Diversity, Representation and Inclusion At Soul Craft

Dear Crafters,

This week has seen some incredibly important conversations within our making community about race, diversity, inclusion and representation. Like many of you, I’ve been reading and listening, and learning, and thinking all week.

For me though, this is not my introduction to these ideas. Just over six months ago, I was grateful to receive an email where I was called in about the lack of diversity and representation at Soul Craft, the festival I ran in June of 2018 in Melbourne.

I want to apologise to anyone who was impacted by the programming of the festival. To anyone who felt that they wouldn’t be welcome, or who felt unseen, unheard and unrepresented I’m very sorry. I got it very wrong.

I want to add that I’m also sorry to anyone who came to Soul Craft and who felt othered or unwelcome in the space I created.

Right before the festival, a woman emailed me to tell me that while she loved my writing, my ideas ,and my attempts to connect community, that she had decided that she couldn’t attend the festival. She said that when she looked through speakers, demonstrators and teachers, that she was really disappointed to discover that the program line up was almost all white women. As I read the email I fell into a shame hole because I knew she was right. This generous woman went on to say that as a leader, as an event creator, and as thoughtful as she believed me to be, that she knew I could do better in the future.

I emailed her back to thank her, and started reading that day, and have been listening, and reading, and examining my privilege, views and values since then. What I’ve learned has changed me forever, and while I have a lot more to learn, I’ve realized this week that although I took on what she said and what I’ve learned, I didn’t say it out loud, and I haven’t apologized publicly.

Receiving the email was a reckoning. I knew I needed to understand what I’d done better. I started following and reading intersectional writers and black feminists like @rachel.cargle, @catricemjackson and @laylasayad. And I’ve been reading books and blogs and feminist websites and opinion pieces in newspapers. Importantly, I also downloaded Layla’s Me and White Supremacy handbook when it was released, and have been working through it. There is something about doing rather than just reading that has been incredibly instructive.

I’ve found our attitudes, thought patterns, and blind spots are most visible in the comments on the Instagram posts of the women I’ve been following. Reading other people’s comments has helped me understand my own thoughts, biases and privilege better. As I’ve been reading I’ve been sitting in the discomfort of being wrong, realizing that I’m ignorant and finding myself lacking. The more I read the more I realise how much more work there is to do, how much more there is to unpack.

I’ve been away the last week and so while I’ve been trying to keep up with the discussion, and keep listening, I missed parts of it. But I’ve seen there are a couple of prevalent ideas that keep coming up that I want to attempt to address.

Intention doesn’t matter, impact does. Action is needed, not intention.

Over the last week there have been a lot of comments about intention, and it has become clear to me that we don’t seem to deeply understand that our intention doesn’t matter.

I am going to use myself, and my failure to act, as an example. I feel this is important as I’m worried that people reading this, will defend my intentions.

My intentions don’t matter because they don’t change the impact to the people who were hurt.

I was trying to create something truly special with Soul Craft – an event that was about making and ideas, and well-being, and community, and mental health. I was trying to be a good person, doing good things, putting good stuff into the world.

I had discussions early on with numerous people about diversity. I had intentions. BUT!! during the planning, through one small decision at a time, these intentions were deprioritised.

The result was a space that was not inclusive to all of our community. The result was a lineup that was not diverse. The impact was that people didn’t feel included or seen or represented as there was no visible representation of diversity. The impact was hurtful.

And so why would I believe that my intentions matter. They don’t. The hurt matters.

Action is different to intention. You see, when I started Soul Craft I created policy to make sure that we prioritised and focused on key areas that I believed were important. Creating these policies was an action, not an intention. Soul Craft had a Connection Policy, a Low Waste Policy and a Giving Back policy. * Getting consciously active about these areas meant that we achieved our aims as they were stated. I did not have a anti-racism policy about diversity and inclusion and representation. And so my intentions melted away without me actually doing anything concrete.

We must act rather than intend.

I have a responsibility to address the privilege I am a recipient of.

This week has shone a light on people like me, people with platforms, and how we use them. Without centering ourselves, we need to amplify the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander** and BIPOC who are doing the work.

