Knitting and the Arts

My wife knits. She is a part of the very active knitting community that gathers on the Ravelry.com site, she listens to podcasts and reads blogs, buys books and magazines, and is part of knitting and spinning groups. (The arts could learn a lot from knitters about creating a sense of community.)  Sometimes she buys yarn, sometimes she spins her own from a fleece she’s purchased from a local sheep farmer. From the point of view of economics, this doesn’t make any sense: she could buy a sweater in a store cheaper than what she would pay for yarn, and that doesn’t include the amount of time it takes for her to do the knitting.

Once, I asked her why she did it, and her answer surprised me. I expected that she would say something about the sense of personal connection she feels to clothing she has made using her own hands, and while that is certainly the case — and is the case for me as well, as someone who often benefits from her knitting largesse — that wasn’t the only thing. What she told me was that every pair of socks or sweater she knits she sees as a strike against corporate America. When she makes something herself she feels as if she’s supporting a more local, independent, craftsman-oriented economy instead of the global industrial market.

I love it.

And of course, this applies to the arts as well. Every time we create a play, paint a picture, play or sing music together, dance, or share stories and poems, we are simultaneously not supporting art created by the global mass media. We are disconnecting from the fame machine, from the mass distributed, non-local arts economy and instead reinforcing a sense of an independent, self-sufficient community. We support local farmers when we shop at farmer’s markets or join a CSA, we support local bookstores when we buy there instead of ordering from Amazon, we support local restaurants when we eat at owner-operated eateries instead of at chains. But when it comes to the arts, we often forget the local option.

Mass media — film, television, music CDs — is the artistic equivalent of eating at McDonalds, of buying the cheap sweater made in Malaysia. Make your own — stand up against global corporate homogenization. Create something unique, and do it with your own hands. Make it authentic. And then show it with pride.