April 23, 2008
Craft – the alt version
People keep telling me that there’s a crafting resurgence. There’s certainly a lot of it online. I’ve heard several times that it’s because of September 11. I’m not sure how I feel about that. As a non-American, that doesn’t particularly resonate with me, international influences aside. Personally I think the internet has more to do with it.
I knit. I’ve known how to knit since I was a kid. It never really occurred to me that I could knit anything person-shaped, until I stumbled across a million and one craft blogs. I picked up a magazine, decided I’d knit a sock, and Bob’s your mother’s brother! I have a craft blog of my own, although it’s been languishing a bit lately. The crafting community online is just fantastic. I think it’s that we all have something in common – we use our hands, and we make things. It doesn’t matter much what. Scarves, jumpers, quilts, jewelry, chairs, anything! Just the act of creating something out of simple materials transforms the way you see the world.
I’m hoping, in future issues, to go over some online-craft finds, especially things we’ve tried ourselves. The other thing that online crafting gives us that nothing else can do quite as well, is alt craft. It’s kind of hard to explain, but if it gives you that anarchist buzz, it’s probably alt.
Crafster, Threadbanger and Cut out and keep are three good examples of places you can find alt crafters doing there thing. Of course a lot of stuff is spread out through teh interwebs. Hopefully, when we find something, we’ll be able to tell you about it. Somewhere that already does this well is craftzine, or makezine, if you’re more into metal and wood than fabric and fibre. They put out hard copy issues (you can get them mailed over, or I saw one in Borders the other day… for $35. Scandal) and also have great blogs, where they aggregate a whole bunch of cool finds.
Even knitty.com is pretty alt. They have things that you could never ever find in a traditional, paper magazine – nautili toys and space-invader socks. Binary scarves and fake boobs. And of course, there’s the anti-craft, chock full of knitting, baking, crafting goodness, with a decidedly dark feel.
If you know of a great alt-craft site or have done something cool yourself, let us know! In the meantime, happy surfing!
C
