antislick to postslick

8/13/2019 Antislick to Postslick

1/11

Antislick to Postslick: DIY Books

and Youth Culture Then and NowRochelle Smith. . . elegance is decadentand we cant have that dur-ing wartimeelegance is only acceptable if its pastedtogether, with spit and glue, from the detritus of a too-prosperous/too ridiculous world.

(Dave Eggers)

God bless the hippies; they loved anything ugly.(Garry Knox Bennett)

The material and social culture of America in

the 1960s and early 1970s is a subject of persistentfascination and critical attention. Books, articles,and essays have discussed 1960s art movements,design, music, theater, and even the cookbooksproduced by communes (Hartman). But craft, aspracticed by laypeople as opposed to professionalartisans, has remained largely unexamined. Thisperiod saw a steep rise in the popularity of mak-ing by hand, from woodworking and weaving toneedlework and pottery. Now, after subsiding inpopularity through the 1960s except among the

deeply committed, craft is again receiving signif-icant public attention in the first decade of thetwenty-first century. As recent cover stories inPublishers Weekly suggest, American craft pub-lishing is booming, even in the midst of recession(Martinez 24). There is an increasing body ofscholarly work on craft in the new millennium, inthe United States and overseas (Bratich; Parkins),but little has yet been written that compares thetwo time periods.

Both the 1960s and the early twenty-first cen-

tury upsurges in hand making are notable for theirinvolvement of young adults, working outside ofany tradition handed them by their forebears.Both gained ground in the face of war and grow-

ing energy crises, at times when the status quo interms of resource use and consumption is oftenchallenged. Both express a fundamental disillu-sionment with big structures, be they govern-mental or private, that comes out of war,instability, and economic uncertainty, whetherVietnam or Iraq, the Bay of Pigs, or September 11.

Political activism and social criticism bubble justbeneath the surface of each. These two waves alsodiffer in meaningful ways, and the books writtenas instructional guides to crafts provide a usefulwindow on the zeitgeist of each period. The 196575 craft books discussed here were generallyaimed at the young, and more specifically at thecounterculture subset of the young; similarly, amajority of the books published since 2000 isaimed not at all knitters or crocheters or embroi-derers, but the under-thirty subset that finds itself

newly intrigued with recreational handcrafts(Tartakovsky 59). This is an area ripe for inves-tigation. What are these creative impulses a re-sponse to? And how does publishing react to andreflect these waves of interest on the part of newand potential makers?

The do-it-yourself books of the Flower Childera had many parents. Chief among them was theagrarian, simple-living ethos promulgated byScott and Helen Nearing in their hugely influen-tial 1954 book Living the Good Life, a chronicle

of twenty years of rural homesteading by thecouple, vegetarian political activists who took upsmall-scale farming in Vermont in the midst of theGreat Depression. The Nearings life workthey

Rochelle Smith is a librarian at the University of Idaho with a background in conservation ecology, and an essayist. She is originallyfrom Trinidad and Tobago.

207Antislick to Postslick Rochelle Smith

The Journal of American Culture, 33:3r 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


2/11

built their stone house themselves and wroteextensively about maple sugaringstood forself-sufficiency and against mass production,large centralized economic systems, and theyoke of a competitive, acquisitive, predatory cul-ture (Nearing xix). Later works, like Alicia BayLaurels immensely popularLiving on the Earth,published in 1970 (the same year renewed interestprompted a reprinting of the Nearings book),would interpret that ethos for hippie back-to-the-landers. Living on the Earth, a self-styled hand-book for alternative living, includes instructionson pickling; hatha yoga; salting fish; growingmarijuana; identifying cloud formations; wrap-ping a sari and giving birth at home; as well as onwoodcarving; soapmaking; patchwork; makingtoys; moccasins, and musical instruments; weav-ing; and sewing simple garments.1 What the bookdoes not include is a page of contents (though itdoes have a thorough index) or distinct chapters:to quote its twenty-one-year-old author, it justgrew as I learned (Laurel Introduction). Seldomdo Living on the Earths instructions, even forcomplex arts like pottery (or giving birth for thatmatter) go on for more than two pages, a blitheapproach that betrays an enthusiasm for learningin the moment and a fearlessness about inexacti-tude and mistakes.Living on the Earthwas hand-written as well as hand illustrated, and itsspidery,elegant yet childlike drawings of naked gardenersand campers contribute to the gentle, prelapsarianmood it sets.

Like the Nearings writings, Living on theEarthtapped into a yearning for the preindustrial.It was not alone in this: forging connections to anagrarian past developed into a prominent concernas national prosperity and mobility increasingly

threatened to erode rural traditions. Appalachiahas long served as a locus of this concern: as farback as 1899, Appalachians were being referred towith nostalgia as Americans contemporary an-cestors (Frost 91). Rural areas experienced theirown folk-craft revival during the Great De-pression (Gelber 227), and Appalachia came tofunction as a wellspring of handmade Americana(Watkins 20), whether via craft schools likeArrowmont in Tennessee and Penland in North

Carolina, or titles like The Mountain ArtisansQuilting Book. Mountain Artisans, published in1973, intersperses quilting instruction with thehistory of the Mountain Artisans cooperativecraft enterprise and of the women of rural WestVirginia. The Foxfire books, a monograph seriesbegun as a high schoolerproduced magazine inRabun Gap, Georgia, in 1968, are even clearerindicators of the appeal of toolkits for getting intouch with Americas rural roots. These endur-ingly successful volumes chronicled vanishingAppalachian folkways and also practical countryskills, from weaving white oak split baskets tobuilding log cabins, food preservation to soapmaking, hide tanning to gathering wild food.

