Devil in the Details

by Jennifer Traig

  She was very serious about form and technique. Oh, sometimes we used kits, and sometimes we did lazy amateur crafts, making Shrinky Dinks and oven-baked stained glass panels, but mostly we learned to make things from scratch. “Machine-quilted,” she would sniff, examining pieces that failed to pass her muster at quilt shows. We learned to look down our noses at un-lined home tailoring and acrylic blends. In all other areas she believed in taking the easy route, but she insisted that craft work and pudding-making be done the hard way. No shortcuts. Except for the soap operas and swearing, we might as well have been Amish. We spent our days working on swatches and samplers, practicing needlework’s most archaic forms. Cross-stitch was just an entree. We learned bargello and candlewicking, crewel and tatting. Had we also been given pianoforte lessons, and been born about two hundred years earlier, we would have been quite the marriageable young ladies.

  As it was we were kind of dorks, but that suited me fine. I was just relieved we weren’t being forced to play outside. I knew kids whose mothers locked them out of the house on the grounds that fresh air was good for you. Surely these mothers hadn’t gotten a lungful of the pesticide-rich oven-hot ether that hung over our California farm town. In summer, the temperature normally hovered around 110, and the air was as fresh and healthy as that at a Soviet smog inspection station.

  But inside it was cool and pleasant, and the worst thing our mother subjected us to was macrame. Seventies crafting was fairly dismal, it’s true. We latch-hooked wall hangings in yellows and browns using kits depicting the popular figures of the day – the Bionic Man, the Fonz, the Waltons. We fashioned clunky pottery whose leaded glazes gave us headaches. In the kitchen, we crafted our own granola bars and yogurt. What child wants to play with yogurt?

  On the other hand, the regulations regarding toxic materials were much more lax in the ‘70s, and we got to work with substances whose fumes left us pleasantly high. Our favorite was a strange and fairly pointless bubble-making kit you could find in the children’s section of any craft store. You squeezed a blob of malleable plastic from a tube and placed it at the end of a straw, which you blew through, transforming the blob into a bubble colored like a gasoline rainbow. This, in fact, is exactly what it smelled like. It was completely absorbing, between the fumes and the paraphernalia, and became very popular among the children of the ‘70s, preparing some of us for future careers as crackheads.

  The brain damage sustained from using these materials may explain the crafty atrocities my sister and I created in the ‘80s. We put our background in classical needlework to good use Beadazzling our acid-washed jean jackets. We beaded armloads of Madonna wanna-be bracelets and spattered our clothes with Jackson Pollack-style squiggles in neon fabric paint. We stenciled carefully cut-up sweatshirts with new-wave slogans that urged passersby to “Chill Out!” or warned them we were “Bitchen and Bewitchen.”

  The crafts at Hebrew school just couldn’t compete. There, our craft supplies were limited to burlap and glue. These two materials were the sole components of almost everything we made, from scratchy pageant costumes to charmless rustic wall hangings. On a good day, we might make clumsy havdalah candles or faded sukkah garlands, but these never managed to sustain my interest. They were dusty and colorless, lacking the spangly appeal of the things I made at home. I was, however, quite taken with the sixth-grade sugar cube Masada. I’m not sure whose idea it was to teach us this important history lesson by having us fashion the mountaintop bulwark out of coffee accompaniments, but the upshot was that we ended up snacking on the Jewish people’s most tragic martyr site. That the cubes were coated in white glue deterred us not one bit. “It just makes it easier to eat two or three at a time,” we enthused.

  But if there was supposed to be some sort of lesson, it didn’t stick. I never learned to associate craft with creed, mosaic with Mosaic. I just wasn’t interested in crocheting prayer book cozies or tallis bags. I’m not sure why. The only working artist I knew, my cousin, made religious art. She was Isaac Bashevis Singer’s illustrator and she painted lots of shtetl scenes, portraits of women lighting Shabbat candles and men donning tefillin. I was suitably impressed but felt no need to create ritual art of my own. In part, I was afraid I would do it wrong, breaking some unknown law by gluing pom-pom trim on a challah cover. But mostly I just wasn’t all that compelled. I liked making things I could wear. If there were some religious paraphernalia that would go well with my red denim mini, I would have made scores. But there wasn’t.

