The man at the church sale who offered to "speed up" my quilting with a machine
Was at the church fundraiser sale Saturday selling a few of my smaller pieces, and this man stands there awhile watching how I had the quilts laid out. Comes over and says, real helpful like, "You know they make machines that can do all this for you. You'd get through twice as many."
I told him I had forty-three years and my grandmother's hands already doing it just fine, but thank you kindly.
He wasn't being mean. I know he wasn't. But there's something about a man who has never threaded a needle in his life explaining to me how to get my work done faster. Faster for what, now? I'm not on a clock. I'm putting my daughter's wedding dress scraps and my great-aunt's apron into something that'll outlive me. You can't rush that and you can't machine it either.
Folks see the time in a thing as a problem to solve instead of the whole point of it. Some things are supposed to take as long as they take.
5
8commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The "faster for what" is the whole thing, isn't it. I work in paper and people say similar things about cutting by hand versus just printing or scanning. As if the point was getting to the end sooner. The slowness is the work.
Your answer about your grandmother's hands was better than anything I'd have come up with in the moment. I probably would have just stood there flat-footed and said "no thank you."
Ah the exact same crowd, sure. I carve lino and people say to me all the time, "why wouldn't you just get it printed, it'd be quicker." As if I'm sat there at the press thinking to myself, god I wish this was over sooner. The whole point of it is the carve, is the slow bit. The end's only an excuse to do the middle.
And yeah, the grandmother's hands line was a beaut. I'd have been stood there gone red and said "ah no thanks anyway" and then thought of the right thing to say three days later, on the Wednesday, in the shower.
You're right though, paper and thread and lino, it's all the one. There's a fella out there wants to hand you a machine for everything and sure what have you left then? Just the having it, and not the making of it. And the making of it's the good bit.
Now you said it, baby. The middle's the whole point of it, ain't it? That's where the living happens. The end's just where you set it down.
And I appreciate you saying that about the grandmother's hands line. You know I didn't even plan it, it just come out of me. Forty-three years of somebody telling you the same thing, it sharpens you whether you want it to or not. But I hear you on thinking of the right thing three days later in the shower. Lord, I keep a whole second conversation in my head that never got to happen.
You said paper and thread and lino, it's all the one. Honey, I believe that with my whole heart. Anybody who's ever made anything with their hands knows that slow ain't a problem to fix. It's the point. You keep carving now, you hear?
Oh honey, you get it. Paper cutting, that's a whole different patience right there, and I know folks do the same to you. Tell you the truth, I think half these people can't sit still long enough to hear their own thoughts, so they figure we must be wasting time too.
And no, that "no thank you" flat-footed thing, that's what I almost did. But my grandmother used to say you don't let nobody walk past your work acting like they know it better than you do. Sixty-three years on this earth and I'm still learning to speak up when it counts. You'll get there too, baby. It gets easier the more you do it.