into foods as cheap filler with no regard for the long-term health effects of the extra plant estrogens. Cashmere can be made finer by underfeeding the goat from which it comes and there are currently huge problems with overgrazing causing widespread desertification. Sheep can be treated poorly, their waste can be managed poorly, or wool can be imported from countries with serious human rights violations. Any and all fibers can be harvested or produced and processed with dangerous chemicals, and by child labor, political prisoners, or underpaid workers.

It's up to each individual to determine what the ethical issues are with each fibers, and which best align with their values. Thus for some people acrylic is preferable to leather ethically, and for others the reverse is true. By all means address and, if possible, correct the ethical concerns with your own fiber of choice. But pretending that those simply don't exist is flat-out delusional.

Men's Crafts versus Women's Crafts

OK, first off, apologies for the title. Naturally there's no such thing as a "man's" craft or a "woman's" craft. I don't know of a single craft done with the use of a penis, and you could probably use a dildo if there was. Likewise female genitalia is not used in any craft I can think of. So properly speaking, the title should be "Predominately men's crafts versus predominately women's crafts." But that's not as pithy and doesn't fit in the subject line as well. And certainly doesn't let me share the mental image of penile and vaginal craft projects.

Anyway, what I'm actually hear to talk about are attitudes towards intellectual property rights in scroll sawing and wood carving (traditionally male-dominated crafts) and knitting, crocheting, and sewing (traditionally female-oriented crafts). For some reason, women seem to be a LOT more stingy about the IPRs. You would be hard pressed to find a modern fiber craft book that does not have a "patterns may be made for personal use only" disclaimer in the front. I've seen ones that try to put limits on how many copies you can make for yourself to mark up as you work -- copies no one else ever even sees.

On the other hand, you pop open a scroll saw book or magazine, and there's good odds that there's advice on how to sell what you've made from the patterns. (For example, Scroll Saw Scandinavian has a nice little section on how best to display the items it's giving you patterns for.) Not to say I've never seen the complaint about someone making money off of a designer's work. I did once, from someone who walked into a Hallmark store and saw hundreds of lasercut ornaments made with his pattern and without a license.

Ladies, what are we doing here? They're worried about mass production; we're worried about a church raffle. Why is this?

I know it's not that the men's crafts are harder or slower. I've been knitting and crocheting since I was a kid, but give me a choice of making a coaster with an elaborate design with yarn or on the scroll-saw, and I'll be down making some sawdust. It's so much faster.

Are men more secure in their IPs? I'll be the first to admit that men's crafts are more respected; it's much rarer for a woodworker to be told "you know, you can buy one of those" compared to a yarn artist. The hypothetical coasters: I strongly suspect the scroll-sawed one will get more wow's than the yarn.

I don't think the men's crafts have a larger customer base, and I'm quite certain that's not the cause in any event. In the 1980s, when knitting was a terribly niche market, many American patterns had a limited license (allowance to make 100 items/year for sale, or for 'pin money', or some other non-mass-production commercial use OK).

Is it related to the way women are taught to hate each other and view each other as competition? This is the one I always suspect, although I wouldn't try to say whether it's an effect or part of a cause. Is it really that horrible for your work to help another woman ease her financial burden? It's insanely rare for a crafter to be in direct competition with the designer selling the finished article, and the sort of person who would buy the pattern is not the sort to buy the finished article. (Otherwise we wouldn't be in this knitting thing; it's faster and cheaper to buy sweaters from the store.) So why not let other women sell what they've made?

I'd really like to see women's crafts open sharing back up. I mean, isn't it cool to think that the thing you designed has helped pay for another woman's car, or a meal, or a doctor's visit? Or even just a couple of balls of yarn? Designers don't have to close it off to individuals in order to prevent mass manufacturing. Heck, you will almost never see me suggest this, but grab a Creative Commons license. Instead of worrying about small losses, let's think about the big helps we can provide.