  Religious as I was, my projects were always secular; my sister’s were always profane. At one point it became her habit to paint obscenities in tidy cursive at the bottom of teacups she fashioned so carefully in ceramics class. You’d finish your Earl Grey only to find a polite request to go screw yourself. The saucer announced, “Suck it.”

  That was just fine with our mother. The main thing was that we were productive. Create, create, create. Every summer we filled the house with our crafty detritus, our braided rugs and hand-loomed pot holders, our colorful accessories spun from recycled rags. A pyramid of creations grew and grew on the designated arts and crafts table, or, as our mother called it, the “arts and craps table,” because there was always so much shit on it.

  “It looks like Colonial Williamsburg in here,” our father would mutter, coming home from work and finding nowhere to place his briefcase but on a stack of hand-painted trivets.

  He did not share our enthusiasm. Although he has a fine eye and a sure hand – I once came across a sketch of a crumpled napkin he’d drawn on a place mat while we waited for our food and was amazed by its sensitive detail – his interests lie elsewhere. He expresses himself creatively by rewiring the hi-fi components and packing the trunk for family trips.

  Our father had reason to be wary of our crafts. He was often the victim of our artistic endeavors, the recipient of our misguided creations. For his birthday one year I made him a puffy pipe holder from quilt batting, cardboard, and calico. The end result was a cute ‘n’ cozy country craft that somehow managed to emasculate pipe-smoking, the most manly hobby in the world. My sister made him a hand-shaped ashtray whose fingers promptly broke off, leaving only the middle finger extended and whole. He was delighted, and it remained on the coffee table for weeks, offending all visitors, until it was finally relegated to a new home under the kitchen sink.

  Although my father is such a conservative dresser he won’t even wear jeans, we were undaunted. We provided him with a loud, ill-fitting wardrobe every year, subjecting him to garish ties, flamboyant hats, belly-baring vests that had turned out too short, floppy sweaters that had turned out too long. Sometimes the tastelessness was by accident and sometimes it was by design. It is a fact that my mother once spent months embroidering his surgical scrubs with a colorful R. Crumb – inspired panel that proudly proclaimed him ‘BORN TO BOOGIE’ in big puffy letters. Even his own mother betrayed him, making him yarmulkes from crushed velvet and gold trim that resembled nothing so much as Victorian lamp shades.

  Though he hates clutter, he is a sweet and sentimental man who never throws away anything his children have made for him. This is baggage for life, and we keep giving him more. As recently as last year, I made him a ‘fruit case’: a hand-painted wooden box, lined in purple fun fur, designed to protect the pears he complains always get smashed when they go on picnics.

  From time to time he tried to get us to tone things down, to slow the pace of production. When I was about five he became alarmed by the amount of fabric in the house – you could open a closet and be faced with a solid wall of gabardine – and asked my mother not to buy any more until she could make a dent in her back stock. She tried, but she couldn’t always control herself. One of my earliest memories is of a trip my mother and sister and I made to San Francisco while my father was at a conference. We spent the entire day driving from one fabric store to the next. In between, my mother dashed into shops to buy us bribes – a doughnut, an ice-cream cone, a candy bar – quizzing us before sh
e handed them over: “What are you going to tell Daddy we did today?’ ‘We went to the museum’. ‘Very good. Have a cruller.” By the end of the day I was covered in eczema and vomiting into paper bags. This was the day we learned I was allergic to chocolate, and the day I learned to associate crafting with sweetness and excess.

  We knew no restraints. Every summer witnessed a bumper crop of whatever craft had captivated us that particular year, our creations filling the house like so much zucchini. In 1981 we got caught in a cross-stitch frenzy and covered all available surfaces with our tiny x’s. Another year it was needlepoint, and we churned out a variety of accoutrements, stitching over plastic canvas that could easily be made into cigarette cases, Bible covers, or, as we favored, simple wall hangings. Borrowing the popular catchphrase of the day, we needlepointed ‘Love is…’ canvases for everyone we knew. ‘Love is Grandparents’ went over big, but ‘Love is the Pool Guy’ was met with bewilderment. Our efforts were further compromised by the fact that it was tricky to needle out legible letters and the recipients often couldn’t read the mangled messages. ‘Low is the Hoonet’? the Hoovers asked. ‘Lay us the Hooker’?

