Puttering as an Art Form

Most arts and craftspeople do not know that their modern hobbies began in the dusty stables of medieval times. But it wasn’t necessarily the same crafts we know today . . . macramé probably started out when someone started braiding scraps of rope tack for example. And, to drill down to their true beginnings one has to examine the ancient practice of puttering. Which is what drew those neocraftspeople into those smelly horse stalls in the first place.

We have only now re-learned how important it is to putter and to have a part of the home as a puttershop or in modern speak, "shop". The term derives from the verb "to putter", meaning to doze while appearing to be in deep thought, surrounded by rows of expensive power tools.

Observers will often mistake the vacant gaze of a putterer as, well, vacant. How far this is from the truth only the initiates of this mystical guild can appreciate. Rather, the sleepy pose, often with coffee mug in mid-swig, represents a transcendental moment. Often the issue is just how to make that cosmically difficult mortise and tendon joint. But just as often it goes more like "Let's see, what can I dream up to avoid any real work today?". Which, as we all know is a perfectly valid activity.

I recently have joined these noble ranks, having just completed the first stages of "shop building", that is to say, the least expensive part of the experience, before one begins the exhaustive process of selecting the many, several, and expensive digital power tools necessary to truly define it as a "SHOP".

This has a neat twist to it, too. In order to justify the whole process the male spouse inevitably has to agree to build things for the home. The more extensively one furnishes the shop the more one mortgages his/her future with such promises. To no married person’s surprise this is a skewed arrangement. Buried in the marital contract there is a clause that says one will return ten (varies, can range up to 1,000) –fold what one spends in both time and money to the other suffering spouse.

For instance no, I can't build the new cabinets that we now need to get for the kitchen with my $399 table saw. So that automatically creates a $3,990 cabinet "debit" with my name at the bottom. I tried an end run by offering to buy a $7,700 cabinetmaker’s table saw to do this but that just upped the ante to $77,000 worth of cabinets.

I think I will go back to braiding rope in the barn and limit my mortgage payments.