Armed with needles

CARRBORO -- Betsy Greer comes wielding needles. She's not afraid to use them.

With her knitting needles, the Carrboro woman hopes to inspire people to reach out to their communities and challenge the world with their crafts, one stitch at a time.

"In craft, you have the product and the process," says Greer, 33. "If you put the two together, it's an opportunity to squeeze good out of it."

She calls it "craftivism." It means finding power in making your own sweater, donating your crafts, sewing protest banners.

Greer, a child of the 1990s punk aesthetic, mashed the words craft and activism together to come up with "craftivism" seven years ago. She details the philosophy behind the word in her book, "Knitting For Good," published by Shambhala Publications in November, offering suggestions and patterns for community service projects.

The idea of craftivism took shape over a long period. Greer participated in the Riot Grrrl movement, born of a feminist do-it-yourself philosophy. All around the UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, like-minded friends were starting up bands, producing music, publishing their own 'zines, and skateboarding.

Greer wanted in on the action but found she couldn't do any of it. She failed again and again.

"It was frustrating knowing I wanted to do something but not knowing what that something was," Greer says. "I felt that way for a long time. I didn't know how to tap into it. Eventually you ask the right questions and figure out where you need to be."

Greer grew up in Charlotte, and her grandmother, Lolly White, was a knitter. Greer didn't start knitting until she moved to New York to work at Penguin Books in 1998. Alone in the big city, she wanted to make new friends, especially with older people. What do older people do? Some of them knit.

She joined a knitting circle and met all kinds of people, including closet knitters from her own office. Before long, Greer could knit a sweater in a color she loved, with one arm longer than the other, if necessary. She had the freedom to choose. She felt empowered.

Heck, knitting was punk.

She ended up in London, studying for a master's degree in sociology from Goldsmiths College and writing her dissertation on craftivism. She even spent two months learning small-scale wool production at a sheep farm in Sussex.

She began thinking about materialism, the labor economy, how a sweater taking 40 hours to make can cost just $20, how labor can be devalued, how the world is connected, how hand-making the sweater evened the score.

"I never would have thought about any of that without starting knitting myself," she says. "It's not political. It's personal. It's how you take it into the community and make people think."

With those thoughts simmering in her head, the self-proclaimed social science geek conducted her own experiment. Greer began blogging about "craftivism" on a Web site, getcrafty.com ("Home of the craftistas," it boasts). She explained the idea and suggested craft projects others could do to get their voices heard on issues in their communities.

Sometimes Greer would search for her word using Google. During the early days, in 2002, the search would yield exactly two hits: her own and one from a workshop in Toronto called the Church of Craft.

Greer was battling stereotypes. Crafting can conjure up images of homemakers knitting and crocheting in rocking chairs when they aren't toiling over a stove or behind a broom. Activism can conjure up images of banner-waving zealots.

"I found making things and talking about them was a much better way," she says.

Faythe Levine, director/author of the documentary and book "Handmade Nation," says Greer's work "has really provided a platform" for people to find meaning in their crafts.

The platform reaches beyond the U.S.: Google "craftivism" and you get nearly 46,000 results.

"Betsy started talking about it but in a way so clearly open to your own interpretation," says Rayna Fahey, an activist and crafter from Melbourne, Australia, who runs radicalcrossstitch.com. "It has spawned debates all over about what craft means to people."

Greer feels the zing in her gut relaying how she once received e-mail from a Finnish doctoral student working in Indonesia. The student wrote to tell Greer that she'd met an Indonesian girl who, inspired by Greer's ideas about craftivism, was building a lending library in her village.

"Just the fact that people understood what I was thinking and trying to better their lives," is gratifying, she says.

Greer reaches people on her blog at craftivism.com and is knitting the world. Literally. She's working on a replica of the globe featured on the cover of her book. Her Shambhala editor knit the original but only the side facing the camera.

When Greer isn't earning a living as a freelance writer, yarn shop employee and researcher, she reaches out locally, knitting and donating baby hats to hospitals and scarves to domestic violence organizations. She reaches out to the world with the International Cross-Stitch Project, which has crafters cross-stitch samples of anti-war graffiti.

That's how Greer's crafts are personal to her.

"What I like best is when people come to me and say, 'This is how I feel about my craft; what can I do with it?'" Greer says

Greer began by asking herself how her love of music, social science, skateboarding, knitting, travel and culture reflected her life and her values.

She challenges others to do the same: Pick up yarn, fabric, paint, a tennis racket, a hammer. Figure it out. Knit your own world.