  We just didn’t know when to stop, and our mother egged us on. “Don’t let good taste hold you back,” she urged. She always encouraged us toward the unsavory and the insipid, favoring fartsy over artsy. She herself once made my father an anatomically correct flasher doll from pantyhose stuffed with quilt batting, complete with a Brillo-topped crotch and a tiny trench coat. More recently she made a quilt that featured a little cabin amid some trees. When I remarked that it looked like Ted Kaczynski’s shack, she was delighted and immediately embroidered ‘KEEP OUT. FBI, THIS MEANS YOU’ on the cabin’s front door.

  We remain her proteges. We both went on to quasi careers in crafts, me writing craft books, my sister selling ceramics. Because I write for children, I try to keep it clean, but my sister has no such compunctions. She puts her art school education to good use making the line of ‘Shitbucket’ teacups she feels compelled to produce. They sell remarkably well, but even if they didn’t, she’d have to make them anyway. We were raised to believe that nothing is more important than giving outlet to our crassest artistic impulses. It informs everything we do. Even at her day job as a waitress, Vicky used to express herself much as she does with her ceramics, scrawling “Have a nice day, jerkoff!” inside customers’ takeout containers. Well, we all have our missions.

  In the Bible the big craftsman is Bezalel, whose name means “resting in the shade of the Divine,” a fitting appellation for one so cool. I’ve always admired him, with his competence and easy assurance. We never hear about his self-doubts. “Are the acacia and gold leaf working together here?” “Do the purple and blue clash?” “Am I really good enough?” Moses asks that question all the time, but Bezalel just gets down to work. He’s charged with the most important commission in human history and he just plows ahead, making the Ark of the Covenant as though he’s assembling an entertainment center from IKEA, no sweat. By way of explanation we are told, simply, that he is “wise-hearted.”

  I’m just wise-assed. This is what happens when you learn to cross-stitch by making samplers that read “If Jackasses Could Fly, This Place Would Be an Airport.” I never learned to play it straight. It’s rare that I craft ritual objects, but when I do, they tend to be kitschy commentaries on the form, items like a Dr. Dre’dl or a Neil Tzedakah box.

  For the most part I just don’t make them at all. For me, crafting is the ritual. It’s as comforting as reciting psalms, a meditative practice akin to prayer. It controls my tics and hushes my ruminations. It’s secular but spiritual. I never feel as peaceful as I do when I’m elbow-deep in a project. And on those summer days, sitting on the air-conditioning vent while I needled out chestnuts like “We Don’t Swim in Your Toilet…” I felt as contented as I ever could. Not like I was resting in the shade of the Divine, maybe, but pretty cool nonetheless.

  INTERSTITIAL

  FUN THINGS YOU CAN MAKE WITH KLEENEX

  Think Kleenex is just for runny noses? Well, think again! It has more uses than duct tape. Versatile and sanitary, it’s the crafter’s miracle material. Here are some project ideas to get you started.

  Hats

  There’s nothing like a new hat to pick you up when you’re feeling down, or when you’re feeling an overwhelming, mind-pricking need to cover your head in prayerful submission. So what do you do when you don’t have a hat handy? Make one yourself! Simply unfold a Kleenex and place it on your head. Voila! It’s holy, hygienic, and high fashion. Wear it in the rain and you’ll have instant papier-mache – it’s two crafts in one!

  Gloves

  Fingerless gloves are all the rage. Raging infection, that is. Lacy and insubstantial, they offer no protection against disease, and since they appeal to trashy girls who like to try them on even though they don’t have enough cash to buy them, because they spent all their money on tattoos, yours probably came home from the store already loaded with germs. Toss your pair right in the garbage! You can craft a pristine replacement from your trusty Kleenex. Simply wrap Kleenex around your palm and you’re done. Now you’re sporting a trendy accessory that keeps disease at bay. The next time you need to open a door or shake a hand, line your palms with these handy helpers!