I have sat on this post as I didn’t want to be reactive. I needed to sit with it as I wasn’t sure if telling you this story was centering, or inserting myself into the narrative, or if it would be helpful. But after sitting with it and learning from the voices in the discussion this week, I believe it’s really important for me to clearly state how I have been complicit in the lack of diversity represented within our community.

I still don’t know if I’ve got it right but I know that trying is right. I do know that apologizing is right. But I also know that it is a privilege to choose whether or not to try to get it right. I know that waiting is the definition of white privilege. That I can wait to talk about it till I’m ready, till I believe I can do it better, because I am privileged. Because I can choose to engage, or not engage, around race because I am white.

If I am truly going to engage with the process of doing things better, I need to act, and this email is part of me trying to do better.

I will work hard to do better with Soul Craft, and to use the privilege I have to be active. As such, I will be having many conversations about diversity, representation, inclusion and anti-racism over the next year as I begin to plan the next event.

The biggest thing that came out of the conversation last week for me is how entrenched and pervasive and subtle and overt our racism is. And how much we need to begin this conversation as a community. This work can’t be done quickly – it takes sitting and listening and time and thought to unpack our internalized racism - it will be ongoing work and an ongoing conversation.

Thank you to all those who have done the incredibly thoughtful tricky work to pull us up and keep us accountable over the last week. Thank you especially to @thecolormustard, @su.krita, @astitchtowear and @ocean_bythesea and many others for spending so much of your time, thought and emotional energy calling us to account.

I also want to thank the kind woman who so generously emailed me to clearly spell out what I had done, while giving me the push to do better by telling me that she knew I could. I am grateful for the grace, generosity and kindness you showed me, in spite of my ignorance. Thanks for being willing to keep talking to me and for holding me accountable.

I encourage you to check out this post by teacher Rachel Cargle who lists a wonderful set of resources for you. Please also read through her saved stories as there is so much important stuff there.

I also encourage you not to ask questions, but instead sit and read and think about what makes you uncomfortable. I suspect you will find, as I have, that your questions have all been answered without you having to ask. Get to understand incredibly important ideas like tone policing, white washing, white fragility, performative allyship and spiritual bypassing. And please pay the teachers you find for their work. Buy their books, donate to their work and well being.

I’m turning off the comments on this post as the teachers that I’ve been reading have stated that my role is simply to amplify the conversation, not to personally have it, as it is not my lived experience nor my place.

If you want to email me about anything I’ve written then please feel free to email me directly at hello@soulcraftfestival.com. I would also welcome any and all comments and suggestions about Soul Craft. Please know that it’s school holiday time in Australia at the moment so I have limited computer time, but I will get back to you as quickly as I can.

I want to leave you with a quote that I read a few months ago that really affected me.

“The fight is to be self-critical, be reflective, actively work on our empathy and knowledge , and for the love of the fucking universe – listen to those who get hurt while we benefit. Then do something about it. I believe this fight to be a moral imperative.”

— Bisha K. Ali, in an interview in The Guilty Feminist book by Deborah Frances-White.

I will keep reading and listening and learning. I will act. And I will do better.

Most importantly, I am sorry.

Felicia x

*The link is to show you the thought that went into them because they were prioritised.

**I’ve edited the post to specifically acknowledge our Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Go Slow And Hard?

For the last few years, as I’ve got deeper and deeper into my thought hole about what sustainable making looks like for me, I’ve been wondering a lot about how to keep making, while acknowledging the fact that I have enough. Enough clothes, enough options for nearly all situations. So how do I make, for my well-being and my heart in a meaningful way, while knowing that making too much is just excess?

In one way I’m lucky in that I have three growing kids all of whom wear their clothes till they are actually rags. They love what I make them, and they wear them really hard, and I repair and repair until it is actually pointless to keep repairing as the fabric is so thin. Or they lose brand new knitted hoodies on public transport, and then beg for a replacement.…..so there is that.

And then I give myself some leeway to make things for replacement and a little for the sheer joy of it. A few things a year, and replacing things that have worn out, means that some of my making feels necessary and good.  

Then there is the making I do for others – presents, gifts, and community projects.

All of which mean that I can make regularly.

But I’ve been wondering what else I can do. How else can I change my making to ensure it is in line with my thinking and my values?