The valorization of the preindustrial that con-tributed to the late 1960s and early 1970s revivalof the handmade can also be viewed in light of thepolitical and social tensions of the 1950s and early1960s. The first decade of the Cold War saw thearms race and the space race stir a societal cocktailof fear, competitiveness, and technological opti-mism which manifested in everything from syn-thetic fabrics and artificial foods to miraclepesticides like DDT to the design of automobiles,buildings, and clothing (Pavitt 50). Rachel Car-sons 1962 environmental critique Silent Springhelped initiate a paradigm shift, as did soberingglimpses of the perils associated with progress,like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Apollo 13near-disaster. A distrust of slickness, artificiality,and better living through chemistry began tomake itself felt (Brubach 215), especially amongyounger Americans, and technological utopianismwas increasingly superseded by a more bucolickind. Many dreamed of leaving the city and thestrictures and corruption it represented, to get

closer to nature in as unspoiled a form as possible,to the beginning, the primal source of conscious-ness, the true basis of culture: the land (Houriet,qtd. in Hartman 29). In Craft Paradigms GlennAdamson describes a mass retreat to the coun-tryside in the late 1960s, when this distrust wasexacerbated by the catastrophic political eventsof 1968 and the coincident degeneration and over-population of urban Counter-cultural areas(89). This retreat was a rejection both of the

208 The Journal of American Culture Volume 33, Number 3 September 2010


3/11

danger represented by bellicose foreign policy inthe age of nuclear weapons, and of the urge todominate and colonize represented by the spacerace: if innovation was tied to domination, thenthe urge to live peaceably and harmoniously eas-ily linked itself to the revival of the timeworn, therustic and the patently handmade.2

The D in DIY in the 1960s and 1970s tendedtoward the holistic and expansive. The very ideaof establishing a counterculture suggests this,incorporating the possibility of a revolutionaryoverhaul of middle-class life ways, from growingorganic food to building a geodesic dome to giv-ing birth in a converted school bus. The list SamBinkley provides of topics covered by instruc-tional books of the time in his essay LifestylePrint Discourse and the Mediation of EverydayLife includes exercise, home furnishing, spiri-tuality, travel, sex, home economics, cycling, re-cycling, gardening, massage, home birth andVolkswagen repair(110). Crafts would fit wellon Binkleys list, representing as they do an aspectof DIY incorporable into anyones life, even if heor she had not committed to a wholly counter-culture lifestyle. Adamson, who mentions thepopularity of nostalgic self-pronounced imprac-tical books by those in the craft movement thatfetishized hand tools (91), considers the focuson crafts on the part of young activists andwould-be activists to have been a way to avoidhollow idealism, one more way to put ideals intopractice (90).

Brendans Leather Book, written in 1972 byCalifornian college student Brendan Smith, servesas an exemplar of the counterculture-influencedmanuals of that time. Brendan, which providesinstructions on making sandals, handbags, and

other items, displays a relaxed approach to con-veying informationSmith talks in the introduc-tion about finding other leatherworkers to be atightlipped lot (6), and for the book he draws onthe experience he gained by experimenting on hisownas well as to aesthetics, both of the rougr-hewn projects and of the volume itself. Its dis-tinctiveness and charm lie both in its pen-and-inkillustrations, drawn by the author, in which toolsare rendered in precise detail but the occasional

cat or human figure is folksy, almost cartoonish,and in Smiths conversational tone. Discussingdyeing leather, he says that, after years ofscrounging for information here and there, Ihope there arent too many gross gaps in myknowledge of this mysterious topic. Maybe I cansave you from going through the same drama Idid (40). In the appendix, which explains how tosharpen knives, he observes that if youre usingyour good old got-it-from-my-dad pocket knife,you may make it on karma alone (162). The sin-cerity, the rejection of authorial hierarchy that thebook conveys, is palpable.

Brendanand books like it that focused on in-dividual crafts were common, but works thattaught several, like the 1972 Woodstock Crafts-mans Manual, were also produced. Authored byeleven different New York State artisans, Wood-stockoffers instructions on skills that might haveappealed to attendees at the 1969 music festival,including candlemaking, crochet, leatherwork,embroidery, pottery, beading, weaving, tie-dye,batik, silkscreen, and macrame, as well as homesound recording. The books counterculture toneis set on its front cover, on which it is described asbeing not compiled or edited but provoked. Itspottery chapter is subtitled Notes from the Un-derground, a reference to the novella by Dos-toevsky that greatly influenced socially consciouswriters from Joseph Heller to Ralph Ellison. Andcontemporary politics, where not explicit, are im-plicit in its pages. The chapter on beads urges in-ner peace even if Viet Nam is in a state oftransitional disaster (160), and Roger Sessions,the author of the chapter on silkscreen, discussesthe printing of political posters and signs his namewith a hammer and sickle in place of the capital R.

