Stash Less 2016 - Challenge #1 roundup.

In 2016 we invite you to join us in your own personal Stash Less project. Stash Less is a project whereby we work towards having a mindful stash. Each month we will be posting a challenge for you to use in your own journey of discovery and change. Please feel free to join in at any time. We can't wait to hear what you find out! Previous Stash Less posts can be found here.

And Stash Less Challenge #1 can be found here.

A quick roundup.

I've been loving watching things pop up on instagram and on the blog over the last three weeks. Your insights into your making thrill me. They are so personal, and so related to where you were/at at the time of purchasing.

I really believe that being kind to yourself is a really important part of this process. Because changing behaviour is just that - a process. Over time, I'm choosing to make better choices that will add up to a mindful stash. It doesn't mean that I won't make mistakes, and make bad choices here and there. But overall, I'm making better decisions because I have taken the time to understand myself and my purchasing better. And then on top of that I'm practicing what I've learnt. I'm also not allowing myself to be a perfectionist about it, which would allow me the easy out once I'd failed. It's OK to do this imperfectly. And I do.

Better decisions over time, through self knowledge and practice = a mindful stash. Simple as that.

Although the themes that run underneath everyone's purchasing are similar - fomo, the pretty, time poverty etc - how that has translated into what you own, are uniquely personal. And then after examination, what you want to do with that knowledge is too. I love that everyone's journey around consumption is so similar and yet unique.

Photo by @lunarknits of a sweater made from stash.

The next challenge will be posted this Friday but in the meantime I thought I would do a little roundup highlighting some people I've found (in a two minute google search :)) that have posted about the results of the first challenge of our 2016 Stash Less Project, and what they have learned. I always find these such interesting reading as they often give me a different way of looking at my own stash.

- Quietfantastic posted a gorgeous image of some of her grandmother's stash.

- Create Share Love has written about her plan.

- The Knitographer has done a thorough inventory which clearly showed her the benefits and problems with her stash.

- Christine's stash is truly impressive - and tidy.

- Dottie Doodle has gone through her fabric.

- The Dawn Threader talks about why she overspent last year.

- Some more instagram photos of people's stashes - a great way to stay accountable methinks.

- Sonia Knits talks about her stash and clarifies that when I, Felicia, talk about Stash Less I mean "to Stash Less" rather than "to go Stash Less"! Totally true! I love a stash. I just want mine to be mindful and intentional.

Please leave me a link in the comments if you have posted on instagram, facebook or on your blog. I would love to take a look at what you are up to.

Felicia x

PS. As I mentioned, the next challenge will be posted Friday, and in the meantime I hope to slip in another more general post.

Making Time for Creative Play

As of yesterday, all three of my children are in school. A new era is upon our family, with new ideas and a sparkly feeling of freedom.

That said, I'm also feeling a little cautious. One thing I’ve learned in my years of parenting, is that without scheduling time to follow my joy, it just doesn’t happen. Spare time gets sucked up with endless numbers of jobs. Washing, buying sandals, feeding chickens, and work meetings, mean that my making often revolves around what needs to be done.

My crafting time gets taken up with craft jobs, rather than craft joy. There is of course joy in nearly all my craft but I very rarely get to make on a whim and just follow the creative spark. Experimentation occurs but generally only within the context of a given need. A kid needs shorts, I need some tops or a friend has just had a baby and so a quilt needs to be rustled up. Now creating to meet a given need is also fun, but nearly everything I make falls into the category of need-based making. You have to get your jobs done before you can have some fun - right? These days, I'm not so convinced.

What’s crappy about my current needs-based system, is that I have an ongoing deep-seated longing for time to play that is not being addressed. I have all these ideas - they buzz around my head in a frustrated fashion, thrown into the "one-day I'll get to it" category. These are the ideas that aren't based on a "need". These ideas fall into the “wouldn’t it be great if I could just play with that material” or “i wish I could just see what that would look like” or “I wish I could try that”. Just for fun. For the sheer joy of figuring out what was possible and what it might look like.

I'll give you a quick example. Ever since I got the Gee's Bend book I've been a little obsessed. Every time I look at it I see something new. Some kind of stunning alchemy of quiltmaking that is so different to my own. This week I'm moving into my new study space, and as I have less room, I'm having to go through what I own and downsize. This has meant scrap-sorting. And the scrap-sorting has lead to a brain-buzzing question "could I make something like those quilts?"

I mean look at it!

Could I? If I had a go, and did some practice, and put some scraps together. It is totally different to my normal kind of making. Maybe it wouldn't work at first, but when I started chucking scraps together I would learn about what was needed through practice. As I have written before - planning only takes you so far - sometimes the only way to figure out whether an idea will work is by making. The making gets your fingers involved with the materials, and it is there that magic is often made. Could I create in that way? Could I?