Since October, I’ve made constantly. We have some other life stuff going on that means I haven’t been posting my makes as regularly so I haven’t shared the half of it - so here is a list so you can see just how manic it’s been.

-       For the kids I’ve made six pairs of shorts, a birthday jumpsuit for a kid, two kid tops for Xmas, a kid tee shirt, a birthday dress for another kid.

-       For me I’ve made a Maya, a Hinterland dress and a pair of modified Emerson pants.

-       Plus I’ve fixed nine pairs of leggings, at least four shirts and three pairs of shorts, and a sleeping bag. And a bunch of other stuff – like a bag for our camping cutlery - that I can’t even remember.

-       Plus knitting – a sweater for my SIL, one for my niece, socks for a friend, ….

-       And….a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember.

Much of this making has been to a deadline and has involved late nights and giving up some sleep. And it’s not quite over. I still have three pairs of shorts to make for the biggest kid as he has just outgrown everything. And the mending is something that is constant in our house as my family are get down in the dirt lovers.

Their xmas tops with some of their new summer shorts.

But in the background of all the manic making I’ve been making my kid her quilt which has given me pause. It’s been a different kind of making to the rest. It’s been slow and it’s been hard. But it’s also been ongoing and meaningful and uplifting…. and took a looong time.  

Which got me thinking. Now that the Xmas/Birthday rush is over and the mending is done and the quilt is gifted, maybe now is the time to go hard and go slow. Maybe having an ongoing project that is hard and slow is part of the answer to less? Part of the answer to making while having enough?

Most of the things I’ve made over the last few months have just been a matter of following a set of instructions or a known process that doesn’t feel like much of a stretch. But her quilt? Her quilt was a physical and emotional stretch. It involved blisters and an ongoingness that held within it a different kind of reward.

Long, slow, hard projects have their own set of skills, qualities and feelings that are unlike most craft I do. At their most basic, they take time, but they also take me out of my comfort zone by their level of difficulty. They are challenging, either in terms of the technical skills I’ll need to use, or the mental skills I’ll need to engage with in order to get it done. These types of projects require me to sit with the discomfort of boredom, to engage with persistence, to not allow my head to get to focused on the outcome, and instead to intentionally find joy in the process.

This kind of project supports me in my everyday because it reminds me of all the things I’m capable of when I try. It deeply connects me to my values as it is such a conscious choice to re-engage with the project again and again – and often I do so only because of my values. In the quilts case it was because I valued my relationship with my kid and I knew what it meant to her. But every time my hands reached for the project I was also reminded of my consciousness, my willingness to act, my capacity to do hard things.

Slow hard making is a way of practicing the skills and qualities I want to use in my wider life.

In my wider life I’m human. I often try and fail to do the right thing. Sometimes I make decisions not based on my values, but simply because I’m tired, or the kids are fighting. Engaging with a slow project actively reminds me of who I am, and what I am capable of when I try by allowing me to practice micro-skills of courage and persistence.

A photo of her quilt.

When I heard the poet David Whyte speak recently he said we are practicing in this moment who we will be in the next. He asked us to think about who we are practicing to be.

Our craft – but particularly our hard slow craft -  gives us the opportunity to practice with a low risk and high reward. Projects that are hard and slow allow us to get better in our real lives at sitting with boredom and uncertainty. By sitting with uncertainty in our craft, our bodies learn and practice the feeling, and so when when it arises in real life, our heads and our hearts recognise it for what it is; a feeling that tells us something important but will pass.

And this is only what I’m aware of as I’m sure that some of the lessons we learn are things that are not even visible to us.

Living with the objects created - the artifacts - of using this part of my making practice makes me feel strong and capable, persistent and thoughtful. They remind me always that I have agency in my life to create change, even if that change is on the micro-level of me.

This practice – the practice of hard slow projects - is a gift to me from me. And I believe it is something I want to engage with more. To choose more projects that meet this criteria, to push myself a bit harder to sit with the lessons to be learn in hard and slow. To continue to do my day to day making, for myself, my kids and others, but in the background to have a main project, my main squeeze if you will, that is a bit of a stretch.

