The True Magic of Making.

This time of year – around registration for our annual retreat time – is always a little intense. Workshops being finalised, scholarships sorted, registration smooth as we can make it, makes for busy times. So each year, before things really ramp up, I check in with myself and get a little conscious just to make sure I’m on track. I think about why I do it, and should I do it, and what am I doing it for. And it always comes back to this.

I believe in the life-giving magic of making!

Making with our hands enables us to live an elevated life, where our values are deeply embedded within our everyday, infusing our lives with richness and meaning.

I believe that making things with our hands – which includes crafting – isn’t yet widely acknowledged in the same vein as meditation or even art. And yet, making with our hands has the same power to support us, to connect us, and to change how we see ourselves, our community and our world.

I believe that making should be given kudos as a spiritual practice, not in a religious sense, but because it connects us to our own spirits, to how we are feeling in that moment, allowing us to hear our own heads in all their crazy glory, and to connect with what makes our hearts sing. It allows us to practice skills we need in our everyday, like mindfulness, and courage, and letting go, and sitting with uncertainty, all the while giving us a the gifts of flow, of agency and sometimes of accomplishment.

I believe that we need to share what we know - about how craft impacts our well-being - with our wider community. Part of that means we need to be consciously creating the very community we seek - a making community that fulfills our deepest human need, the need to feel connected, and heard, and truly seen.

We need to be generous with our time and our knowledge, whenever and wherever we can, to enable others to get started or to get unstuck. The knowledge we share needs to be broader than simple how-to skills. Sharing our knowledge means speaking of making as a practice, and dispelling myths around talent and creativity wherever we find them. Making where we are all simply practicing in the gap, where we get better with experience, practice and a little help from our friends. Sharing with others that the richness and joy of the making process comes from the making process itself.

I believe passionately in all these things and so much more about the thing that we do, and the community we are part of.

So, as well as putting on a retreat this year, I am spending this year (and I spent part of last year) writing a book! A book about how the process of making supports us in our everyday, connects us to ourselves and our communities, and ultimately how it changes us over time, often in subtle ways we aren't even aware of. A book that celebrates the process of making and all it gives us.

I would love to hear thoughts - about the idea of a book, about your beliefs about your craft, and well, really anything you want to tell me about your making process.

Felicia x

PS. I’m very proud to say that I have a piece in the latest copy of Making Magazine called “Craft As An Elevated Life”. To all of you who already subscribe then I hope you enjoy it. To the rest of you – get your skates on and grab a copy. This baby sells out!

The Case For Pushing Through.

So I’m away on holiday for three months. Well it’s not really a holiday – it’s traveling which is not really the same thing. A holiday to me implies sitting in the one lovely spot having a bit of a relax. This isn’t that. This is living on the road, which has periods of relaxing but also bit periods of inconvenience that you wouldn’t experience if you were at home. It’s rained the last three days running and we and our caravan are damp. Really damp. Sleeping in the damp, drying yourself with a wet towel, clothing your children in damp outfits…. And trying to work out what to do with kids in the rain. Anything but relaxing, and really time consuming. Anyway I digress.

The point of this post is to tell you about a little aha moment I had while sitting in the damp caravan over the last three days.

So when I was packing to leave Melbourne a month or so ago, I was throwing together a bunch of wool and half finished projects into my Wool Box. Trying to grab the right amount to last me three months, while also trying to do a shifty number on myself with a couple of WIPs that had stalled. Bringing them along to force me to finish them.

Wool Box Inventory looked as follows.

• A tiny baby Granny’s Favourite that I needed as a sample for the Workshop release that was nearly finished.
• A sweaters worth of wool for my boy child’s birthday present - he has since said he doesn't need it until Christmas when we are heading back to the UK.
• A sweaters worth of wool for a hoodie for my smallest which she has been begging for.
• A half done pair of socks for the boy child's birthday.
• A half done Shore Cardigan for my lovely SIL.
• A done-except-for-the-sleeves sweater from last year’s top down Fringe Association KAL
• A yoke-done-but-long-way-from-being-finished Piece of Silver KAL
   

When I gaze into this box I feel a mix of slight trauma and happiness. The slight trauma is intentional.

When I get stuck on a WIP – like I have with the last two projects on the list – I have a suite of tools for helping myself shift through and get it done. Now generally before I employ any of those tools I engage in an extended period of procrastination/self-recrimination where the WIP in question stares at me with reproach from it’s scrunched up ball in the cupboard. Loathed and avoided in equal measure.

My favourite-but-traumatic trick for dealing with a-grade stalling is to wait until I am going on holiday. I then pack the project in question along very little else. That way there is no way but through the procrastination to the finish line. Unless I decide not to knit at all…. which as you all know would be pretty extreme. Most knitting, even knitting I’m really not enjoying, is better than no knitting at all, isn’t it?

Anyway, so back to the damp, condensation filled caravan. I had a night the other night when I had completed the socks, the baby sweater, the cardigan for my SIL plus an opportunistic pair of fingerless mitts for the boy child. Therefore as far as WIP go I really only had the last two.

Too much fabric???

Neither of them were easy but I decided I should finish the one that was closest to finished. My Fringe Association KAL from last September - a top-down sweater in a beautiful camel-y yellow.

Two sleeves were all that was left; only a few nights work. And yet the sweater stalled last November and hasn’t been touched since. How come? Well if I really  put time into thinking about why, a question I was also avoiding, then the why is very clear.

It stalled because I’m not sure I’m going to like the result. I'm uncertain and afraid that all my work is in vain.

Aha. Such a tiny thing, but such a useful reminder that this is one of the things in a project that I get stuck on.

