(Nearly) Open Thread, January 30 2012

Many crafters and artists are drawn to their hobby or vocation because they love the physical property of the material - paint, wood, wool - that it involves. Is there a material you love to craft with? Let's hear about it.

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Comments

[Froborr]

I'm just as utterly terrible at it as I am with all other visual arts,* but I love love love LOVE the feel of clay beneath my fingers.

...I haven't really played with clay in years, I should remedy that.

*Well, not entirely true, I am less terrible at it than I am at things which require an ability to select colors.

[kisekileia]

Yarn! Beautiful soft colourful yarn! It's such a delight to the senses.

[Kit Whitfield]

I love yarn. Knitting with it is like magic: you start with just a ball of wool and weave this incredibly complicated knot, and something takes shape. And good yarn is just beautiful: that translucent gloss, the depth of colours, the way it stretches - yarn with cashmere in it is almost juicy, it's so lush. Ooh, yarn...

And my dad loves wood. He does carpentry in his spare time; the thing he said that stuck with me is that wood is a 'forgiving' material. He means that if you damage it you can sand it down and make it good again; it's a rather lovely way of putting it. And knitting yarn is forgiving too; you can unravel mistakes, if the yarn breaks you can tie it and hide the knot in the back...

I'm in the process of doing some custom-made Christmas stockings for the family next year. My husband's is going to be a monster (you put the presents in through the mouth); mine will be a log with leaves and possibly some bugs on it; I'm waiting to see what my son likes best before designing his. Knitting makes me very happy. :-)

[Laiima]

I 'think' by touch, so I'm one of those people who is always trying to get away with touching things that have signs saying 'do not touch'. Sight/vision is just not meaningful help with what I want to know; I have to touch it and have it touch me back to understand. (Spouse is not a toucher, and he gets rather annoyed having to police my wayward fingers.)

I love yarn, but I haven't yet found a really good way to use it.

I love fabrics of all sorts, esp natural fibers. I love dyeing fabrics - results can be so surprising; even 'ugly' results are delightful because they were unpredictable.

Ten years ago, I did ceramics for 3 terms, and really loved it.

I love painting with oils and acrylics.

I love creating interesting color communities.

I love working with ideas in unusual ways.

I love movement, esp freeform dance. I experience music kinesthetically, so if I *can't* 'move to the music', I don't really 'hear' it. There aren't really words to say what I mean. Basically, I *do* move to (pleasing-to-me) music no matter where I am, or what the occasion. I often sort-of-juggle or bring a bouncing ball along on walks because I think better when I'm not only moving my feet, but other parts are doing something too.

I've consciously created my life to be a work of art, but I'm not sure what to say the medium is. Spacetimematter? Relationships? the fabric of lived philosophy?

[hapax]

Well, let's see --

I've tried painting with oil, watercolors, and acrylics, but finally settled on the last because of the wonderful plasticity of the medium. You can thin it to a smooth wash; grab great hunks of it and smear in creamy streaks; scrape it dry over a finished layer, for a nubbly feel; use fingers and sticks and bits of cloth and toothbrushes and what-have-you for all sorts of marvellous tactile effects.

And I'm terrible at the technical side of it (cutting and soldering), but I love love love working with stained glass. It's the closest I can get right now to working with pure light.

(I'm holding out for the futuristic technology you see in some sf movies, where you can grab at holographic projections in front of you and move things about, like using the very world itself as your touchscreen. Why are the protagonists in these movies always wasting it on boring computer applications and weapons design and tacky advertisements, when the possibilities for artistic expression are so enticing?

I refuse to die until one of these is installed in my living room...)

[Timothy (TRiG)]

hapax,
Something like that exists in Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun, and it is used for art.

TRiG.

[Wysteria]

This is more vocation than craft, but I love the way trees smell. I love all the different smells, and I love being able to tell them apart by smell. Almondy cherries, pine, that smell dead leaves get, the way forests smell when they're budding in the spring.