For some of you this won’t be a part of our craft practice that you will want to engage with regularly or even at all. Your craft might be more comfort focused – in that craft is where you go to seek comfort and solace in your everyday. And the idea of doing something hard and slow and process driven won’t sit well with you and where you are in your lives at this moment. Obviously this is totally valid. But one of the beautiful things about making is that the option is there when you need it or desire it.

Slow craft for me is some of the most meaningful of my making. It is the part of my craft that I engage with to remind me of who I am, and who I’m practicing to be. And it’s a part of my craft that I want to explore more.

This blog post came about because I’m thinking about what my next slow project is…. The Twigs anyone? Do you engage with hard and slow projects… and what do you get out of it?

Felicia x

PS. I’m on holiday with the family this week but can’t wait to read about your slow projects early next week.

Craft Is Not Trivial

Today I’ve heard two comments that have lit a raging fire in my belly. A fire that has inspired a blog post I’ve been meaning to write for an eon. A fire for all of us who have ever had the craft that we do diminished, either in person or online. And this my friends, is probably all of us, because one of the narratives that is strong and persistent within our culture is that craft is trivial.

Just this morning my darling son walked into my study to find me on my computer with knitting in my hands. I had just read a comment on the interweb that stated that discussions about craft were privileged, and essentially indulgent, in a world where so many people were struggling to survive, people who didn’t have the choice, time or money to make. I was mulling over the comment – when my darling son said “look at you sitting there knitting like some old granny”. Two flaming arrows in five minutes. Talk about light me up. 

To my son I said – “My love, how many grannies do you actually know who knit?”
Him: “Well there’s grandma.”
Me: “Yes, but nearly every woman you know knits, and none of them are grandmas, so why are you perpetuating a stereotype that is not true in your world. For that matter, where did you even get that stereotype from? You are surrounded by people who knit who are in their 30s and 40s. And for that matter, why would knitting like a grandma be a bad thing, you crazy kid? Why are you dissing the grandmas?”
Him (with a smile as big as his head): “Well, your hair is grey”.
Me: “Off you go, you ridiculous wind-up merchant”.

My first question is – how strong does a stereotype need to be that a child in my home – the home of a woman who crafts all the time and is surrounded by a vibrant craft community - that my child, is pedaling this narrative? A narrative that suggests craft is ridiculous, and trivial, as it is only done by old ladies, who obviously have no value to us as a society due to their age, and therefore their chosen activity should be a thing of scorn and derision due to it’s worthlessness.

My second question is - how is it that when we talk about our craft practice – around how to make with more thought and intention - that we are reduced to a bunch of people who aren’t acknowledging their privilege? That we become people who don’t care about the real issues in the world as we are obviously thinking too much about this trivial hobby. This thinking is prevalent more widely too, in discussions about slow fashion, and food choices, and environmental stewardship. If we care about any of those things we are simply not acknowledging our privilege. I don’t think this is true.

We can acknowledge our privilege, work towards change, and also spend time talking about, and doing, a thing that brings us pleasure and joy and purpose and meaning. And well-being.

Thinking about craft, how we can use it to make our lives better, is important because craft can change our lives for the better, and it can change the lives of people who aren’t in positions of privilege, especially if we are thoughtful about it and conscious. It can change things because we are all connected.

You see, I am trying to change my corner of the world through my craft. I am trying to name our shared experience so that we can share it with others who might benefit from it. And I’m trying to see if we can figure out how to think about making things in a way that sustains us more beautifully.

We can improve the experience of our lives by changing the quality of our thoughts and minds. I’m trying to promote the idea that making is an innate part of our humanness, and engaging with making elevates our lives.

Craft is not trivial.

Culturally we seem to have a special distain reserved for craft that it seems is not given to other activities. People who make art aren’t trivialized in the same way as crafters. They are celebrated for trying to change culture. People who spend to much time thinking about sport aren’t chastised or trivialized for it. Instead sport is celebrated for it’s health benefits. Or take people who are obsessed with their dogs. Well, they are looking after their well-being through the connection that comes from pet ownership.

There are a few shitty narratives about craft that get a run over and over again in the mainstream media. The two main ones that bug me are “it’s not your grandma’s knitting” and the second one that I hate equally is “stitch and bitch”. The “bitch” part because that is how petty and awful women really are while they sit around and do their trivial stitching.  Superficial, frivolous and mean.

