New Inspiration or What Informs Your Design?
Since Rhinebeck, I have felt a renewed desire to connect with the blogging community and have been far more willing to follow links and spend chunks of time exploring new blogs. I find it really interesting when I hear people talking about how fractured our society is and how sad that we don’t know our neighbors names, typically followed by a well-placed tsk and murmurs of the harmful effects of technology. But, as Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. It may have changed format, but people create community in whatever incarnation their present situation and desire to allows them. For me, technology enables this, and, while it may present new barriers, it also breaks apart old ones. Someone recently interviewed on NPR (I think it may actually have been Studs Terkel) said, “This same technology that can destroy us also preserves us.”
In my recent link excitement, I headed over to Norma’s and from there found my way to this domestic goddess on the other side of the pond. What brought me to Yarnstorm was a picture Norma posted of one of her handmade “ladies.” (That punctuation correctly placed inside the quotations is just for you, Joe.) If you scroll down her page a little, you’ll meet Lettice Maud. She also has a link on the side of her page called “ladies” that takes you to images and stories of her other creations.
As a person who is fairly obsessed with handmade toys and what makes them unique, I am always curious to see who manages to achieve a sense of personality with their creations, and why some turn out to be lumpy, vacuous shells that no child would ever want to touch. Franklin’s recent Do It Yourself post on the value of something handmade sparked off a flurry of comments and more than a few memories. For myself, I can’t stop thinking of Priscilla. The only doll I remember. I was young during that weird portion of the 80s where parents were getting into fist fights in the middle of the store over the last Cabbage Patch Doll. Oh, and I wanted one. But, they were expensive and not even remotely a possibility. I wasn’t a brat, I didn’t complain, but my mother knew.
One night I came home and there was this doll laying on my bed with a red velvet dress and long, brown yarn hair pulled back in two pony tails. My mother, who has always so desperately wanted to give me everything, had her made for me by the mother of somone she worked with and since she was a secretary in a law office at the time, she had real adoption papers drawn up for me by one of the lawyers. I named her Priscilla and she was better than anything I ever got in the store. Plus, real adoption papers. How cool was I?
So, when I find someone who manages to impart life to their homemade items, they find a special place in my heart. So it is with The Ladies of Yarnstorm.
I’m also adding Jodi’s Weblog to the mix. Her work is really fascinating and I’m glad to have discovered her. (I think I linked to her through A Little Bit of Happy at some point.)
It was Jodi’s blog that got me suddenly noticing all the Self-Portrait Tuesdays popping up and it reminded me of the importance of including pictures as we blog. We’re such a highly visual culture. I was going to post one this morning, but can you believe I have not one single set of charged batteries in the whole damn house? (If you knew me, you would believe it in a second).
As I have been floating through the blogoverse, I am realizing how much exposure to creative and inventive people I have. And more than that how we all inspire one another and set off little sparks that inform the path of of our own design pursuits.
October 25th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
amen sista