Since I wrote the What we can learn from watching kids craft post the idea of experimentation, and the lack of it in my crafting, has been bothering me. I’ve feel like I’ve fallen into a grownup (?) mindset whereby I’m always trying to achieve things. To get things done. To move things forward. I feel like I don’t have the space to experiment, or the time. In craft, and life, I write lists that say things like “post X, call Y”. I wake up and I start to cross things off. Grownup stuff. Grownup responsibilities. Using time to play – unless it is with my children or with my girlfriends – is something that has disappeared off my list of things to do.

As I’ve thought more about it, I’ve realized that I’m actually jealous of the kids and their seemingly endless time to experiment. And jealousy is an important emotion to watch for. It always has something to teach me, and what it’s trying to teach me is normally very bloody obvious. In this case – I crave time to play with my craft.

I recently read Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin – a wonderful book – and one of the things that Gretchen very clearly laid out for me is that we need to (if we are a certain type of person) schedule time for every-single-thing we want to do. That includes the things that you would love to do but don't need to do. The things that will simply bring you joy. 

Scheduling them, is often the only way you actually get to do them. Without assigning specific time for play, there are always things that will take a higher priority in the short term.

So today when I was sitting in a cafe, having the first solo coffee of my new found freedom, I decided that I needed to firmly plant a stake in my schedule. And so here is my stake.

I'm scheduling time to play with my craft. Time I can’t use for “needed craft” and I can’t use for “comfort craft”. I can only use it for play - to experiment with ideas and just go with the bliss of the day.

I’m thinking an hour a week. I’d love two, but I don’t know if I can fit that in yet. I plan on being religious about it. No distractions. A lot of experimentation. I'm smiling with anticipation and joy as I type this!

Is time to play something that you lack? Is scheduling something that you think about, or something you've done? Do you make time to play? Have you come up with a way to make play happen? Do you just do it naturally? Any and all thoughts gratefully received!

Felicia x

Connection through time.

On the way home from our summer holiday last week we popped in to Canberra. As you do - the nation's capital and all that. We took the kids for a quick one hour walk around Government House, and on our way out of town we decided to take them to the Australian War Memorial. We weren't surewhether it was the right decision as my kids are still young. We've talked mental illness, disability, homelessness.....but we haven't yet got to war in any detail.

And so we were looking through the exhibits in a pretty superficial way - one that was keeping them away from photos of things they weren’t yet ready to understand. But I kept coming across craft made during the war that I didn't want to leave.

The jumper in the photos is one such item*. I don't know anything about the facts of this jumper. All I know is what you see in the photo below and what a quick internet search will tell me. It was made by a soldier called Duncan - Sergeant Duncan CarseIdine - his Red Cross Wounded and Missing record is online and shows he was a prisoner of war in Limburg, Germany from 1917-1918. I don't know any details about it's making other than that I can see it was made from scraps. It has colourwork and cables and a saddle shoulder. There is at least seven colours of yarn.

What I do know is that as I stood there in front of it I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. And I've thought about it and Duncan ever since.

It made me grateful that I make. Grateful that I understood what was involved in making it. That I could feel the stitches in my hands. That I understood that to design and make what Duncan had made, it would have provided him with comfort and respite from whatever else was going on in his world. It would have given him that feeling of flow one enters when one is manifesting an idea into a tangible product. I was grateful that he had the chance to make it, and grateful that I could recognise the feeling.

It's the collar that really got me. Maybe it was the fashion at the time (?), but it felt to me like he just wanted to go on knitting.

Seeing pictures and exhibits at a War Memorial for me is often a disconnected, almost distant experience, as I don’t have a personal experience similar to the people whose stories are being shared. But the craft makes the exhibition something alive and deeply human.

Felicia x

*Photos were taken with permission.

Stash Less Challenge #1 - Taking Stock

In 2016 we invite you to join us in your own personal Stash Less project. Stash Less is a project whereby we work towards having a mindful stash. Each month we will be posting a challenge for you to use in your own journey of discovery and change. Please feel free to join in at any time. We can't wait to hear what you find out! Previous Stash Less posts can be found here.

Challenge #1 - Taking stock

So we want to start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. And that means taking stock; of what we have and how we came to have it.

All it involves is a couple of hours work, a pen, some paper and a bit of emotional recall.

Why do we start here? Because in order to change our behaviour around our consumption we need to understand why we consume. Understanding the why is the key to change. It gives us something to look for and tells us what our purchasing/stashing triggers are.