[J Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

I love markers, pencils, and paper.

I've been drawing since I was 4 or 5, which means I've been drawing for better than 20 years now. I've been drawing for longer than I've been writing, although I'm not sure what if anything that says. I haven't drawn anything in a couple of years. It's too expensive; the markers that I like I can't afford (I love prismacolor markers), and the supplies dry up quickly. I recently started taking graphics arts classes - a perk for working at my college is I get a scholarship that lets me take 8 free credit hours of any class so long as I take the prereqs and pay for my books; and you better believe I'm using it - but most of that stuff is all photoshop, and not hand-drawn.

Now that I've typed that, I do want to sit down and draw something.

[Froborr]

Trig beat me to the Asimov reference, though I was going to mention the short story set at a party hosted by an amateur "light sculptor" who is apparently pretty good. I cannot remember the title of the story, but it was a good one. It's sort of a mystery story, I guess? It's about a murder, anyway, but it tells you in the first line of the story that she did it, the question is why.

ROT13ed for spoiling a half-century-old story: Ure "oebxra" ebobg vf gur npghny negvfg, naq fur zheqref n jryy-zrnavat ivfvgbe jub "svkrf" gur ebobg jvgubhg nfxvat ure.

Vg bpphef gb zr gurer'f n pbhcyr bs Nfvzbi fgbevrf srnghevat "znyshapgvbavat" ebobgf gung perngr neg. Jbaqre jung ur jnf trggvat ng jvgu vg...

[Lonespark]

I like rocks. They're comforting, and wise, and they tell stories. I like dirt, too.

I've done a small amount of lapidary, along with metal arts, making rings and pendants and such. I've considered carving things into rocks, but haven't.

I like leather. I've used it to make SCA armor, and belts, and I'd like to again. Cutting and burning and lacing and dyeing and riveting...

I like paper, and ink that flows, and scribbling poetry with same.

I keep imagining quilts but not making any. Cross-stitch is the limit of my talents in recent years, and in recent months my most ambitious project is sewing a ribbon onto my fedora.

[sarah]

I work at a visual arts college, and yet I'm terrible in the visual arts.

I have, however, tried to do things with collage using old magazines. Some of them turned out nicely.

[Deird, who's nearly finished her latest one]

My favourite type of artwork is cross-stitch. Especially when it gets all complex and has full-on lacework happening...

[Fitcher's Bird]

This may not be in the spirit of the post, but my immediate answer to the question is cooking (maybe because I'm not particularly crafty aside from a recurrent flirtation with cross-stitch but that's less about the physical sensation than the calming mathematical orderliness). Whenever I cook, whatever I cook, I have to feel the food in my hands. I love gadgets and technology but I tend not to even remember them in the kitchen*. For example I have to knead dough by hand at least to start with before using the mixer.

Maybe it's the influence of my Indian heritage. My family eats with our hands a lot and so food has always been a tactile experience. Cooking without touching seems sterile. Partly it's the way I cook. I'm not the type that sticks to the recipe or even bothers with one once I'm confident of the basic principles so I need to keep tasting and touching to see how the dish is evolving. Times like that, cooking is a craft for me.

*Although they are handy with large quantities and time pressures.

[Froborr]

@Fitcher's Bird: I thought about cooking, too, but decided that wasn't what the question meant.

But yeah, what I love most about cooking is that it engages me completely. Every sense and capacity is involved: I am touching and tasting and smelling and hearing and seeing, thinking about numbers and measurements and aesthetic choices and feelings...

Plus I get to use knives and fire! What could be better?

[gleomstapa]

I love dough, especially yeast dough. When the gluten comes together and the dough turns from a puddle of goo into a thing, it's just fantastic. And bread dough feels alive in a way cookies and pancakes and whatnot don't, partially because of the way the yeast respond to changes in the weather and the recipe's chemistry.

