I miss CRAFT

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, and now that I'm trying hard to avoid writing the article that I'm supposed to be completing, it's probably the perfect time to do so. I miss the printed version of CRAFT magazine. Even though some of the projects were dumb (I'm putting this nicely), I loved seeing what people were coming up with. I learned to embroider by reading CRAFT--an outcome that I think was worth the price of my subscription, given the halo of serenity I've learned to create for myself while embroidering (at baseball games, on airplanes, while playing seemingly unending board games with my fractious children....).

The columns (especially Susie Bright's) were often really good, and even when I disagreed with them, they helped me think through some of the theoretical issues that handwork constantly raises for me (like the blurry relationship between "art" and "craft" [something Jennifer New has been writing about], connections between handwork and environmental sustainability, the power of handwork to nurture social relationships and communities, etc.).

I wanted to be excited about getting issues of CRAFT's sister publication, MAKE, in place of CRAFT....but so far, MAKE doesn't grab me. I generally ignored articles about electronics in CRAFT, and there's a lot more of these (plus lots of computer stuff) in MAKE. On the up side, Elliot seems somewhat interested in these features, especially now that he's learning more advanced stuff about computer programming from his father.

I sure hope Threads never goes out of business. That would be a really, really sad day for me....