Woodstocks illustrations are a mix of black-and-white photographs and drawings, and several ofthe chapters are entirely or partially written byhand, a design decision especially prevalentamong its female authors and more traditionallyfeminine crafts, such as crochet, beaded jewelryand dyeing, and one shared by contemporaneouscookbooks like Mollie Katzens early Moose-wood titles.3 TheNew York Timesreview said ofWoodstockthat there is no distance at all between



4/11

instructor and beginner, and experimentation isthe word (Gemming 8). It was followed a yearlater by The Woodstock Craftsmans Manual 2,which includes chapters on, among other skills,sandalmaking, quilting, tipi construction, stainedglass, bronzework, and songwriting. A member ofthe True Light Beavers commune is credited withseveral of the second volumes photographs.

Books likeBrendancame out of small presses,grassroots publishing ventures, as Binkley callsthem (116). Many of these publishers were basedon the West Coast of the United States and par-ticularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, and sev-eral, such as Bookpeople (distributor ofBrendansLeather Book), Shambhala, Ten Speed Press, andBookworks, are still in existence. Binkley de-scribes these publishers as self-initiated, amateur,youth-based, [and] non-New York and says theyformed part of a countercultural lifestyle printdiscourse (109), in which doing-it-yourselfmeant not just making the objects but writingthe books about making them as well.4 A classicexample, or perhaps metaexample, is the WholeEarth Catalog, Stewart Brands self-describedevaluation and access device, which beginningin 1968, pointed readers to tools and informationas they attempted to forge sounder, more sustain-able ways of living. A strong proponent of ap-propriate technology, Whole Earth was a primesource of DIY literature. It featured and reviewedinstructional works, like Living on the Earth,Pioneer Pottery, andFoxfire magazine, while alsooffering its own how-to essays and articles(Kirk 5). The layout ofWhole Earth, like that ofLiving on the Earth, reflects the editorial expan-siveness Binkley describes: both favor inclusivityover specialization, eschewing categorization

(Kirk 2), and moving easily from topic to wildlydivergent topic, metalwork to yurt constructionto puppet theater to alternative schooling tohandspinning.

These works, concerned with self-sufficiency,closeness to the land, and comprehensive lifestylechange, resonated deeply with the tune in/turn on/drop out generation, a generation that was read-ing Summerhill, Spiritual Midwifery, The Electric

Kool-Aid Acid Test, and perhaps The Anarchist

Cookbookalongside their craft books. In the firstdecade of the twenty-first century there is nocomparable groundswell of young people yearningto get back to the garden, as Joni Mitchell sang in1970, to overhaul everything, abandon mainstreamculture, and set up a city on a hill. While urbanhomesteaders and others may seek to introducemeasures of creativity, self-reliance, and commu-nity into their lives (Fisher), few contemporaryyoung adults evince a desire to forgo society en-tirely for a self-created alternative; unless that al-ternative is a virtual one, manifested through theInternet and other communication and entertain-ment technologies.

Many young adults interested in craft todayare also deeply invested in life online, plugged inrather than tuned in. Several authors suspect thatmaking things by hand serves as a complement, orantidote, to life in cyberspace. Minahan and Cox(p. 8) consider whether craft may function as aremedial response to the Information Society,and Stoller concurs (11). Interpreting do-it-your-self impulses as a response to changing technol-ogies is not new: in 1966 Newsweek cited as areason for the craft revival of the time the factthat we are, more and more, becoming the slavesof technology (Crafting 62). In that instancethe technology referred to was likely mechanizedmanufacture, but passive entertainment, like tele-vision, may have been implicated as well. Craft onthe other hand is now, as then, tangible, tactile,connected to history and to otherswhetherthrough local circles of like-minded individuals,nationwide groups like Church of Craft, blogslike Angry Chicken or Internet communities likeRavelry. These potentially international commu-nities may provide some of the sense of shared

endeavor that young people in the 1960s and1970s found through consciousness-raising ses-sions or, more radically, in commune life.

The two generations may be widely separatedin terms of their responses to the societal issuesthey face, yet craft connects them in unexpectedways, as with the environment, a realm in whichboth craft cultures come together while also re-vealing striking differences. The craft movementof the 1960s and 1970s tapped into nascent public



5/11

environmental concerns and consequent desires toget in touch via material culture with less indus-trialized societies that were perceived as living incloser harmony with the earth. The rejection onthe part of counterculture young people of thesleekness and futuristic/aerodynamic style associ-ated with the Space Age manifested itself in theaesthetics of daily life, from peasant-inspiredclothing to the humble, boxy bluntness of Volks-wagen buses. The things they made, and their fa-vored materialswood, leather, clay, bronze,glass, woolforegrounded the rough-hewn andthe makers hand. The author of Woodstockschapter on pottery, commenting somewhat skep-tically on the crude look of much of the workbeing produced at the time, remarks that mutedcolors [are] preferred [by amateur potters] be-cause they are believed to be more natural to theclay itself (122). A generalized Native Americanaesthetic pervaded the bead- and leatherwork ofthe timemoccasin patterns were ubiquitousand batik, tie-dye, folk embroidery, and sandcandles and other natural forms were also cham-pioned, as can be seen in theWoodstockbooks andLiving on the Earth. By opting for materials per-ceived as natural and for preindustrial techniques,makers could show solidarity with the burgeon-ing ecology movement and demonstrate aware-ness of the beauty and fragility of the planet sorecently seen from space for the first time.