It's been a while since I made any pottery, but I loved it when I did - both the slower hand-building, where you can feel the textures and consistency, and throwing, where you have a very responsive connection between your body and the clay. I still like playing with soil in general. Wood, too, mostly whittling though I've done some minor carpentry - I like the constraints of grain and hardness that hide inside each piece of wood. I can't force a piece of wood to do something it doesn't want to.

I would hardly call this my hobby or my vocation, but I find something really satisfying in soldering circuit boards, coordinating the position of the iron and the solder and the board and the part to make a perfect shiny little cone of connectedness. (I'm not especially interested in building electronics, is the thing - I just like soldering.)

[Kirala]

Mmm. Pie crust, scone dough, meatloaf, anything properly squishable in the kitchen. Dad maintains that it's impossible to make really good wheat bread without slamming the dough full-force on the counter a few times - "stretches the glutens", he says, but I think it's just for the pleasure of acceptable smackage. I have adopted his policy for my scones.

And I love clay, particularly on a potter's wheel.

And yarn, especially when I'm crocheting or using bamboo knitting needles (the surreptitiously-knit-in-the-dark-movie-theater tool of choice for me, being less noisy than plastic or metal). Soft, soft yarn.

@Laiima - I am 100% with you on the touch thing. I will find myself having my fingers hovering millimeters over a forbidden object, imagining carefully how it feels...

[MercuryBlue]

Cooking is totally an art! I don't get to do it enough. Last time I was trying a vegetarian recipe, stir-fry over rice with a sauce made from hoisin sauce and concentrated orange juice and I forget what else, and I kept stealing green beans and baby corn out of the pan to dip in the sauce bowl and nom. Still can't figure out why nobody including me liked the finished product when all the pieces were so tasty.

[Sixwing]

Stone! I love the feel of it, and its hundred different sheens, and the way you can feel a flaw with your fingers before it ever develops to the eye. I love the way a fully polished stone looks the same wet and dry (or, well, I'm picky, so I like that finish) and I like the way it smells when it's wet, and I like the way it smells on the wheel, being cut. (Except psilomelane, which smells like burning tires when it's being worked, but is gorgeous anyway.)

I like the way it can't be forced - if you try to make a stone do something it doesn't want to do, it'll crack and then you have to start completely over. I like the irregularity of patterned stones, and how there's no predicting what lives beneath the surface.

And then there's the extra fun of hammers and fire that comes with creating the settings for a finished stone. <3

@Lonespark, lapidary high five! o/

[Deird, who should make more cakes]

I need to get better at baking.

I'm good enough at cooking pasta, roasts, stir-fries, and so forth that I can chuck the recipe away and just experiment with what I want. But I can't do that with baking yet.

Strange, because in a way my mindset (and hence my kitchen) is way more skewed towards baking than to other types of cooking. And yet I've done much less of it...

[Nick Kiddle]

If we're going by the feel, I love wood. One of my most prized possessions is a corner unit that I picked up cheap, stripped of layers of old varnish, sanded, and treated with teak oil. Sanding wood is a pleasure for three senses - the feel, the smell and the look - although my ears don't thank me when I use the sander.

Fabric and especially quilts are another good one. I love using up materials that would otherwise go to waste, and one fabric I used on my epic Hoarder's Patchwork was my ex-boyfriend's favourite pair of old jeans. (They ripped, and I offered to save them from being thrown out, I hasten to add.) Well-worn denim is soft, but it made an interesting contrast of texture with polyester lining fabric on the next square.

[Samantha C]

Weirdly, I love tactile crafting projects even though I'm not good at any. Sewing and stitching and clay and origami, I like having something to do with my hands.

[Nick Kiddle]

Whah? I posted, and I'm sure I had no captcha. Where'd it go?

[The Board Administration Team]

@Nick Kiddle: Sometimes I think TypePad has a twisted sense of humour all of its own. I can decern no reason for trapping you -- but there you were.

We rescued you :)

[Nick Kiddle]

Thanks :)

[Steve Morrison]

@Froborr:
Light Verse

[Froborr]

Yes! That was it, thanks Steve!