There is this notion that to spend time on craft – especially now that it is not a necessity but a privilege undertaken by women with time and/or money on their hands – that to do so is indulgent. The value of what we do when we engage in craft has diminished even further now that it is optional. Obviously this thinking has history; a throwback to time when the men were seen to do the important work of hunting, gathering and fighting the wars, while the women just piddled around knitting socks. Maybe the trivialisation of craft is part of the lack of acknowledgement of the place the domestic plays in all of our lives.

I know in my own life that my partner could not have had the career he had, and had children we had, had it not been for the work I did to care for those aforementioned children. And yet his career is what is celebrated by others, whereas my contribution to his success is unseen and unacknowledged largely because it was in the realm of the domestic*. A woman I once met at a round table discussion stated that she couldn’t do what I had done (be the full time carer for three kids under 5), and that the reason she had gone back to work was so that her daughter didn’t think that she was lazy. That she wanted her daughter to see her as hardworking and productive and doing something meaningful in the world. I understand that this wasn’t a personal attack – that it was just the lens she saw the world through – and yet I think it speaks to the idea that to engage with anything domestic is to be choosing something that is less than. And craft is still often seen to be of the domestic sphere.

We need to change the cultural narratives we have around craft.  I often hear people saying statements like "Oh, so, I know it sounds trivial but I've found real meaning and satisfaction in sewing". The narrative is so strong that even we makers, even those of us that make and understand what it does for us, feel the need to preface our statements about it with an apology, an acknowledgement that to speak of craft in a meaningful way sounds trivial. Even though we know it isn’t.

Craft is not trivial. It isn’t what we see in the mainstream media. It isn’t playing around with needles and yarn and little bags of thread. It isn’t ugly useless objects that clutter up houses. It isn’t time wasting, it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money, and it isn’t something that just privileged women do that have too much time on their hands.  

So what is it?

Practically speaking, craft is engaging with the practice and process of making a thing with our hands. Emotionally speaking, taking time to craft is us being goddamn kick-arse grown-ups who know that in order to be the best we can be, we need to prioritise our well-being.  

It is our responsibility as adult humans to chase down our well-being with all we have, because how we show up in the world matters. It matters to those that we share our lives with. It matters in our workplaces – workplaces where, I might add, many of us are solely focused on the well-being of others. It matters to those people we interact with for a second at the supermarket, to the person we sit next to on a train, or to the person we are responsible for serving at the school canteen.

It matters because as part of a community, we have a responsibility not just for our own well-being, but for the well-being of the people we interact with, live with and love. We are in this together.

Little things matter – small interactions with others, eye contact, smiles, our tone of voice. All of these things, my ability to be present, and centered, and loving, and responsive to other people, are made infinitely better through me taking the time to make things with my hands.

To butcher and paraphrase an idea from the beautiful poet David Whyte – we must drink from a deep well, the deepest well we can possibly dig for ourselves, if we are to live our best lives.

Yes, the commenter I mentioned at the start of this post, was right. We are privileged because we aren’t talking about the base level of survival – water, shelter, food – but we are talking about things that affect our next level up. We are talking about our ability to connect with others. We humans are social animals who need connection, but it’s impossible for us to connect, to support, to love and to give if we have nothing left inside. We can’t give when we have nothing to give. We need to go to the well.

Our privilege – and most people who read this blog are immensely privileged as they have the head space to read my wordy posts x  – allows us to think about, and talk about, how to better our wellbeing. Making choices about how to think about and navigate our craft are part of that, because the more nurturing our craft practice, the better our well-being.

We need new language, better language, and a new narrative about what craft gives us; how it supports us, connects us and changes us.

This thinking about craft, talking about craft, and the act of making itself, is not trivial. It is life sustaining for so many of us. And by life sustaining, I’m not just talking about the big stuff. Yes – craft has sustained me and supported me through grief and shock and babies and cold, still, lonely winters. And so many of you lovely people have shared stories with me over the years, of craft sustaining you through cancer and divorce and loss of children and elderly parents and mental health stuff. But craft’s main purpose in my life, and I suspect in yours, is much more mundane and much more beautiful.