Many current craft projects, by contrast, bearwitness to their materials and construction in away that is quite postmodern, like the artworkmade of still clearly identifiable magazine sub-scription cards inThe Big-Ass Book of Crafts (45), or Ready Mades rug woven from upscaleshopping bags (3033), in which so little attempt

is made to conceal the logos and other testamentsto the origin of the materials that the finishedobjects form their own ironic statement aboutconsumption. The current movements concernswith the environment are galvanized by a sense ofWestern society as existing atop a landfill; thedisposability of material culture in the late twen-tieth and early twenty-first century prompts adesire on the part of makers to address the wastestream in some direct way. Writer Dave Eggers

statement, quoted in part at this articles outset,describes Ready Made, a 2005 compendium ofDIY projects selected from the magazine of thesame name, as embodying a spirit of DIY, notjust reuse/recycle, but a revolutionary sort of aes-thetic ethos that allows us to make elegant objectsfrom unelegant things. Because elegance is deca-dentand we cant have that during wartimeelegance is only acceptable if its pasted together,with spit and glue, from the detritus of a too-prosperous/too ridiculous world . . . for now, itsthe only tasteful way to have taste (Berger, Fron-tispiece). Recent books like Eco Craft and 62Projects to Make with a Dead Computer havetherefore dealt not with pristine organic materialsbut rather with upcycling, reworking, and trans-forming what would otherwise be discarded.

Deconstructing and finding new uses for thriftstore items is one major manifestation of thisconcern. Thrift store reimaginers emphasize theuse of secondhand materials in what they make,not from economic necessity as much as from adesire to make a unique statement with their pos-sessions in a way precluded by purchasing new,mass-produced items. Several books, among them

Alternation, Rip It, Generation T, Sew Subver-sive, and its sequel, Subversive Seamster, provideinstruction on recycling and restyling clothing,particularly secondhand finds. The raw-edged,makeshift aesthetic of the projects in these booksis often credited to punk subculture, which sincethe 1970s has spawned an antifashion, artfullyreconstructed sartorial aesthetic. Young peoplewithin and beyond this subculture were engagedin DIY projects throughout the 1990s from pub-lishing zines to making mixed tapes (Bond 20;Pentney), and many eventually incorporated

more traditional crafts, like sewing, into theirskill sets.As the handmade once represented rebellion

against DuPont slickness, it now stands againstubiquitous branding and a species of conspicuousconsumption in evidence at least since the greedis good 1980s. The act of making itself, whetherthe object made is a sweater, a mixed CD, or aburrito cannon (Maker), becomes a statementagainst a world in which quotidian material cul-



6/11

ture bears little imprint of human hands (Bond23). This was also a concern in the sixties: ex-plaining the appeal of craft in 1966, Newsweekdecried the vast cornucopia of standardized, ma-chine-made goodsa faceless inventory of con-sumer products whose distinctiveness exists onlyin the advertising slogans that peddle them(Crafting 62). But the current level and reachof corporate branding, as well as the big-boxstores filled with disposable, anonymous foreign-made goods, were as yet unimaginable.

Minahan and Cox suspect that needleworkmay represent a small effort to refute the ubiq-uity of the Nike sweatshirt (11). Several crafts-people concur: author Share Ross expresses thisrebellion when she says in Punk Knits: 26 Hot

New Designs for Anarchistic Souls and Indepen-dent Spirits; knitting is an amazing way to makea truly anarchistic statement . . . what is more rockn roll than making your own fashion statementand snubbing the corporate entities that tell ushow to look?! (S. Ross, Frontispiece). And, dis-cussing the publics eagerness to patronize craftentrepreneurs in a 2007 article in Metromode,artist and independent publisher Mark Maynarddeclares, People are kind of pissed off [at] havingto buy everything from Wal-Mart (Chou). Dis-trust of government in the 1960s and 1970s, play-fully manifested in Woodstocks silkscreenedhammers and sickles, stands in contrast to cur-rent distrust of multinational corporations. Thisdistrust may point to another reason why craftdoes not currently manifest as part of a larger andmore revolution-bent social movement. The focuson the corporate rather than the governmentalmeans that making something, and thus modify-ing ones relationship to the marketplacein

however peripheral a waymay feel like an aptand sufficient response, obviating the need tofound an entire alternative society, as when gov-ernments (and older generations) are perceived asthe opponent.5 Betsy Greer, author ofKnitting forGoodand creator of the website Craftivism, saysthat atrocities are happening in our front yardsand on our televisions and suggests that craft canprovide a means to react against what is hap-pening without either giving up or exploding

(Greer). In the case of makers like Cat Mazza andher website microRevolt, concern over interna-tional sweatshops and the conditions endured bygarment factory workers form an element of thissoft activism6 (Bratich 4). Mazza uses her knit-ting projects, which incorporate logos from com-panies like Nike and Mattel, as a way of craftingcommentary on corporate labor exploitation(Gschwandner, MicroRevolt 6).

