I craft history.

There is a hash tag, or promotional phrase I have been hearing lately regarding Plimoth Plantation, #icrafthistory. What an interesting phrase,  I craft history.  I know it is strange but craft is one of my pet peeve words. In high school when I was called crafty it would get under my skin. In my head it implied, simple, anyone could do it, easy, and worse of all cheap. It was degrading.

Now I get, "you're so talented," or "you made that?". It feels good, it feels like I am on the right path. I heard for the first time the phrase Artisan last year regarding some of the talented people I worked with. It was hearing about the staff who build, talk, cook, sew and do pottery as Artisans and it felt like a word that fit with me as well. I had been told by an art teacher in high school that sewing wasn't an art. That I couldn't use embroidery for my final project.  I told her I was going to design my own pattern.  That wasn't enough. I had to have 5 different kinds of stitches, the original drawing,  the grid drawing, have it mounted and more than 12 color changes. Even then she said it was to crafty. I wanted to cry.

If only she could have seen what I see. In every stitch there is a story. It was a girl sitting on a stone wall looking at a sun rise. I go home, see that piece in my bed room and think that is my life. To her art was on paper or sculptures. For me art, and history was around me. My home was art. Every wood was connected by my father and grandfather's loving hands. It's color decided because it was the perfect shade of green. In the yard trucks and tractors in various stages of repair. Want to see art? A tractor or truck rusted to time, barely running going again looking and sounding brand new like just came off the line. Inside the smell of amazing meals, the ingredients from our own garden.

In my life today I spend seconds to hours to days crafting a variety of different items keeping my sanity in check while honoring the talent and love of the women who did this not for the art but for the necessary implementation.  If they didn't make bread there was no bread, no socks than their feet got cold, and no logs cut meant they got rained on or had no fire in their homes. So here's to those busy homemakers (crafters). I am history by what I craft and I keep those memories alive.