I Wish My WIP Photos Were More Interesting/aesthetic/intriguing, But Hey. As Long As The Finished Pieces

I wish my WIP photos were more interesting/aesthetic/intriguing, but hey. As long as the finished pieces have those qualities I won't complain too much.

Tagged: #this is a really sad p0st #because y0u have t0 have s0 much hate t0 take s0mething that is literally taught in anger management as a relaxati0n technique and make it n #0t relaxing #y0u kn0w the saying D0 what y0u l0ve and never w0rk a day in y0ur life #it apparently d0es n0t apply t0 this pers0n #n0r d0es hist0ry

Thanks for you expert insight into my psyche and all my hatred. No, I don’t make a “fucking fortune” from my job. I just don’t find it relaxing. I am allowed to not find it relaxing, because it is, unfortunately, not “literally relaxing”. If you find it relaxing: good for you! I never said you, or other people, couldn’t find it relaxing, but I am tired of people assuming that I must find it relaxing. I’m not telling you that you cannot find it relaxing, and all I ask is that other people don’t tell me that I should be finding it relaxing because it “literally is”.  Apparently this is too much to ask.

But here’s the thing: I don’t. I don’t find it relaxing. And I am very much allowed to not find it relaxing. And I will defend my right to experience embroidery as not relaxing. I shall sit here, obscenely sewing without finding it relaxing, defying science itself and the very ordering of the universe with my stubborn refusal to find my job relaxing. I shall lead the subversive revolution of people being allowed to enjoy things they don’t find relaxing, to do things they don’t find relaxing regardless of whether they enjoy it, and to get annoyed when other people tell us that we must find it relaxing. And presumably, with every non-relaxing stitch I sew, a puppy with die and a fairy will lose its wings. 

“I can’t make a living 0ff this and I actually d0 enj0y it.”

You are conflating “relaxing” and “enjoyment”, and then implying that I claimed I didn’t enjoy embroidery, and you even go so far as to later assert that I hate it. You are putting words in my mouth. “relaxing” and “enjoyment” are not the same thing and I never once claimed I didn’t enjoy embroidery. Other things I enjoy without finding relaxing: rollerskating, mountain climbing, writing academic articles, horror movies. 

“ I have n0 idea where y0u’re getting this n0ti0n that embr0dery wasn’t s0ld at high prices.”

Perhaps the reason you have no idea where I got that notion from is because that is not a notion I have, nor one that I expressed. But apart from the fact that that’s not actually a thing I said, the citation for the quote I was discussing is right there in the post. The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker. 

The history of embroidery is long and complicated. When it was sold, it was sold at a high price. When. By the 18th Century it was seen by a large group of people as a leisure activity, something that women did to decorate their homes, NOT something they sold. These are the women I am talking about - I even acknowledge that this ignores other women: “But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour.” 

“I have n0 idea h0w y0u t00k an activity specifically designed and scientifically proven to be relaxing…” (my emphasis)

Citation needed. 

“and made y0urself hate it”

Citation needed. 

The person reading hate into this is you. The person assuming I hate something that I never said I hated is you. I really don’t appreciate being so mis-represented, to have someone claim I said things I never said, and to even go so far as to make assumptions about my mental state and assert that I hate things without any evidence that that is in any way true. And to then imply I don’t know anything about history, or think that it doesn’t apply to me: It’s rude. It’s really, really, rude. 

Finally: There is a reason a whole range and variety of therapies and relaxation techniques exist: it is because different things work for different people. It is because there isn’t one universal thing that has been scientifically proven to work for everyone. And context is important. Sometimes I find cooking relaxing. Sometimes I don't. It's the differences between cooking for myself or my loved ones, cooking recipes I am familiar with or making it up as I go along, and knowing that it can take as long as it takes; and cooking to a deadline, having to strictly follow recipes I'm unfamiliar with for people I'm also unfamiliar with. Embroidery is my job and I still don't find it relaxing.

Don’t tell me embroidery is relaxing.

“By the eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a leisured, aristocratic life style — not working was becoming the hallmark of femininity.” (The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker, 1984: 11)

Women’s work as an oxymoron: if women do it, it cannot be work. Women cannot work, so anything a woman does cannot be work. Therefore, embroidery, actually called ‘work’ by women, cannot be classified as work. It is instead, a leisure pursuit – assuming one is not paid for it. And one cannot be paid for it because it is not work, cannot be work if it is produced by an upperclass woman. To try and pay her for it – for her to try and sell it would be to undermine her husband’s fragile masculinity by implying he cannot support her. But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour. 

I think this is one of the reasons I get irritated by people telling me it must be so relaxing to sew. I don’t find it relaxing. It is work. It is labour and it is my job. I don’t tell other people that their work, their job, the thing they do everyday must be ‘so relaxing’ because that would be an absurd assumption to make. Maybe they do find it relaxing. Or maybe they enjoy it, but don’t find it relaxing because actually it’s hard work and concentration. But it is not my place to assume these things, and of all the questions one could ask about another’s job, whether it is ‘relaxing’ is a strange place to start. What are people implying when they tell me I must find embroidery relaxing? That it’s easy? Unskilled? Requires no concentration? That it’s not work. 