The connections between current craft practiceand political or social statement can be seen in actsof public art undertaken by craftspeople. Gue-rilla knitting, as practiced by groups like Knitta,a group of anonymous knitters based in Houston,Texas, mingles art and social commentary, encas-ing trees, lampposts, and other public objects inhandknit fabric. In Sabrina Gschwandners 2007bookKnit Knit: Profiles1Projects from Knittings

New Wave, one of the anonymous Knitta tag-gers speaks of wanting to demonstrate that dis-obedience can be beautiful and that knitting canbe outlaw(92). Individual artists like Lacey JaneRoberts also utilize knitting. Her installations,including one of pink-knitted barbed wire fenc-ing, aim to dismantle systems of power througha soft medium usually associated with warm,homey comfort (Gschwandner, Lacey JaneRoberts). It is no accident that knitting is oftenthe chosen medium for women (and men) whoseek to question received power structures.

Several of the manuals utilized by this newgeneration of makers deal with mechanical pro-jects, like those found in Make magazine, whichowe a debt to the Popular Mechanics school ofworkshop-based home technology (Gelber 208),but the more significant uptick in craft publishinghas come from works teaching traditional fem-

inine skills like crochet, sewing, beadwork, em-broidery, quilting, and particularly, knitting.Debbie StollersStitchn Bitchstands in the van-guard of the new how-to books that take as theirsubject traditional womens crafts. Published in2003,Stitchn Bitchaimed to take back the knitby contextualizing knitting within feminist prac-tice, while providing instructions for making suchwhimsical items as a Wonder Woman bikini and aRibbed-for-Her-Pleasure scarf. In her prefatory



7/11

essay, Stoller, a founder ofBUST magazine, dis-cusses her own journey back to knitting after ini-tially rejecting the craft as antithetical to feministaims, concluding that all those people wholooked down on knittingand housework, andhousewiveswere not being feminist at all. Infact, they were being antifeminist, since theyseemed to think that only those things that mendid, or had done, were worthwhile (7). She de-cided to do everything in [her] power to raiseknittings visibility and value in the culture (9).The raising of consciousness is very much in ev-idence in this book, much as for the commune-based books of the 1960s.Stitchn Bitchhas beenfollowed by hundreds of titles, fromAlterknitstoPretty in Punk, many of which valorize tradi-tional crafts while approaching them with whatMinahan and Cox call playful, ironic commentand an unbundling/re-forming or even implosion. . . of traditional associations between time, placeand gender (Minahan 17).

The use of the word subversivein the titles oftwo of the sewing manuals discussed earlier isnoteworthy: many craft books aimed at a youngaudience strenuously seek to distance themselvesfrom any connection crafts may have to thequaint, the nostalgic, or the pastexcept perhapsthe very recent, rebellious past, as with Punk

Knitsor AntiCraft: Knitting, Beading and Stitch-ing for the Slightly Sinisterwhich describes itselfas focusing on the darker side of craft, takingan approach much sought after by the growingaudience of hot publications like BUST, ReadyMade and Craft: transforming traditional craftsinto quirky wearable fashion (Rigdon, Frontis-piece). Building on Stitch n Bitchs revivalistagenda but more aggressive in tone, these books

adopt a confrontational stance against needle-works nineteenth-century middle-class asso-ciations with sedateness, meekness, and quietfeminine industry. Jennifer StaffordsDomiknitrixconcerns itself primarily with promulgating ex-acting standards of workmanship for knittingprojects, but the books prose expresses that workethic in the fetish terminology of Bondage andDiscipline (I am the Domiknitrix. I discipline myyarn. I force it into the form I want it to take . . .

the knitter is the mistress or master who whips thestitches into shape. [89]). Hosegood notes thatknitting books like Domiknitrix and Naughty

Needles: Sexy, Saucy Knits for the Bedroom andBeyondstrive to construct knitting as not only aworthwhile and altruistic pastime but also as adecadent, self-indulgent, and subversive action(149).

At the same time, these titles reside on book-shelves alongside sewing manuals like A is for

Apron and The Apron Book, postfeminist cele-brations of the trappings of prefeminist femaledomesticity. According to the latter, its brightand sassy contemporary aprons confirm that nest-ing is all the rage (Geisel, back cover). Evenfeminist BUST cheerfully included instructionsfor making an apron in its December/January2009 issue (Tie One On 21). The exoticismprivileged in 1960s crafts like tie-dye and batikmoved the maker far from the avocations of thatgenerations parents in the safety and homogene-ity of the suburbs. Forty years on, temporal dis-tance from homemakers of the postwar era andfrom womens subsequent struggles to be recog-nized in the workplace can render the skills ofthose homemakers, like sewing and knitting, at-tractively exotic in their own right, while makingit possible to perceive the loss of knowledge ofhand skills as a deprivation and a birthright for-feited. (On her website Heather Ross, author ofWeekend Sewing, describes the current generationof young women, the first generation for whomhome economics classes were not required, as inneed of empowerment [H. Ross].) It is difficultto imagine a contemporary craft book author ca-sually saying we all know what darning lookslike, as Nell Znamierowski does when explaining

the structure of plain weave in 1967s Step-By-Step Weaving(7). Those seeking to create by handin the 1960s and 1970s were closer in time to atradition of making and fixing that was passedalong in families as well as through formal edu-cation. Just as household machines, like toastersand radios, were easier to tinker with in an analogage, many people, even the relatively well off,sewed their own or their childrens clothes, kept aworkshop in the garage, could repair their own