My craft is part of my domestic life, my everyday. It is something I look forward to even if it is something I get to spend two minutes on, or no minutes on. It is what I do in the gaps instead of scrolling through my phone, cleaning out my cupboards, or watching TV. Craft is a big part of what allows me to live my domestic life with grace, because it allows me to retain 3% of me no matter what is going on; the 3% that has it’s own dreams and ideas and desires. Craft is there when I want it, when I need it, when I desire it. It provides connection and ritual and beauty to my family life, to my children and to my partner. It allows me, without much money at all, to show them in an ongoing way, my love for them.

For us – those of us that come to this place seeking to think more deeply about how craft impacts us -  craft is sustenance for our thinking minds and our beating hearts.

It is what allows us to show up in the world in the best way we can on any given day. It allows us to see ourselves more fully – to see who we are and what matters to us – by reminding us, through the objects we have made, of our capacity, our values, our priorities and our joy. I know that when I look around at the things I have made I am grateful. Grateful that I have made the time and spent the energy (even on days when I don’t have it) making a thing, because the act of making is what gives my life beauty and connection. And because we need beauty and connection in our everyday to be buoyant. For how can we continue to show up for those who need us, if not for moments of beauty and connection?

Craft is not trivial – it is life giving. For us, but also for all those we serve.

Felicia x

*Not by my fella btw. He is very loving and aware.

Josephine of the Very Snuggly Quilts program with the quilts made at Soul Craft.

Sometimes Projects Just Fail

I made the sweater in the picture at the top about six months ago. And to me (and to all my family and my friends who were asked to judge it’s beauty) it was an abject failure. It’s actually much uglier in person than it is in pictures. The back is bright purple and there is a strip of light mauve on the bottom left panel. After these pictures were taken I actually redid the band one more time in a raspberry which improved it, but did not de-uglify it.

My (incredibly loving and supportive) fella actually said “Felicia, you make so many beautiful things. Please just throw that one in the bin and start again. It’s so ugly. You can’t inflict that on someone.”

Now the failure wasn’t for lack of trying. I tried, and I tried, to make it work. I pulled different parts out over and over again in an attempt to make a beautiful scrap sweater. And yet, I couldn’t get it to work. I ripped for joy, and tried again, and still no joy.

Now I’m a big fan of failing. Failing means I have tried something hard, something that is a stretch for me, and that I’ve hit the edges of what I’m capable of in that moment, under those circumstances. That’s not to say that I enjoy failure in the moment of the failure because I often don’t. In the moment I feel the prickles of shame, frustration or anger run up on the back of my neck….. But then I consciously make the choice to find the lessons and the joy in the failure.

It’s a choice I’ve practiced over many years. To consciously feel joy about being wrong. Because – and here is the magic part - when we have failed we have learnt something, and as such we are smarter than we once were. This is not a reframing where we are trying to make a pile of elephant dung be a cookie. But rather it is a cookie, that upon first glance can look like elephant dung. What’s failed is failed - it’s done - so why would we not look for the joy in learning the lessons we’ve learnt??

Failure is a teaching tool; we always learn from what we did, even if what we simply learnt is not to do the same thing again*. This process of try and fail and try again, can be incredibly satisfying and informative…. but this is conditional upon us being able to see failure for what it is. We need to take our cultural conditioning and our judgement out of the game. We need to learn to allow the failure not to mean anything about us. We need to not take our failures personally but rather that we see them as opportunities for growth.

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”

— Stephen McCranie

So back to the ugly cardy - even after all my years of knitting and combining colours and my effort I couldn’t make it work. And so I quit trying, and simply called it done. And I learnt some lessons.

I learnt that sometimes I can’t force it to work.

I learnt that I can’t really combine flat colours with heathers and make them sing in a way I would like.

I learnt that slightly different weights need to be combined using different stitches.

I learnt that sometimes an ugly yarn is simply an ugly yarn.

I learnt that while someone else may have been able to make it work, I couldn’t with what I know at this moment.

I learnt that to keep trying was just making me feel worse.

And so I quit. A noble and valid choice.

The back is this bright purple.