Some of you have been watching my journey and have been thinking about the Stash Less project for some time. Some of you have already created your own versions (which I love) and have already considered your stash. I would ask though, that if you have never gone through your whole stash before, that you do now. It is such a worthwhile exersize and one that cannot be overrated in terms of what it can tell you. On the simplest level it creates a baseline. On a deeper level it really allows you to be totally mindful of just how much you have. Taking the time to really sit down with all you own and go through it means that you don't allow yourself to have blindspots - bits of your stash you can't quite see as stashing.

I know when I sit with my stash and really do a proper inventory, my mind starts whirring at incredibly speed due to all the crazy, wonderful, exciting, magical possibilty that lies within it. And due to it's size. There is always more than I think there is when I take into consideration what is hidden in that cupboard, .... oh yeah and that basket over there. And then all those books, and my goodness all those patterns and then there is that special yarn that I keep in a different place...... And so on it goes.

Taking the time to take stock in a considered way will really change your perspective.

How to take stock

You need to write it down. All of it. If only so you can see it all on the pages at the end.

For those of you that want to be thorough I would suggest that you create a table. Write down the product, the amount you purchased, where you purchased it (online, a fair, a shop) and the why/s. There will generally be multiple whys. If it is something that has stayed in your stash for a long time you should also include information on why you haven't yet used it.

I have created the simplest of templates here if you want something to work from. I've left it as a .doc file so you can fiddle with it to your heart's content to make it something that would work for you.

The Craft Sessions Inventory Template

A quick word of warning. Depending on who you are, and how you stash, this might not be an enjoyable exercise for you. It might be difficult to sit with your stuff and your emotions around it. You might avoid it or you might want to walk out halfway through. Or you might need a friend to help you do it. It's all good - just pay attention to how you are feeling and remember that it is the feelings that we are really looking at. So all feelings, avoidance, boredom, annoyance..., are useful. Those feelings will tell you things about your relationship with your stash. And that is what we are trying to figure out.

A few words on "why"

The why could be multiple reasons and you should try to include as much detail as you remember. The why is actually up to three things;
1. The emotion that was "around" the purchase. Excitement, fomo, tiredness, desire, boredom, stress...
2. What you were purchasing it for? A particular project or as a base?
3. Why haven't used it yet.

After you get a little way into your inventory you will see patterns appear and this will get easier.

I have written a few posts about the "whys" I found, and what I learned, when I initial did an inventory of my stash, however I would encourage you to read it only after you have had a go at doing it by yourself, with your own head and heart. I'm worried that by reading them before you take stock, you will have my ideas in your head about why you might stash, and you might overlook a reason you have for purchasing that I haven't even thought of. When, and if, you read those posts then please read the comments. Other people have added the "extra" reasons they have found. So helpful!

A final word

If possible please set aside time to go through your whole stash in one go. This will really give you a good understanding of what you have. The brain is a crazy powerful thing and without doing this step properly, I believe there is the possibility that you (and I) can trick ourselves into believing what we want to believe about what we own.

For me it took me leaving my stash for six months to give me some clarity of perspective. Hopefully you can get yours in an afternoon.

If you are sharing your journey in any way on social media then please leave a link to your instagram, blog or facebook in the comments to this post. I'd also just love your comments on what you found, what you discovered about your whys or what surprised you about what you have. As always the instagram hastag is #stash_less.

I can't wait to hear what you learn!

Felicia x

One of the (many) things Anna Farago taught me.

So I'm lucky enough to have this friend Anna Farago. Lucky in all the everyday ways that make friendship over many years wonderful. But I often feel even luckier for her friendship for two big reasons.

1. We work very differently as humans, which provides a richness of experience and ideas to our conversations, that I love.

2. She is super patient with me, which is not always an easy feat.

She is an artist and a patchworker. And an art teacher. She is also very very smart. About art, craft and life.

Anyway enough about her. Let's talk about me. And what she has taught me.

As I've said before on this blog, I am wrong often. The whole "I was totally wrong about patchwork" is a fantastic example, and the Anna in question who did the sighing in that post was the lovely Anna Farago. Did I mention that she is patient with me.

Anyhoo. We make things together, not always physically in the same room, but we share what we are making as part of our everyday conversations. A lot. We have different skills. I'm a little more interested in the technical and love the maths, and she knows the art, the colour and the composition. We talk about things as we work on them; what we are doing, why and how. The way we make things is really different too. I'm a practicing-completionist/reforming-perfectionist whereas Anna loves the process.

She didn't/doesn't set out to teach me stuff. But over time, her thoughts on making slowly but surely, seep into the way I work. And today I want to talk about what she has taught me about the beauty of visible process.

I started this quilt a while ago (that is Anna in the top photo of that post) and it is an ongoing-work-in-progress. I'm not even halfway finished the hand-quilting yet, and so I've realised it will be an ongoing-work-in-progress for the next six months at least.