8/11

car, and subscribed to make-it and fix-it maga-zines likePopular Mechanics(Gelber 290; Kirk 5).The 1950s saw its own DIY movement (Gelber26894), which meant that Baby Boom youngpeople grew up familiar with household carpen-try, needlecrafts, model building, and other hand-work. Thus 1960s and 1970s counterculture craftbooks tend to provide guidelines and basic infor-mation but almost no specific projects. In fact,they reject the idea of being imposed upon bysomeone elses aesthetic judgments and decisions,even the authors, and instead champion beingon your own trip creatively. The author of theembroidery chapter inThe Woodstock CraftsmansManuallaments being born into a kit-generation(79) and advocates freeing the designer within.7

Brendans Leather Books introduction states em-phatically that there are no fold-out letter-by-let-ter projects in here (Smith 6). These books drewon the basic knowledge that their readers wouldhave likely already possessed while shunning con-formity in terms of how craft projects should turnout. Twenty-first-century craft books confront avery different set of conditions, in which few skillscan be assumed and letter-by-letter directions arewelcome if not vital. Their pedagogical model isone of very detailed plans for clearly defined andnamed projects, with perhaps the occasional nodinto branching out on ones own, as in Alterknits,which includes creativity exercises along with itspatterns. Instructions for replicating a single pic-tured item may go on for several pages. The dis-empowerment Ross alludes to makes this crucial;it also means that each generation of books isspeaking of something very different when it talksof the satisfaction of making by hand, of where theself in do-it-yourself resides, whether in the orig-

inating of a creative concept or in the execution ofmanual tasks.This investigation represents only a beginning

in addressing this topic. Much more remains to bewritten, including comparative analyses of theaesthetics of craft books from the two periods,and further examinations of second and thirdwave feminism and postfeminisms impacts onamateur craft work in the United States, theUnited Kingdom, and elsewhere (Pentney). Links

between handcrafts and the 1960s and 1970s ap-propriate technology movement are there to beexplored, as well as links between twenty-firstcentury craft practice and concerns over sustain-ability, both in terms of the acquisition of usefulskills and of knowing the origins and conditionsof manufacture of yarns, fabrics, wood products,and other materials (see Knight, qtd. inGschwandner, Knit Knit 87). The meaning andvalue craft takes on as a form of resistance to in-dustrialized life has endured for well over a cen-tury, but its precise significance to differentgroups at different times is complex and multi-variate. Young makers, at once embracers of newparadigms and hapless recipients of conditionsthey did not create, have the potential to shedmuch light on these societal shifts. The booksthey use as guides merit close attention.

Notes

1. Sewing is not always classified as a craft rather than beingplaced in a category of its own. It is included here partly becauseseveral 1960s books include this skill, and also because periodicalsthat track publishing frequently include books on sewing in their

discussions of craft (Martinez 28). Additionally, amateur craftspeoplethemselves seldom set up great distinction between, say, using asewing machine or hand sewing needle to make a quilt or a skirt(Stalp 205).

2. It is easy to see how this impulse leads in a direct line back tothe Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth century, in which alienation from both handmade pro-cesses and products, spawned by the Industrial Revolution, led to arevival of handcrafts and of an aesthetic associated with the hand-made.

3. There is a parallel history to be examined that concerns thecookbooks of the same era, as begun by Hartman. Around the timethatDiet for a Small Planetappeared in 1971, counterculture cook-books, often providing guidance on a vegetarian lifestyle, began toemerge, such as theMoosewoodbooks, theTassajarabooks (Binkley12223) andLaurels Kitchen. The design of these books, fromLau-

rels woodcut illustrations to Moosewoods hand script and Tass-ajaras drawings and gentle sepia tint, places them firmly in the sametradition asLiving on the Earthand the Woodstockmanuals.

4. The decentralized, grassroots approach to publishing that sawthe launch of some of the earlier wave of books via West Coastpublishing may have its counterpart in Internet-initiated publishingnow, as with the very successful six-titles-and-counting Yarn Har-lot series of knitting advice books by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whobegan as a knitting blogger in early 2004, or Mason-Dixon Knittingand its sequel, which originated in epistolary blog entries by twoknitters from the northeastern and southeastern Unites States. TheInternet provides unprecedented opportunities to build a reader basebefore approaching the publishing establishment.



9/11

5. Indeed, as the online craft marketplace Etsy demonstrates,people are more than willing to support market ventures they per-ceive as alternative(Miller).

6. Out of the same impulse have come Dumpster divers andFreegans, who are not necessarily in dire economic need but who seetheir activities as ethical and political as much as practical (Kurutz).

Rather than being motivated by personal or community poverty,they are responding to living in a wealthy and wasteful society. Thisimplied critique of capitalism links Freegans to groups like the Dig-gers, the 1960s anarchist street theater troupe in the Haight-Ashburysection of San Francisco, which among other community-focusedactions operated free stores in which everything was given away,often after having been scrounged for free in the first place (Howard46; Laurel 52).

7. Steven Gelber discusses the use of craft kits in the 1950s atlength in his bookHobbies, and though his study ends in that decadehe briefly mentions the resurgence of high quality handicraftingthat accompanied the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, considering ita return to the romantic notions of the arts and crafts era and anexplicit rejection of the overly commercialized hobby activities ofthe 1950s (299).

Works Cited

Adamson, Glenn. Craft Paradigms: The Studio Craft Movementand the Avant-Garde, 196672. Diss. Yale University, 2001.

