Soupbone Collective

To All the Crafts I've Lost

Calla Norman

On a late spring morning, I was at work in the office, and as I was yapping with a colleague, my hands reached for a square Post-It that had been left abandoned on the table. My fingers folded it into tinier squares, and as I absentmindedly played with it my friend asked, “Are you trying to make a cootie catcher?”

And I was, although I always called it a fortune catcher. You know, the peaked structure which unfolds into numbers, colors, and eventually fortunes. Or, you can turn it into a beaked puppet, as I have been known to do. I had folded my Post-It into fourths, folded that into half, and then, I was stuck. You pinch it in here, right? Why isn’t it doing what I want it to?

I had completely forgotten how to make this, out of the probably hundreds I’d made in childhood. Where did that knowledge go?

Gone with all the other embodied skills I picked up and put down throughout my life. Lyrics forgotten, fingerings missed on a once beloved and obligated instrument, theories on how to properly draw an eye.

Part of it obviously was a lack of proper materials. No matter what way you fold it, a Post-It is simply too small to feasibly make into a fortune catcher.

I have an easel in my closet that’s been there for probably thirteen years. My grandmother got it for me when she tried to teach me how to paint. I didn’t understand why I had to layer paint, what the point of priming the canvas was if my background was going to be white anyway, and pretty much gave up because I wasn’t immediately good at it. The first painting I was supposed to make was of a calla lily, but the curvature was all wrong. I knew I’d never be able to make the shadow of the lip of the flower fall right, so what was the point in even trying? Now, I watch painting videos of experts breaking it all down, and it still doesn’t compute.

There’s this push-pull between wanting to pick up these crafts again, to make them a part of my daily practice, and in just letting them lie. One can only do so many things, and is it not better to just focus on one or two, and getting better at them? At the same time, I can’t stand the thought of purchasing more craft supplies and having all that clutter - although the ghosts of that clutter I feel will always be in the back of my mind.

Crafts I’ve Lost

Something that the adults in my life always told me when I’d whine that I was bored is, “Boredom is a choice.” Or, a bit more bitingly, “Only stupid people get bored.” While I wonder if that was some method of getting me out from under their feet (I understand now, since as I type this there is a bored dog currently barking at me trying to get me to play with him), I think that this is one of the pieces of advice or admonishment that’s still affecting me - the drive to always be doing something.

Several friends I know are into crochet and knitting. They’ll whip out yarn and needles whenever given the chance: work meetings, Lord of the Rings extended edition marathons, lazy afternoons, baseball games, the possibilities are endless. Watching them, I think it’s a good way to pass the time, and part of me is attracted by the idea of having some kind of embodied thing to do while I try to get through the hours in a day.

Lately that’s been my relationship with time, trying to just get through the day, not necessarily feeling engaged, treating the day as if it were a chore I just need to get through. Would having a craft to work on help? Being able to sit with my fingers in motion and at the end of the day have something to show for my time, to insist that I was here, even if I was just sitting on the couch.

Looking at the list, even though I couldn’t tell you the first step in making an acrylic painting or crochet, and the last time I thought of a piano keyboard was trying to figure out how many white keys there were for a trivia night question, every one of them has had a role in making the person I am.