  Seat Cushions

  Seat cushions are a great project for the novice crafter. Just whip together a quick casing and slip it over a store-bought pillow form. In minutes, you’ve got a beautiful new cushion and a host of new contaminants – those pillow forms are just loaded! Forget the pillow form and craft your own by stuffing a Ziploc bag full of Kleenex. Cover with casing as usual. On second thought, why not skip the casing entirely? That fabric, I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem clean. The Ziploc bag, too. But what about the seat itself? That’s definitely not clean. So let’s just cover the seat with a fluffy nest of Kleenex. Sure, it’s not as cushy as a nice tufted cushion, but what’s more comfortable than knowing you’re free from seat-borne contaminants?

  Slippers

  What to do when all the tissues get used up in a large-scale can-dusting emergency? Don’t despair! The Kleenex may be gone, but the fun continues. Empty Kleenex boxes make a fine pair of shoes, favored by stylish jet-setters like Howard Hughes himself. Perfectly hygienic and orthopedic to boot (hah!), they’ll protect your feet from contaminants like bacteria, feces, impure thoughts, and death.

  ∨ Devil in the Details ∧

  Sunrise, Sunset: The Holidays

  For the better part of my childhood, my Catholic mother was charged with my Jewish education. She was armed only with an LP of Fiddler on the Roof and a copy of How to Be a Jewish Mother a friend had given her as a joke. As a result, my early religious instruction consisted mostly of heavy sighs and gestures directed at the ceiling. “Such children I have,” my mother prayed, lifting an open palm skyward. “Oy vey. The questions they ask.” Our questions were mostly about the holidays. The holidays are the sticking point of the interfaith family, the time at which differences are most noticeable and worrisome. We weren’t particularly concerned about our immortal souls, but we did want to know if there would be presents and candy and a day off from school. My mother was straightforward and honest, answering our theological questions with admirable frankness: No, Santa Claus didn’t exist. The Easter Bunny was a fraud. And yes, the Tooth Fairy was totally, totally gay. A few years ago I found the stash of baby teeth and letters we’d exchanged for half-dollars over the years. Following my mother’s instructions, we’d addressed our letters “Dear Bruce.”

  She was a good teacher. If we asked her a theological question she couldn’t answer, she responded in philosophical Tevye fashion, “The sun rises, the sun sets. What are you going to do?”

  The sun rises, the sun sets. It was more apt than my mother realized. This, in a phrase, was our family holiday experience. It was light and dark, good and bad, Catholic and Jewish, obsessive and compulsive. There were no matchmakers, no fiddler
s, and no Cossacks, but vodka – there was a little of that.

  WINTER

  In December of 1974, the local newspaper ran a picture of my family trying to stuff a Christmas tree into our Volkswagen Beetle. There’s my father, a Norman Rockwell figure with furrowed brow, pipe, and Coke-bottle glasses, struggling mightily with the tree while my mother and my sister and I, little Chers in ponchos and pigtails, look on with mild alarm. It was intended as a cute lifestyle photo, but as far as our family was concerned it was hard news. It was the first and last time we actually paid for a tree.

  We weren’t cheap so much as lazy. When you wait until December 24, no one’s going to charge you for the crisp, teetering remains. Sometimes the lot let us have the tree for free. Other times we were given one by a school or a business already closed for the holiday. Usually we pulled a prematurely discarded tree off a neighbor’s trash pile. One year we struck out entirely and had to decorate a houseplant instead, its tiny pathetic branches bending with the weight of a few tin ornaments. “A Christmas fern.” My mother sighed. “It’s the saddest, silliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a Christmas twee.”

  I’m not sure why we bothered with a tree at all. Decorating the tree was always an exercise in dysfunction, the occasion of our biggest annual family fight. My mother got annoyed because no one was doing enough to help; my sister and I sulked because my mother was yelling at us; and my father tried to look busy with some ancillary activity, mixing eggnog or adjusting the hi-fi to maximize the sound quality of the holiday sound track. We plowed through the job sullen and mute, shooting one another hostile looks as we piled on crocheted snowflakes, glitter-encrusted sugarplums, garish blinking lights, and a flurry of tinsel icicles. Being a family that refuses to throw anything away, we had hundreds of ornaments, half of them bent or broken but all of them still in play. We kept on decking until the tree was tarted up like a North Florida stripper. At that point we crowned the sagging mass with a fraying straw star: ta da, it was done. My mother stepped back to admire our work, swirling a glass of eggnog nearly brown with bourbon. “Well, that looks craptacular,” she announced. “Happy Birthday, J.C.”