A notebook

I've been thinking about simplicity. So much of crafting is tied up in the idea of simplicity. Which is strange, because so much of what crafters do is complex. Knitting and brick-laying are both additive tasks. Stitch after stitch. Brick after brick. But only one of them is popularly imagined as simple and meditative. There's a Barthesian thing here, maybe? Where we tell ourselves a small public fiction (“knitting is more simple and beautiful than brick laying”) to imply a larger but unspoken fiction (“labour undertaken inside the home is spiritually fulfilling in a way that precludes payment”). I'm being facetious, but only a little.

And I also worry about the urge to simplicity in more general terms. I don't believe in “one weird trick” for happiness. I'm suspicious of anyone selling one. The world is complex. The desire to simplify it is a desire to make it a little more dead for the sake of peace. The desire to simplify ourselves is the desire to replace a living question with a taxidermy answer. So when I see “simplifying” lifestyle consumer choices pedalled as a solution (“Life Coaches HATE her! Click now!”) I bristle. We know that the cottage-core to TERF pipeline exists. Learning to make your own cordage is, for some, a gateway drug that takes them towards anarcho-primitive style eugenics. I don't trust craft with tidy ideologies.

But, even as I say all that, I'm craving simplicity right now. I'm heading into a period of uncertainty employment and education-wise. I can scoff all I like about other people's taxidermy answers, but looking into the maw of 2023 I'm acutely aware of how comforting it would be to be looking into glass eyes instead. Pretending otherwise would be a version of the fake simplicity I'm concerned about.

The urge for simplicity has come through in a few ways. I've learned neovim, a command-line text editor that strips away everything but writing quickly. I've been working on a patchwork quilt made from hideous fish fabric. And I've been designing weaving and knitting charts based around the idea of “fewest possible variations”.

The weaving charts aren't going to be novel for anyone who has ever woven. I'm planning to buy a new loom next year, and deciding how many shafts I need. My gut is that if I'm going to drop hundreds of pounds on a piece of equipment, then it should be an item that will allow me to do as much complexity as I'll ever want. But, before I spend huge amounts of money, I wanted to see how complex a pattern could be woven on only a few shafts. (A shaft, for those who aren't into weaving, equates to one, repeatable pattern row. So a basic over/under plain-weave would take only two shafts. Entry level looms often have 4 shafts, which allows weaving of twill fabric. More complex home looms can have up to 24 shafts.)

The charts below show two motifs weavable from one simple 3 shaft arrangement. Drawing them out made me realise that even with this small a “palette” of shafts, it would still be possible to draw expressive lines.

The knitting chart was an attempt to realise a gradient in a small number of stranded motifs. I started by drawing 9 3x3 motifs, and adding one additional coloured stitch into each. Then, by repeating and reflecting these motifs, a gradient of sorts emerges. I was surprised by the soft geometry this created. Something like the horizontal bands of a slow worm. Or the traditional OXO pattern dissolving into static.

I think my takeaway here is that simplicity, at the small scale, can support complexity at a larger scale. That maybe I am allowed to enjoy the comfort of simplicity in small things. When we break our activities down atomically enough, they are all simple. Looking at it this way, I can re-frame my desire for simplicity as a response to alienation. I am tired of looking at the big picture. I would like to go back to painting it. I can imagine a version myself skilled at this switch in perspective, able to move gracefully from the scale of the canvas down to the brush stroke and back. A rhythm of seeing as natural as breath, not preferring the in or the out.