Berger, Shoshanna.Ready Made: How to Make (Almost) Everything:A Do-It-Yourself Primer. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2005.

Binkley, Sam. Lifestyle Print Culture and the Mediation of Every-day Life: From Dispersing Images to Caring Texts.HistoricizingLifestyle: Mediating Taste, Consumption and Identity from the1900s to 1970s. Eds. David Bell and Joanne Hollows. Hampshire:Ashgate Publishing, 2006.

Bond, Gwenda. A Nation of Crafters. Publishers Weekly11 Aug.2008: 2024.

Brand, Stewart. The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools.Menlo Park, CA: Portola Institute, 1971.

Bratich, Jack, and Julie Brush. Craftivity Narratives: Fabriculture,Affective Labor, and the New Domesticity. International Com-munication Association, 2007 Annual Meeting, San Francisco,CA. Conference paper.

Brubach, Holly. Fear and Clothing: How the Cold War Sent Fash-ion into the Stratosphere.New York Times Magazine Fall 2008Style: Womens Fashion: 21415.

Chou, Kimberly. DIY Design. Metromode 22 Mar. 2007. 16 July2009. hhttp://metromodemedia.com/features/diy11.aspxi.

Fisher, Adam. Urban Homesteaders. New York Times 12 Oct.2008 (retrieved from Lexis Nexis, 22 July 2009).

Frost, William Goodell. Our Contemporary Ancestors in theSouthern Mountains. Appalachian Images in Folk and PopularCulture. Ed. W. K. McNeil. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,1989. 91106.

Geisel, Ellynanne.The Apron Book: Making, Wearing, and Sharing aBit of Cloth and Comfort. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2006.

Gelber, Steven M. Hobbies : Leisure and the Culture of Work inAmerica. New York: Columbia UP, 1999.

Gemming, Elizabeth. How to Make and Sell a Candle. New YorkTimes Book Review 2 July 1972: 8.

Greer, Betsy. What is Craftivism, Anyway? 24 July 2003. 12 Jan.2010. hhttp://craftivism.com/what.htmli.

Gschwandner, Sabrina. MicroRevolt: Knitting as Resistance toSweatshop Labor.Interweave Knits, Winter 2006: 6.

.Knit Knit: Profiles1Projects from Knittings New Wave. NewYork: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2007.

. Lacey Jane Roberts: Dismantling Systems of Power. Inter-weave Knits, Winter 2008: 8.

Hartman, Stephanie. The Political Palate: Reading CommuneCookbooks. Gastronomica3.2 (2003): 29-40.

Hosegood, Betsy. Whip Your Hobby into Shape: Knitting, Fem-inism and Construction of Gender.Textile: The Journal of Clothand Culture7.2 (July 2009): 148-63.

Howard, John Robert. The Flowering of the Hippie Movement.Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science382 (March 1969): 43-55.

Keneas, Alex. Crafting Their Own World. Newsweek 21 July

1969: 6267.Kirk, Andrew G. Counterculture Green: the Whole Earth Catalog

and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2007.

Kurutz,Steven. Not BuyingIt.New York Times21June2007.10Jan.2010.hhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/garden/21freegan.htmli.

Laurel, Alicia Bay. Living on the Earth: Celebrations, Storm Warn-ings, Formulas, Recipes, Rumors, & Country Dances. New York:Random House, 1970.

Maker Workshop: Burrito Blaster. 10 Jan. 2009. Make: Technologyon Your Time. 22 July 2009. hhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.html i.

Martinez, Juan. Getting CraftyBeating the Economy. PublishersWeekly 9 Feb. 2009: 2428.

Miller, Claire Cain. For Craft Sales, Recession is a Help.New York

Times23 Dec. 2008: B1.Minahan, Stella, and Julie Wolfram Cox. Stitch n Bitch: Cyber-

feminism, a Third Place and the New Materiality. Journal ofMaterial Culture12.1 (2007): 5-21.

Parkins, Wendy. Celebrity Knitting and the Temporality of Post-modernity.Fashion Theory8.4 (2004): 425-42.

Pavitt, Jane.Fear and Fashion in the Cold War. London: V&A Pub-lishing, 2008.

Pentney, Beth Ann. Feminism, Activism, and Knitting: Are the Fi-bre Arts a Viable Mode for Feminist Political Action? Third-space: A Journal of Feminist Theory and Culture 8.1. hhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyi.

Ross, Heather. About Heather. 10 Feb. 2010. hhttp://heatherross-designs.com/about/index.htmli.

Ross, Share. Punk Knits: 26 Hot New Designs for Anarchistic Soulsand Independent Spirits. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang,2007.

Smith, Brendan. Brendans Leather Book. Cotati, CA: OuterStraubville Press, 1972.

Stalp, Marybeth C., and Theresa M. Winge. My Collection is Biggerthan Yours: Tales from the Handcrafters Stash. Home Cultures5.2 (2008): 197-218.

Stoller, Debbie.Stitch n Bitch: The Knitters Handbook. New York:Workman, 2003.

