Artistic, by Betsy

As a youngster in school or Girl Scout meetings, arts and crafts was always one of my favorite activities.   I am very grateful for the time spent making things because I still enjoy making things. So when I started thinking about today’s topic, I naturally pondered the question what is the difference between an art and a craft. 

I decided that art is a creation of the imagination, a craft is the result of making something by hand which is a copy or an impression or a depiction of something else. Further investigation reveals that the word craft comes from an old English then German word originally meaning strength then later, skill.  Skill is the key word here when it comes to the word origin.  However, the meaning for me is broader inasmuch as I have crafted many an item without the application of an ounce of skill.  At least so it would seem.

In my dotage I have taken up the craft of counted cross stitch.  My friend Carlos has shown some beautiful examples of his work.  The two main skills required for this craft are patience and good eye sight.  Also being systematic about transferring the pattern from a paper to the cloth is essential. 

Is this art? Technically, in my opinion it is not.  I may be creating a piece based on a painting or an artist’s rendition of an object or a scene.  It is imagination that produces the image upon which my craft is based.  That’s the work of art.  Designing the cross stitch pattern and then stitching it is the craft.   Does it matter to me which it is called? No.  Call it art, call it a craft, I really don’t care. I enjoy doing it. Another of its assets is that it’s a great filler activity very useful when watching sports on TV, when waiting for commercials to end, or when watching something entertaining which doesn’t require a lot of concentration (which is most of television, by the way.)  Other times when it is a useful activity are when waiting or when one can’t sleep. 

A few years ago in our travels to the National Parks, I noticed in the gift shops, cross-stitch kits of scenes from whatever park we were visiting.  So I bought that first kit that I found, and have been buying them and completing them since.  So far I have Monument Valley, Zion NP, Rocky Mountain NP, and I am currently working on Arches NP.  I think it will be another year or maybe two before I finish Arches as it is quite large; that is, if I work on it regularly.

 My last visit to a National Park was about a month ago when we spent a day at Denali NP in Alaska, home of Mt. McKinley now called Mt. Denali. I found no craft kits in their gift shop, but later in Anchorage I came upon a craft shop that had cross-stitch patterns for typical Alaskan flowers and animals. As a result of going into that shop I have now, I think, four or five cross-stitch projects waiting to be started.  Considering that some projects can take two, three, or even four years to complete, I realize I better get on with it.  So many projects, so little time.

By the way, I also knit baby blankets, so if any of you are expecting to be expecting in the near future, let me know early on (before you are showing) so I can get started on a baby blanket.

Ahh! So many projects, so little time.

  

© 8 Sep 2014 

About the Author  

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change).  She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren.  Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

Camping: With Apologies to Certain HOMOPHOBIC Boys Organizations by Ray S

The stair treads creaked and groaned when I took another step up to the attic storeroom of my grandma’s old Victorian house.

When I was a kid my folks, my brother, and I lived with Gram for about three or four years. Dad had been transferred from his post at Rocky Mountain National Park, back to the Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was supposed to be a temporary posting, so Gram’s house in an Annapolis suburb was where we all lived. My brother and I joined the Boy Scouts of America having already completed the prerequisite Cub and Webelos servitude back in Estes Park, Colorado.

Now, some twenty-two years later I return to Londontowne, MD to help with the disposal of the house’s furnishings in preparation for the sale of the house. Gram had decided to check up on our grandpa and see what shenanigans he might have gotten into since he had died some seventeen years earlier.

I reach the room that had always been set aside for storing old steamer trunks and miscellaneous luggage, out-of-style clothes and furniture, baby diapers (just in case one of the grand children produced another leaf on the family tree), old school books, high school and college yearbooks. There even is Gramp’s Army Air Corps uniform.

Digging around in a far corner I find my old camping stuff—the mess kit, canteen, and a number of merit badges that were never sewn onto our uniforms. Gram used to say: “Never know when these things will be needed again” or “Waste not, want not.

There it is—my official BSA pup tent! My search was over. My mission to the attic jungle room was to find the little tent to give to my neophyte Boy Scout nephew just in time for the upcoming Jamboree this summer.

Boy, does this bring back memories. I learned a lot more than knot tying and lanyard weaving in the clandestine shelter of that two-boy tent. Scouting covered a lot more territory than hikes, campfires, and all the pages in the manual. Adolescent boys came to Scouts but left Scouts—for better or for worse—as budding young men. Any vague acknowledgement in the manual, relative to sex education was unheard of and besides what hadn’t you already picked up in the boys' room at middle school?

There was stuff you knew, you were warned about or outright threatened over and forbidden to do. Of course, that said, the warnings made it all the more tempting, even if some of us were just following the leader. The high point occurred when four or five of our troop hung out in the dark of a vacant garage was what is poetically named a “circle jerk.” Curiosity always spurred you on to pursue the forbidden fruits or in future years of the joys of hetero-, homo-, or bi- or just plain fooling-around sex.

Scouting camping is such fun, character building, healthful, teaches you how to get along with your fellows. Hopefully discouraging bullying and taking the Lord’s name in vain. Scouts Honor! And so many more virtues, and believe it or not, some of these do rub off (or in) to keep the spirit of “Love thy neighbor” alive in you all your life.

Of course there is a hidden disclaimer, just like the TV ads for miracle drugs, for all of the above; Parents, do you know where your little Boy Scout is or was?

Any volunteers for a sleep-over in a two-person pup tent on a camping outing?

© 17 March 2014

About the Author