Crafter's Bias.

I mentioned the hard and firm rules in the post about tablet weaving a few days ago, and that is just the thing to segue off into some ponderings about what I call "Crafter's Bias".

When you are doing craft stuff for a living, you want to have a suitable, efficient way of working. Usually, you get taught this way when you are learning the craft, and you get to know other ways to do it, other tweaks, maybe other tools when you are meeting other colleagues, or (what used to be a thing much more common than today) when you are travelling as a journeyman.

So while you might have a bit of time to experiment once in a while, and might shift things slightly, work doesn't usually leave you with lots of extra resources to fool around and try different things and methods. You might also not be aware of there being other methods - or at least not think actively about it. This, together with sort of getting set in your ways that you know will work for you and that can be calculated properly, can lead to the feeling that there is one way to do it - your way. Because, obviously, that's how it's done, right?

When you are, say, an archaeologist specialising in crafts, you might also try to reconstruct how things were done back when. This means you look at different tools, different ways to handle one process (including ways from other parts of the globe), probably try out stuff yourself, and generally keep an open mind regarding procedures, tools and methods. Basically, it's the exact opposite mindset to Crafter's Bias.

Fun facts: I have situations where I have Crafter's Bias, and I suddenly find myself go "That is how it's done! No discussion! ... Oh. Wait. Erm... that is one way to do it. There might be several other ones, we can't tell, but that is how I do it, it works for me, and it has so far worked for a lot of other people I have taught it as well." It's even funnier when I see a different method and my first thought is "But but but that is wrong! With a capital W!" until the archaeologist kicks in and tells the crafter to cool down and breathe, there's more than one way.

While it might sound weird and restrictive at first, Crafter's Bias is actually not a bad thing. I see it as a sort of evolutionary development; these also sometimes look weird from a rational perspective, but from the perspective of the species' survival, it all makes sense. Crafter's Bias keeps you from going off on a tangent too much, losing time, money and energy on trying out things that might work or might ruin your current project, so it's actually a sane thing to have if you work crafts for a living. It won't prevent you from accidentally stumbling across a better method, and also not from picking up tips and tricks from colleagues, or from developing your own little tweaks and tricks - but it gives you a solid, firm base that you work from.

Having the One True Method (TM) also makes teaching a lot easier. Students have to get a feeling for tools and materials as they start out, and having One Way shown to them will be easier to handle for most than getting a bouquet of methods from which to choose. It also means that you can teach a craft by rote - without having actually understood how things work, and why, in depth and detail.

Take knitting, for instance. There's a multitude of ways to arrive at a plain stockinette stitch; there's a huge number of increase and decrease possibilities. If you have a thing for motions and methods and structures, that is utterly fascinating and fun to explore. If your main goal is to make somebody a functional knitter, though, you only have to teach them knits, purls, one increase and one decrease. There, you're done, you can knit anything around. If you now standardise the way the stitches are formed by declaring one method the One True Method, it is easy to teach - you only need to show the motion. No need for understanding what happens, and how, and why. That means craft knowledge can be passed on reliably.

Again - this won't prevent people interested into structures, and people with inquisitive minds, to understand how it all works. These might go on to develop other ways, or different increases and decreases, though - depending on how much of a tradition and spread the One True Method has - that might lead to suspicious looks from the others.