When I’ve talked about failure on the blog in the past I’ve had lovely kind humans commenting that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself – that I shouldn’t talk of myself in that way. That I shouldn’t call myself a failure and put myself down.

I find this line of thinking really interesting because I don’t see talking about a failure as putting myself down at all. I was calling my work in that instance a failure. I don’t see my failure as a reflection of my worth.

We have a cultural narrative about quitting that is tied up with the idea of failure. We don’t quit. We keep going. We don’t allow ourselves to fail (or to quit) because we must keep trying and trying until we succeed. Being quitters means that we are weak minded losers. Being quitters equates to being a failure. But this narrative is bullshit.

Me wearing the same cardy.

This wasn’t always my attitude towards failure. I’ve learnt how to better think about it through my personal experience with failure.

A long time ago I was once a young human who had always done extremely well at school. So well in fact that I managed to haul myself into a spot at one of Australia’s best universities. And it was there that I failed. More than once.

Failed! For the first time in my previously easy academic life, I failed, and I didn’t know what to do. School had come easy to me you see, and so when I failed I didn’t know quite what it meant. About me or my future or my potential. You see, I had never learnt about failure and I had never practiced failure. I had never thought about failure as something that was possible for me.

Figuring out how I thought about and understood failure took me years to muddle through.

In retrospect it’s easy to see what happened, why I failed. I had just moved to the big city by myself at 17. I was a little lonely and totally unclear what I wanted. And one of my clever techniques when I was afraid of failure and uncertain was “avoidance” as a life strategy. And so, when I knew that I hadn’t done the work I needed to to pass the exam, rather than pulling out of the subject (as that would be admitting failure) I simply didn’t show up to the exam.

Yep.

Ahhh the craziness of youth. Anyway after failing and failing again, I decided to take a year off uni and reset. I took my full time job at the local supermarket and for a year I clocked in and clocked off for my 40 hour week. And I got very very bored.

So I quit. Again. By this time I was 20 years old with no plans, no degree and now no job. Some phone calls to my family lead me to understand that there was some :-) concern about the quitting and the failure and the uncertainty. There was some suggestion that the quitting in itself was a failure.

And yet to me it became clear that it wasn’t about failure or quitting but rather it was an opportunity for growth. I was the kind of person that learns best by doing. I couldn’t learn anything about what I wanted without trying all the things. Trying fumbling around with uni studying things I didnt enjoy, working full time in a supermarket,, trying traveling with no money, trying blagging my way into jobs in cities I didn’t know. Without the failing and the trying and the quitting my life wouldn’t look how it does now. All of these experiences were critically informative learning.

The ugly cardy went to a good home where it is very loved it’s owner. It’s owner isn’t the lovely kid in the photo. The kid in the photo said “oh Felicia - that is a very ugly cardigan”. Bless x

As Greg McKeown says in Essentialism, we quit things all the time. We must quit, and we must fail if we are to allow ourselves to grow and evolve. For example we aren’t still doing ballet or learning the organ or sucking our thumbs, like we did when we were small. We aren’t still annoying the shit out of our brother, and taking jokes way to far, as we aren’t 10 years old anymore. We are also not 20 or 30 or 40. And as such I am no longer a ballet dancer, a ceramicist, a land surveyor, a GIS practicioner, a checkout chick, a smoker, a big social drinker, a super-annoying big sister, a white-liar, a market researcher, a worrier, a non-exerciser or someone who is terrified of heights. We’ve allowed ourselves to evolve through our failure and our quitting. And sometimes through our success.

I have tried and failed and practiced and got better and tried and failed again. And that is how I have learnt to appreciate failing. Because each time I fail - especially in my making - I learn something that I couldn’t have learnt without the failure. The potential for failure is about butting up against the edges of what works so we can see what doesn’t.

Sometimes failing is the only way we can learn what we need to learn. About life and about craft.

Playing in the middle is safe and comfortable and comforting but it isn’t where the magic is. Think about the works of craft that you admire; the things you have made, and the things other people have made, and think about what you love. For me the things I love most are the things that surprise me, the things that shoudn’t work but do. The things that break the rules, and in breaking them come up with new rules. This kind of craft can only happen when we try to butt up against the edges of what works and maybe even cross those lines. And to do that we must step into the uncertainty of not knowing and accept the possibility of total failure.