Tartakovsky, Flora. That Clicking Sound. Time31 Jan. 2000: 59.

http://metromodemedia.com/features/diy11.aspxhttp://metromodemedia.com/features/diy11.aspxhttp://craftivism.com/what.htmlhttp://craftivism.com/what.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/garden/21freegan.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/garden/21freegan.htmlhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.htmlhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.htmlhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.htmlhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyhttp://heatherrossdesigns.com/about/index.htmlhttp://heatherrossdesigns.com/about/index.htmlhttp://heatherrossdesigns.com/about/index.htmlhttp://heatherrossdesigns.com/about/index.htmlhttp://heatherrossdesigns.com/about/index.htmlhttp://heatherrossdesigns.com/about/index.htmlhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyhttp://www.thirdspace.ca/journal/article/view/pentneyhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.htmlhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.htmlhttp://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_burrito_blaster.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/garden/21freegan.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/garden/21freegan.htmlhttp://craftivism.com/what.htmlhttp://craftivism.com/what.htmlhttp://metromodemedia.com/features/diy11.aspxhttp://metromodemedia.com/features/diy11.aspx


10/11

Watkins, Charles Alan. Weaving Day at Penland: A PhotographicAnalysis.NWSA Journal11.3 (1999): 18-23.

Young, Jean. Woodstock Craftsmans Manual. New York: PraegerPublishers, 1972.

Znamierowski, Nell. Step-by-Step Weaving. New York: GoldenPress, 1967.

Works Referenced

Benevides, Alyce, and Jaqueline Milles. Pretty in Punk: 25 Rock,Goth & Punk Inspired Knits. San Francisco: Chronicle Books,2007.

Brand, Stewart.Whole Earth Catalog. Menlo Park: Portola Institute,1968-71.

Brown, Edward Espe.The Tassajara Bread Book. Berkeley: Shamb-ala, 1970.

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.

Durant, Judith.One-Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn Shop Favorites. NorthAdams: Storey, 2006.

Gardiner, Kay, and Anne Shayne.Mason-Dixon Knitting: The CuriousKnitters Guide: Stories, Patterns, Advice, Opinions, Questions,Answers, Jokes, and Pictures. New York: Potter Craft, 2006.

Gaskin, Ina May.Spiritual Midwifery. Summertown: Book Pub. Co.,1975.

Greer, Betsy. Knitting for Good!: A Guide to Creating Personal,Social and Political Change, Stitch by Stitch. Boston: Trumpeter,2008.

Harding, Louisa. Knitting Little Luxuries: Beautiful Accessories toKnit. Loveland: Interweave, 2008.

Katzen, Mollie.The Moosewood Cookbook. Ithaca: Moosewood, 1974.

Lewis, Alfred Allan. The Mountain Artisans Quilting Book. NewYork: Macmillan, 1973.

Lohr, Nikol. Naughty Needles: Sexy, Saucy Knits for the Bedroomand Beyond. New York: Potter Craft, 2006.

Meyrich, Elissa K.Rip It!: How to Deconstruct and Reconstruct theClothes of Your Dreams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Montano, Mark. The Big-Ass Book of Crafts. New York: SimonSpotlight Entertainment, 2008.

Mornu, Nathalie. A is for Apron: 25 Fresh & Flirty Designs. NewYork: Lark Books, 2008.

Nearing, Scott, and Helen Nearing. Living the Good Life: How toLive Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World. New York: Schoc-ken Books, 1970.

Neill, Alexander Sutherland. Summerhill: a Radical Approach to

Child Rearing. New York: Hart Pub. Co., 1960.

Nicolay, Megan. Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt.New York: Workman, 2006.

Pearl-McPhee, Stephanie.Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter.Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2005.

Okey, Shannon.Alternation: Transform, Embellish, Customize. Cin-cinnati: North Light Books, 2007.

Powell, William. The Anarchist Cookbook. New York: L. Stuart,1971.

Radford, Leigh.Alterknits: Imaginative Projects and Creativity Ex-ercises. New York: STC Craft, 2005.

Rannels, Melissa, Melissa Alvarado and Hope Meng.Sew Subversive:Down & Dirty DIY for the Fabulous Fashionistab. Newtown,

CT: Taunton Press, 2006.. Subversive Seamster: Transform Thrift Store Threads into

Street Couture. Newtown, CT: Taunton Press, 2007.

Rigdon, Renee, and Zabet Stewart.Anticraft: Knitting, Beading, andStitching for the Slightly Sinister. Cincinnati: North Light Books,2007.

Robertson, Laurel, Carol Flinders and Bronwen Godfrey. LaurelsKitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition.New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Ross, Heather. Weekend Sewing. New York: Stewart, Tabori &Chang, 2009.

Sarafan, Randy. 62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer (AndOther Discarded Electronics). New York: Workman, 2010.

Stafford, Jennifer. Domiknitrix: Whip Your Knitting into Shape.

Cincinnati: North Light Books, 2007.Tie One On. BUSTDec./Jan. 2009: 2122.

Wasinger, Susan.Eco Craft: Recycle Recraft Restyle. New York: LarkBooks, 2009.

Wiggington, Eliot. The Foxfire Book: Hog Dressing; Log CabinBuilding; Mountain Crafts and Foods; Planting by the Signs;Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing; Moonshining; andOther Affairs of Plain Living. Garden City: Doubleday,1972.

Wolfe, Tom.The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 1968.



11/11

Copyright of Journal of American Culture is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied

or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.

However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

antislick to postslick

Documents