Jane Doe
Christy Scheuer
English 102
1 June 2011
Annotated Bibliography
Connelly, Phoebe. “Of Crafts and Causes.” In These Times 30.2 (Feb. 2006): 60-62. ProQuest.
Web. 30 May 2010.
This article is a review of two new DIY (Do-it-yourself) books, ReadyMade: How To
Make (Almost) Everything by Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne and Bazaar Bizarre: Not
Your Granny's Crafts! by Greg Der Ananian. The author of the review explores the question at
the heart of the new DIY movement: Is DIY culture a politically motivated and socially
progressive movement, or is it just a way for hipsters to feel good about recycling a small portion
of the extraordinary amounts of waste that humans create? The answer that Connelly gives is that
the DIY movement can be viewed as potentially socially progressive, but only in a very limited
way; in order to be progressive, the crafts movement must be intentional about its politics and
goals. Tellingly, Connelly quotes Annie Tomlin, who writes,
Some people make overt political statements with their crafted work, while others
just like to ‘make stuff.’ In that latter category, I don’t see a lot of room for
intentional activism. Knitting an iPod cozy alone isn’t going to protect the right to
an abortion. (61)
For both Connelly and Tomlin, it’s important to talk about the intentionality of the artist and the
artwork rather than to blindly celebrate the act of crafting.
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This review will be very useful for my final essay, which will also focus on this question
of whether public knitting, including both knitting circles and yarn bombing, can be politically
subversive. Interestingly, Phoebe Connelly is the managing editor of In These Times, a
“nonprofit, independent, national magazine published in Chicago” that is “fighting for corporate
accountability and progressive government. In other words, a better world” (In These Times).
The magazines stated anti-capitalist biases are interesting, and they will be useful as I consider
this article for my own essay; I can tell that the source shares certain themes and concerns that I
would like to examine. Like Connelly and Tomlin, I believe that the strength and potential social
effects of political art are diluted if we declare all crafting “political.” In order to truly deserve
that name, the art or knitting in question must challenge the status quo, and it cannot be
comfortably self-congratulatory. However, I do think that there is some potentially subversive
potential in the fact that people are gathering together to affirm work and creation.
Etsy Team. “Throw an Etsy Craft Party in Your Town.” Etsy. Etsy. 31 May 2011. Web. 31 May
2011.
This web page includes a short video of the Etsy Craft Team and instructions on how to
“Throw an Etsy Craft Party” or Meet-Up “in Your Town.” Etsy is an online marketplace where
people can sell handmade and vintage goods, and it’s at the center of conversations about making
a living from creating art. (In fact, it’s famous enough to have a very popular parody site,
“Regretsy.”) I found this video and “How To” indicative of an arts movement that thrives off of
a mixture of connections formed on the internet (often through blogs) and local, city or town
based meet-ups. The goal of the movement is to connect with people on a global level but to also
honor local crafts and creation.
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Etsy, as a business, doesn’t really purport to be politically active or subversive, so the
videos and articles produced by the Etsy team are usually fun and playful. However, one of the
things that I found interesting about this video is the overwhelming whiteness of the group; it
seems important to further investigate the demographic of the crafting movement in general or
the Etsy community in particular. I know that there is a group called “Etsy Artists of Color,” and
it would be very useful to interview one of the artists or to “lurk” on their boards. Etsy does try
to champion gender diversity, calling attention to male artists in a subculture that is often
feminized, but there seems to be much less of a focus on racial and ethnic diversity.
Hosegood, Betsy. "Whip Your Hobby into Shape: Knitting, Feminism and Construction of
Gender." Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture 7.2 (2009): 148-163. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 2 June 2011.
Hosegood’s scholarly article examines the gendered (and often feminist) rhetoric used in
contemporary knitting books such as Stitch ‘n Bitch and Domiknitrix: Whip Your Knitting into
Shape. Hosegood notes that these books not only discuss how knitting, “Traditionally associated
with home handicrafts” has “emerged into [a] communal, activist practice” (148), but also how
these books attempt to reclaim links between knitting and eroticism, especially through the
presentation of knitted sex toys and lingerie. Hosegood is also interested in examining how
knitters use public knitting to “blur the distinction between public and private space” (148). For
Hosegood, knitting becomes a way to negotiate the distinctions between those spaces and to
challenge old ideas about the nature of domesticity or femininity.