For me? My most cherished makes are those that I have made by sitting in uncertainty, which means I need actively practicing working with my potential to fail. In order to make the projects that sing we have to also make projects that suck.

How do you feel about failure? Is it something you flirt with? You abore? Or you roll around in? Have you got better at it over time. Please tell me your stories!

Felicia x 

* Like cutting out fabric after two glasses of wine late at night. A lesson I need to relearn at least once a year - which has taught me another important and useful lesson about myself. I’m a woman who needs reminding.

Stash Less - For The Love Of Opportunity Cost

I've fallen off the Stash Less wagon more times I can count, in more ways than I can count. Each time I fall, I simply try to get more aware about why, and not let wagon falling allow me to justify returning to my old ways. I remember that changing any behaviour or pattern takes practice…. and that wagon falling is not an excuse for denial of the truth of unhealthy stashing (ie. hoarding).

I got tagged in a post on instagram recently where someone mentioned that since reading Stash Less they now always buy with a project in mind…. however, sometimes, the beautiful skeins sneak their way in to her bag. Her sweet little comment was "I don't know how?". Which I totally get.

Someone else on that same instagram post stated that even when she purchases special skeins, she doesn’t stash them. Instead she uses them up, as she would rather have special finished objects, than special skeins. What a lovely thought.

Which got me to thinking why I sometimes in the past have struggled to do the same thing. And how it can still be a problem for me. That said I've got better at it, in fact one of the breakthrough moments of Stash Less was when I started using my pretty stuff rather than simply hoarding it. But this is sometimes still an issue for me, and so many of you I suspect. Using the "special".

Sometimes my attachment to the “special” fabric/yarn leading me to purchase something new, rather than using a fabric I love that would be perfect for the project at hand. A weird trick of the mind not allowing me to make the obvious choice.

What happens to me is that I fall prey to the siren song of rolling around in Opportunity Cost; the knowledge that if we use the fabric to make A, then we can’t use it to make B or C or K. And so I enter into a kind of opportunity cost paralysis where I don’t use my very favourite things, the things that would give me the most pleasure to wear…. just in case. Just in case a better idea comes along.

The land of Opportunity Cost is a beautiful place to wander around in. It is full of shiny infinite possibility, each one fully realised in our minds eye. We can see ourselves wearing X and Y and Z, and looking smashing in them. Our future selves joyous in the three different dresses we have made ourselves from our single length of our favourite fabrics.

While using opportunity cost to weigh up our different options is supremely useful, wandering round in opportunity-cost-land is just wandering around in our imagination. You see opportunity-cost-land is a trickster land, a land of distortion. We can get so tangled in the beautiful possibilities that we “decide” that we can’t choose one option - because to choose one would be to deny the others the possibility of every having a life.

Not choosing means we are left with a length of fabric on a shelf or yarn in a (plastic*) box.

Rolling around in opportunity cost is like eating popcorn. It looks like a whole bowl full of goodness but even as you eat it, you know that it never really fills you up. The choice we are making is deciding by not deciding. Denying ourselves the opportunity of getting actual nurturing and joy from a using a thing we made from a fabric/yarn we love.

In contrast, to pick option, to use our special stash, is to acknowledge the opportunity cost of making, and do it anyway. By making a choice we are giving up opportunity and possibility, and we humans don't like giving up stuff. Especially not possibility. It's one of our favourite things.

Choosing is risky - because we might not love the outcome. And it’s brave - not because we are using the fabric/yarn (because lets get real, unless it is our mothers wedding gown, it really is just yarn and just fabric) - but because we are consciously choosing to outsmart our own programming. And that often takes thought, determinations, practice and guts.

I still hold on to special skeins and special fabrics. On occasion I”ve held onto them so long I no longer love them, which is simply a ridiculous tragedy. I’ve held on to them thinking about the many and varied possible projects they would be perfect for - and in doing so have wasted my actual opportunity to love them as a object I could interact with and enjoy.

I’m going to keep practicing how I want to live, and hopefully in time will do this better.

Is this a struggle for you?

Felicia x

*Bloody moths.