(Of COURSE the title is a terrible pun, it's an Asimov story.)

[Mike Timonin]

Dearest Mods, is it possible that I am also spam trapped, or did I simply miss an opportunity to prove my humanity?

[The Board Administration Team]

@Mike: Nope, you aren't in the spam trap. I guess TypePad doesn't consider you human :)

[bluefrog]

TypePad loves me not? I posted earlier, but it's not here.

[The Board Administration Team]

@bluefrog -- it really doesn't like you -- you aren't even in the spamtrap. Hmmm, the same thing happened on this thread to Mike -- I wonder if TyepPad is having an episode here?

[Mike Timonin]

That would be fairly typical of the past couple of weeks - I'm beginning to doubt my own humanity.

First, in the spirit of the question asked, I consulted with my crafty eldest. She says she likes working with sculpy because it's quick and easy, which means she can see early if the project is going the way she wants, and, if not, can scrap it and start again. She also likes the mooshy sensation. She says she would like to try wood carving, but isn't sure how to start. Since she's nine, I think I'm ok with that. She says she likes painting too, because, again, it's easy to see how the project is going. She likes mixing the colours. She likes that it's like drawing, but with a paint brush.

As for myself, I like the IDEA of working with clay - the mooshy feeling again - but the fact of the necessary infrastructure makes me hesitant.

Ok - in the spirit of an open thread - I don't think I could have re-posted this before dinner, but a full belly helps. Prayers, good thoughts, positive energy, etc would be good. We discovered recently that the youngest's lead levels have risen. We knew about the lead early in the summer. The landlord (who is a great guy, we love him) did a whole scraping and painting thing on the outside of the house, and he did a good, if inefficient, job. He didn't replace the windows, because there is no money to replace windows - he has applied for a grant. We were planning a major relocation at the end of this term. We thought it was good enough, and we were wrong. At this point, there's no permanent damage, but we're looking for a new place. Which, this is the wrong time of year, and our budget is too small. Our choices seem to be a)so far out in the country that we should just plan to relocate as originally planned, b) too small, c) dear God, people LIVE here, or d)way out of our price range. It seems unlikely that any of you have leads on apartments in the Southern Tier of NY (although - email mike.timonin at gmail if that's not the case), but good thoughts, positive energy, prayers and etc are greatly appreciated. The whole thing is making us feel like poor excuses for grown ups, frankly.

[hapax]

@Mike Timonin: Oh, dear, that's scary. But (forgive me for prying) I think lead exposure is fairly easy to treat if caught soon enough?

Good thoughts and prayers freely offered, for health, for living space, for peace of mind.

(And oh, that "bad parent syndrome." Sheesh, I know THAT one.

TW: House fires

Nothing like putting your first house up for sale -- the house that your children spent their infancy, preschool, and elementary years in -- and have the inspector inform you that the previous inspector must have been on the take, the wiring was all decades behind code, and we were lucky that the whole thing hadn't spontaneously ignited and burnt down around our ears.)

[Mike Timonin]

hapax - yeah, we're not THAT concerned with the lead issue, because we did catch it in time, and it isn't, yet, at the level of permanent damage, but part of the treatment is to remove oneself from the zone of contamination. Which is surprisingly difficult, it turns out.

[Mmy]

@Mike: Thinking good thoughts at you and youngest.

[bluefrog]

Oy! Mike, I'm sorry about your child's lead levels. Even though it can be treated, that's frightening. Prayers and good wishes for you to find a new place to live. Please, don't feel like bad parents. Stuff happens, and you can't prevent it all.

Ok, I'll try this again. I'm a quilter. It's not just the interplay of design and color, although that's certainly part of it. I don't use a sewing machine, because I enjoy the feel of needle and thread and thimble, the precision of tiny stitches, the pleasure of exactly matched seams, and the act of watching a design take shape.