And that is where it has got interesting for me. The perfectionist in me traditionally wants my craft-person-ship to be as beautiful as I can make it. Although I regularly make mistakes, I make decisions about where and what I'm willing to live with and what I rip out. I rip things out a lot. However it turns out that this quilt is a little different.

So the quilt is a linen quilt with alternating stripes. It goes from a darker blue stripe to a light off-white stripe with blue cross hatching. The back is an incredibly pretty silver linen sheeting from Tessuti. Because of the colour contrast on the front I wasn't sure what colour hand-quilting thread to use when I started the hand-quilting. 

If I used a dirty darker blue it would show on the back of the quilt but not so much on the front. That the stitching would appear in a really subtle way. Subtle but beautiful. However if I used a silver thread it would really show on the front but not on the back. This would be the opposite of subtle. The stitches would be features; highly visible in all their glory. Which might be totally lovely.... I needed to make a decision between subtle (the blue) and striking (the silver). I decided to go for a more subtle look. So I started with a dirty blue cotton as I thought that would look lovely on the blue square in the middle of the quilt.

The thing is, that when I started the quilt, I hadn't done any hand-quilting for a year. I knew I would be rusty and my stitch size would be all over the place. So I started quilting by doing single stitches as a time (rather than loading the needle with three or four), because I was totally lacking rhythm and skill. Now - because the cotton was blue - and remembering that the fabric was blue on the front of the quilt and silver on the back - the stitching looked lovely from the front and, well... the back just looked atrocious. Small, large, small, on the skew. Wacky. And because it was blue cotton on silver fabric the stitching (mistakes) were incredibly pronounced.

The perfectionist in me still finds these photos a little difficult to look at.

If this was a quilt for the wall that would be totally fine. You wouldn't see it. But it is not. It is a quilt for my own bed, which means you will see both sides, often. If I hadn't been in quite such a hurry to get started, I probably would have done what any self-respecting quilter working on an important project would have done, and made hand-quilting samples to figure out what to do. But I didn't. I jumped in.

I stitched a few rounds in blue, and after being appalled by my lack of technique (perfectionist), I changed the cotton to silver and kept going. My thinking was that stitching on the back - which is always messier unless you are an expert hand-quilter - should be the same colour as the fabric on the back, as that way the messiness wouldn't be so pronounced. I decided to keep going, and after completing a few rounds in silver to make sure I liked it, I decided to pull out the blue stitching and redo it with the silver later.

I mentioned this false start to Anna and she said "hang on a bit - don't pull it out yet - just leave it and see how you feel about it later". And so I did. All the while thinking she was crazy (often my starting postion) but as often happens with me, I've slowly come around to her way of thinking (often my end position).

See Anna loves seeing the maker in the craft. She loves seeing the mistakes in all their glory and isn't obsessed with making things perfect. She likes to be able to see the process. Seeing the history, the choices, and the personality of the maker as part of the object.

This quilt is being made over time as part of the continuum of our lives. What I am discovering in making it, is that I too, am actually enjoying seeing a visible representation of that process. I like that my initial choice of blue stitching is still the the quilt. I like that apparently at random, the stitching then changes to silver. I like that you can see at the centre of the quilt that I'm rusty and then that my stitches even out as I find my rhythm.

I want to say "oh my" but instead I'm embracing the history.

This quilt often gets tossed aside for weeks at a time, so my work lacks consistency. I'm also changing my hand-quilting style all the time, as I try to improve my technique. Sometimes I use the top of my finger, other times I'm pinching the needle. Sometimes I'm quilting towards myself, and sometimes on an angle. Other times I'm quilting in the dark when the bulbs blow out in our loungeroom due to a dodgy fuse. Other times I'm tired, or grumpy, or have had two glasses of wine. Or I have a kid sitting on me. All this history is visible and featured within the stitches of the quilt. Maybe not visible to the uneducated observer but visible to me.

And I love that!

Somewhere along the way, I have given up notions of consistency, perfection and craft-person-ship being my primary goal. Slowly, without feeling it change, I've embraced the nuances of quilting over time, and as part of a life. I've learned to love that the inconsistencies in the quilting, mirror the inconsistencies of living. And that this quilt - which I will hopefully have on my bed for the next fifty years - will be a record of the my skill level, my mood, my decision-making, and my environment during the years in which I made it.

If I hadn't had Anna in my ear, subtly guiding me towards freedom by modelling a different way of making, I would be sitting in sadness as I was quilting; knowing that I wasn't quite crafting a piece that was technically perfect. Instead I sit with my quilt on my lap with a feeling of joy, knowing that I am creating a piece of tangible history, that contains a part of me in every stitch.

Much love to you Anna, for being my friend and leading me to the water.

Felicia x