Hosegood’s analysis is very in-depth and echoes my own experience of knitting circles
and the contemporary rhetoric that surrounds knitting, and her examination of the way that
knitting negotiates traditionally gendered spaces was very astute. The author is a professor of Art
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History at the University of Guelph, and it’s clear that she has a strong sense of the history of
textiles. However, the article as a whole often seemed too affirmative or celebratory, and it
would have been useful to have a more in-depth analysis of whether these practices are truly
subversive (or even what subversive means in this context). Still, I will definitely use
information from this article in my essay, especially in the first few pages as I set up the context.
"Manly Crafts: Mike Kelley's (Oxy)Moronic Gender Bending." Art Journal 69.1/2 (2010): 7491. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 June 2011.
This article, a very dense academic exploration of Mike Kelley’s craft-based artwork,
explores how Kelley explores the gender dynamics inherent in traditional knitwear and
“crafts.” According to the writer (unnamed), Kelley explores the “the economics of giftgiving, in which pieces of thread and fabric are invested with deep emotional content,” but
he does so to present “a perverse surfeit of sappiness, a discomforting sense of hominess
gone haywire” (75). By exaggerating this sense of “comfort,” Kelly provides a critique of
easy domesticity and the emotional baggage or potential emotion blackmail that may lie at
the heart of such an exchange.
The article does point out that some feminist artists have read this movement as
appropriation of a feminine/feminist art, and I’m inclined to agree with some of these more
critical readings. The critique of domesticity is definitely significant and important, but I
question why such a critique needs to come from a male artist. Would it be read in the
same way if a woman had created it? That is, would a female artist creating a
conglomeration of knitwear be compared to Jackson Pollack? Perhaps—and I need reread
the article once I’m feeling less annoyance in order to get a better sense of its possibilities.
Regardless, the artwork itself is fascinating.
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Stalp, Marybeth C. and Theresa M. Winge. "My Collection is Bigger Than Yours: Tales from the
Handcrafter’s Stash.” Home Cultures 5.2 (2008): 197-218. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 1 June 2011.
This peer-reviewed ethnography interviews crafters about their “stash,” or their
accumulation of yarn, fabric, and other items necessary for crafting. The researchers interviewed
women to ascertain their relationships to their stash, asking questions about their emotional
relationship to the stash itself, the links between their actual crafting needs and their buying
habits, and the effects of the stash on their relationships with other people; this is the academic
article version of “hoarding,” essentially. The study concluded that the “handcrafter continues to
acquire and stash fabric, floss and yarn, despite how much space it demands or how the stash
influences their relationship with others” (197). The article discusses crafting as an act of
consumption, then, as well as an act of creating, and at times it seems as if the consumption
overwhelms the creation.
This scholarly article will be useful because it complicates my central thesis about
knitting’s potentially subversive and anti-capitalist potential. After all, knitting seems to cycle
back to individual hoarding and competition, despite its focus on knitting circles and public,
transitory art. Though this source does undercut my most hopeful reading of knitting as a
subculture, the careful documentation of interviews and the scholars’ conclusions must be
acknowledged. The article was also written fairly recently and the interviews were all conducted
in the last ten years, which means that the findings are definitely related to the current knitting
culture.
Wynne, Pamela. “One Hundred Years Ago Today.” Flint Knits: Postindustrial Crafts. 25 March
2011. Web. 20 May 2011.
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Pamela Wynne’s blog, Flint Knits, is a treasure trove of highly politicized and extremely
well-documented academic writing about knitting, and this post, “One Hundred Years Ago
Today,” discusses at the Rally for Working Families in Lansing, Michigan. The goal of the rally
was to protest Governor Rick Synder’s attempts to break up unions and end tax breaks for the
working poor. Wynne connects this rally to an event that occurred “One hundred years ago
today, in New York City” when “a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 workers,
mostly women aged 16-24.” For Wynne, these events are related because the fire was an
example of the often oppressive relationship between workers and owners, and she wants to
encourage people to make their own clothing, to be more mindful of how their clothes are
created, and to work as active advocates for the poor and working class.
Wynne’s blog is always very thoughtfully composed (I read it often!), exploring the
intersection between leftist politics, worker’s rights, and the crafting world, and, most
impressively, her research is extremely well documented. For example, this post has a link to
multiple historical articles about the fire at the Triangle Factory, while the following post has
many links on topics related to the culture of crafting and white privilege. When I read Wynne’s
work, I truly feel like I’m engaging in a fascinating academic conversation, and her blog will be
a very useful resource as I develop my autoethnography.