I'm a fan of useful things, so I don't do art quilts; mine are intended to be used on beds. I really enjoy sitting on a cold morning with a quilt in a hoop on my lap, stitching a quilting design. It's rather like meditation--careful, mindful, regular, absorbing activity, in which it's possible to lose yourself for a bit.

[Brin]

I wish you luck, Mike.

[Kit Whitfield]

Oh nads, wrong thread. Sorry everyone.

[Kit Whitfield]

Sending good vibes to Mike and family...

[Certainly Sylvia]

TBAT!! Gaah - please delete that - I was in different thread. It should not be here. I'll repost in proper place.

Apologies all.

[Nenya]

I think I'm spamtrapped as well. Typepad *claimed* that my comment had gone through--showed it on the page and everything--but when I refreshed it wasn't there. Keeping a copy in case it got et by gremlins.

Good vibes and good possibilities to Mike & family.

[Andara Bledin]

@Mike - Good vibes and wishes for a quick resolution.

My medium of choice is glass beads. The really tiny ones. I've been doing beadwork of various mediums since I was 7 or so. I like it all: loomwork, freeform, applique, and mosaics. I like getting a feel for how the beads work together - how they fit. Then there are all of the different cuts and colors and lusters.

There's just something awesome about starting with several tubes of beads, a needle, thread, and a bit of wax and creating something beautiful.

^-.-^

[Andara Bledin]

Typepad seems to be temperamental right now. Ate my post, as well. (saving a copy of this in case it eats it, too)

@Mike: Warm thoughts and hopes for a timely resolution headed your way.

My medium of choice is beads. Tiny glass seed beads. I've been beading since I was seven, and have worked on looms, as applique, freehand, and multimedia murals. There's something about the feel of the different types and shape of beads and the way they all fit together that's awesome to me. It's just so satisfying to sit down with a few tubes of beads, a needle, spool of thread, and a bit of wax, and coming away with a bright and shiny piece of art.

^-.-^

[Amaryllis]

Huh. I posted something quickly last night on the other thread, and I don't see it now. Spam trap? missed captcha (I've been feeling pretty inhuman lately cough cough)? Or just Typepad in one of its moods?

Anyway, sending good wishes to Mike and family. I hope you find something suitable soon.

Fitcher's Bird: I have to knead dough by hand at least to start with before using the mixer.
I do it the other way around: start the kneading with the mixer, and finish it off by hand so I can feel when it's "just right."

Admiration to all you crafty and clever people: you're the reasons we can have nice things.

[Ross]

Woodworking is one of the very few things that I enjoy doing despite not being very good at it.

[Sam]

TBAT

Post removed as it violates spam policy.

[Nenya]

I love colours! Paints and markers and pencil crayons and coloured paper and stickers and and textured paper and calligraphy inks and sealing wax. Even charcoals and pencils, where there are shades of greys. I am one of those people who, as a friend said, "has religious experiences in the stationery aisle." It's all so pretty that I sometimes just get pretty paper and ogle/pet it a lot, and am afraid to DO anything with it because the paper by it self is so nice that I'm afraid nothing I do with it will improve upon it. But sometimes I do, and it turns out all right.

I draw sometimes, and love the creative zone I get into where time passes and I have to forcibly bring myself back to the regular world after a while because I'm having so much fun I forgot to pee or eat or whatever. I also sometimes do sort of collages with coloured paper, or paint things with acrylics or watercolours.

[gleomstapa]

Oh gosh, paper. Nice paper is great to feel and even greater to write on (whee, calligraphy!). I tend to accumulate more pretty blank notebooks than I can fill, just because they have so much possibility - until I write in them they're potentially full of all the things.

[hapax]

@Nenya & gleomstapa: Have you ever tried making your own paper?

It's easy and great fun (in a gloriously stinky and gloopy sort of way) and the paper that results is so infused with personality and character that I am sometimes tempted to hand people a blank sheet and think, "they'll know what it means."