Some people find embroidery relaxing because they do it as a hobby. They do it as a thing which is not their job. Just as some people take up wood-carving as a hobby. But do people tell the professional carpenter that their job must be relaxing because it is considered by others to be a hobby? 

Don’t tell me my job is relaxing. Don’t tell me my job isn’t work. 

I really like how quilts like this start to look a lot like graphic distortion on computer/TV screens. (I love that humans can find even glitches and errors to be aesthetic and wonderful and fascinating).

I finally finished this quilt top tonight-sorry for the poor lighting- I just couldn’t wait! I love how hundreds of scraps from my other projects came together to make something so happy and vibrant. #quilt #quilting #scrapquilt #scrappyquilt #triangle #trianglequilt #wip #colorful #colors

I've also been playing with wire crochet again.

my night manager (who is a gay man) and i sometimes sit down and exchange stories and tidbits about our sexuality and our experiences in the queer cultural enclave. and tonight he and i were talking about the AIDS epidemic. he’s about 50 years old. talking to him about it really hit me hard. like, at one point i commented, “yeah, i’ve heard that every gay person who lived through the epidemic knew at least 2 or 3 people who died,” and he was like “2 or 3? if you went to any bar in manhattan from 1980 to 1990, you knew at least two or three dozen. and if you worked at gay men’s health crisis, you knew hundreds.” and he just listed off so many of his friends who died from it, people who he knew personally and for years. and he even said he has no idea how he made it out alive.

it was really interesting because he said before the aids epidemic, being gay was almost cool. like, it was really becoming accepted. but aids forced everyone back in the closet. it destroyed friendships, relationships, so many cultural centers closed down over it. it basically obliterated all of the progress that queer people had made in the past 50 years.

and like, it’s weird to me, and what i brought to the conversation (i really couldn’t say much though, i was speechless mostly) was like, it’s so weird to me that there’s no continuity in our history? like, aids literally destroyed an entire generation of queer people and our culture. and when you think about it, we are really the first generation of queer people after the aids epidemic. but like, when does anyone our age (16-28 i guess?) ever really talk about aids in terms of the history of queer people? like it’s almost totally forgotten. but it was so huge. imagine that. like, dozens of your friends just dropping dead around you, and you had no idea why, no idea how, and no idea if you would be the next person to die. and it wasn’t a quick death. you would waste away for months and become emaciated and then, eventually, die. and i know it’s kinda sophomoric to suggest this, but like, imagine that happening today with blogs and the internet? like people would just disappear off your tumblr, facebook, instagram, etc. and eventually you’d find out from someone “oh yeah, they and four of their friends died from aids.”

so idk. it was really moving to hear it from someone who experienced it firsthand. and that’s the outrageous thing - every queer person you meet over the age of, what, 40? has a story to tell about aids. every time you see a queer person over the age of 40, you know they had friends who died of aids. so idk, i feel like we as the first generation of queer people coming out of the epidemic really have a responsibility to do justice to the history of aids, and we haven’t been doing a very good job of it.

Don’t tell me embroidery is relaxing.

“By the eighteenth century embroidery was beginning to signify a leisured, aristocratic life style — not working was becoming the hallmark of femininity.” (The Subversive Stitch, Rozsika Parker, 1984: 11)

Women’s work as an oxymoron: if women do it, it cannot be work. Women cannot work, so anything a woman does cannot be work. Therefore, embroidery, actually called ‘work’ by women, cannot be classified as work. It is instead, a leisure pursuit -- assuming one is not paid for it. And one cannot be paid for it because it is not work, cannot be work if it is produced by an upperclass woman. To try and pay her for it -- for her to try and sell it would be to undermine her husband’s fragile masculinity by implying he cannot support her. But all of this is to say nothing of the women who did do embroidery as work, as a living, who did sell their labour. 

I think this is one of the reasons I get irritated by people telling me it must be so relaxing to sew. I don’t find it relaxing. It is work. It is labour and it is my job. I don’t tell other people that their work, their job, the thing they do everyday must be ‘so relaxing’ because that would be an absurd assumption to make. Maybe they do find it relaxing. Or maybe they enjoy it, but don’t find it relaxing because actually it’s hard work and concentration. But it is not my place to assume these things, and of all the questions one could ask about another’s job, whether it is ‘relaxing’ is a strange place to start. What are people implying when they tell me I must find embroidery relaxing? That it’s easy? Unskilled? Requires no concentration? That it’s not work. 

Some people find embroidery relaxing because they do it as a hobby. They do it as a thing which is not their job. Just as some people take up wood-carving as a hobby. But do people tell the professional carpenter that their job must be relaxing because it is considered by others to be a hobby? 

Don’t tell me my job is relaxing. Don’t tell me my job isn’t work.