[gleomstapa]

I have - any crafts project that lets me make a mess gets a thumb's up from me (hence also the clay, and little bits of fabric everywhere, and flour all over the kitchen). Great fun, like you said. Though it's a good thing it can speak for itself, since I've usually had it turn out rough enough to make writing difficult.

Have you ever marbled paper? That's another fun thing, from a fluid dynamics point of view as well as an artistic one. It's normally hard to see what happens when you drag a fork though a fluid, but if paint's there and the fluid is viscous you can see the most amazing things - and then preserve them as pretty paper afterwards!

[Mike Timonin]

Oooo, paper and hand writing. I didn't even THINK of those. Origami is one of my go-to fidgets. I make cranes out of receipt tape while waiting for some members of the family to finish eating at restaurants - I release the cranes into the wild. I hope they make a server or another diner smile when they find them.

I tell my students about a former student who used to do origami as I lectured, as an example of a kinetic learning technique. He made boxes and complex multi-unit sculptures. At some point, someone else must have told him to stop (it was a little distracting), and his grades dropped. :(

And, hand writing. I complimented an older student on his choice of writing instrument - he used a fountain pen - and he gave me a pair of his disposable pens. Apparently, he buys them by the gross from Amazon. I lurve writing with a fountain pen, and always have. I've mentioned it before; I don't do it often, due to left-handedness and thus the dragging my hand through the ink thing, but the sensation of the pen on the paper is just so ... elegant, so I've been using them for short notes when a ball point would work just as well, but isn't as satisfying.

[Froborr]

I have never been particularly enamored of paper (perhaps oddly for a writer), for much the same reason I do not care for yarn: it is dry and crumply and kind of scratchy. But I absolutely adore gel pens. They just feel so nice when they glide across the page, and they work perfectly with my (lack of) penmanship.

[Caretaker of Cats]

I like working with beads, polymer clay, and yarn. I like the sensory experience of working with each medium. Beads fit together nicely, polymer clay is color you can squoosh, and I like making soft fluffy warm things (=shawls) out of yarn.

[Kit Whitfield]

I have never been particularly enamored of paper (perhaps oddly for a writer)

Not that oddly; I hate holding a pen. I suspect my early education - I was young for my year so my motor skills were behind, so I got told I had 'bad handwriting' from the time I tried to write, hence I rather tense up whenever I have to hold a pen or pencil. I like the material of language, but the materials we record it on are a different question.

[Izzy]

I really *like* pens. But my handwriting sucks, and writing for any length of time kills my wrist. So barring game notes and similar, I use a computer.

I like fabric and thread, particularly brightly-colored sorts, which is one of the reasons I'm teaching myself to sew. I also really like gemstones and metal, but jewelry-making per se isn't my talent, and I have a lot of friends who do it.

I love, immoderately and ridiculously, stickers: smiley faces, adhesive rhinestones, those little googley eyes. I have nothing to put them on most of the time, though I may decide to go wild with my laptop cover.

[Lonespark]

Goooogly eyes!
I think one of the best things about having young kids is the opportunity to indulge in Wacky Craft Projects at a moment's notice. Picture frames decorated with feathers, pompoms, and multi-colored googly eyes in a range of sizes? Sure, why not!

[Rakka]

I've picked up a number of crafts in the last few years, but I think I love iron the best. Smithing is just too awesome. Iron is malleable and hard, beautiful and practical, and working on it is hot and exhausting and exhilarating. I also like clay, which is fun to work (although I need to practice my throwing - haven't done anything on a wheel since I was a kid) and it's a lovely practice of using all the elements to bring forth something new and beautiful. And stone is good too... and all of these need spesific tools to work on and I haven't got a stable access to them anymore and wahhh.

I also do a good bit of work on yarn and fabric, due to the whole living history thing. I do naalbinding a lot, and weave cloth on warp weighted loom, and hand sew fabric and leather and they are all fun, too, but not nearly as satisfying as smithing.