There is often a point in projects where I am unsure about whether I am going to like the outcome. It might be that I have stared at it too often, or worked on it too much, or are trying something out, and when I hit this point I put it down and walk away muttering under my breath.

My uncertainty causes me to discard the project (or at the very least shove it in a cupboard) because I don’t like sitting with uncertainty. I like answers. I like clarity. I am a solver, a fixer. And if I can’t sort it out or understand it then I am likely to walk away.

The thing is that in the back of my head I know the project is there, lurking in the background of my study, taunting me with it’s unfinished-ness and my inability to get it done. Sometimes I leave them long enough I almost forget about them, which is of course a valid choice as I wrote about here years ago when I talked about getting stuck in the middle.

My little aha was simply this. Putting it in a cupboard is simply me trying to look for a get-out for a problem that doesn't have a get-out!

The cupboard doesn't help. There isn't a decision to be made and I can’t think, or wait, my way out of the uncertainty. The finished product might be genius or it might suck. The only way I will ever know is if I knit it and see. No way around but through.

If I want the sweater finished I have to sit in the uncertainty of not knowing, and power through regardless!

The other night as I pulled out the sweater and worked on the sleeves - the sleeves I was worried I wouldn’t like - I pushed through the uncertainty. I knit, and it actually wasn’t that bad. I felt a little uncomfortable and annoyed that I had to do it but in many ways I really quite enjoyed it.

Over the next two nights I knitted a whole sleeve, and did a tubular bindoff (which I’d also put on hold) for the front and the back. I was a champion. Momentum had pushed me forward. Once I finally started, I kept on going.

I'd love to tell you that this was the end of procrastination. The part where I got to wrap the blog post up with a Hoorah! and show you the finished sweater looking beautiful/hideous. Sadly it was not the case. Hitting a part I was unsure about I stalled again. The very next night when it came to me picking up the stitches for the other sleeve I piked. I started thinking "well that looks a little bit tricky", and "I can’t exactly remember what I did for the other arm", and "what if I don’t really like it?" And so I cast on for something more entertaining and sparkly. Rid-ick-u-lus but true.

I'm on a mission now though - by writing this post I've outed myself as a champion procrastinator and avoider of tricky things. I've done a number on myself though and upped the stakes by setting myself up. I’ve also not put the offending sweater away. I’ve left it on the couch of the tiny damp caravan knowing that it will reproach me much more loudly if it is in view.

Pushing through is the only way - and tomorrow is another day.... I will get it done!

Do you have this issue with uncertainty? And what do you do to push on through?

Felicia x

Slow Stitching in the Barn

Slow Stiching In The Barn, a special event that we held at the end of March, was an amazingly beautiful weekend! Just as we had hoped it was a weekend full of amazing food, in a stunning location with so much sharing of knowledge, and generosity of spirit. And so much beautiful stitching.

The amount of stitching done by many meant that, for some of us, the weekend was anything but slow :). Luckily the environment was such that it meant that the weekend felt like a step away from the normal busy, with time to connect with those around us about our shared love of making with our hands.

The pictures will show you what it was much better than my words can, so without further ado, I present to you a few of the beautiful photos from our retreat Slow Stitching in the Barn.

Felicia xx

Friday Welcome Dinner and Drinks

I'm about to give the weekend welcome! (and the lovely Shannon having a chuckle x)

The weekend was full of ridiculously good food as prepared by our caterer, the lovely Julie Monk.

A Weekend of Workshops and Good conversation

Melissa Wastney hard at work getting us ready on the Saturday morning.

Our 2017 Workshop List Is Live!

This is one of my favourite days of the year. The day when I get to share with you what we will be doing this September 8-10th at our Annual Retreat by releasing our list of workshops. I'm hoping that you love them, as much as I've loved putting them together for you.

So what have we got? Well this year I've brought back some of the classes I know you loved, like darning and colourwork, while also offering a new twist on some past classes like our natural dyeing classes.

Our handwork classes include Boro and a whole day of handquilting with Anna Farago and we have Elizabeth Barnett back to do her beautiful embroidery sampler. While she is with us we have also roped Elizabeth into doing her Intro to Watercolour class for us.

New teacher Adele Moon is doing a Spinning 101 where you will learn about fibre and get started with the basics using a drop spindle. This class has been much requested and we know you will love it.

What else.... we're thrilled to be offering you basket weaving for the first time with artist Phillipa Taylor. Not just any baskets either - go have a look at the class. These are something really special. Phillipa is also taking a jewellery making workshop where you will learn a small scale weaving technique, making a pair of gorgeous earrings.

We have a bunch of ace new knitting classes, including some advanced techniques like grafting, as well as shawl knitting. The shawl we are doing involves Mosaic knitting which I know will be new to many of you, with new teacher (to us) Ambah O'Brien. And we have some of your favourite teachers back this year - Georgie Hallam and Julia Billings will be joining us.

Garment sewing has stepped up a notch this year too. We have Sewing 101 for those of you who have just begun where you will make one of my favourite basic tops, learning to do beautiful bindings and neat hems. For those of you with a little more experience we are offering the gorgeous Sydney coat by Tessuti taught by the lovely Helen Duckham, along with two classes by pattern-maker extraordinaire Nita-Jane. She will be teaching garment fitting again (in a slightly different format to last year) as well as doing a full day on mastering knit sewing.

Finally we have a new class that I am very excited about, also taught by the lovely Anna Farago, called Colour Play. So much of our craft is successful (or not) based on our colour choices. This class aims to get you thinking about and playing with colour in new ways, which can't help but improve your knitting, sewing, quilting, weaving, .... you name it.

You can find a full list of workshops here and the workshop schedule here.

Remember that tickets go on sale Sunday April 30th at 5pm.

I'd love to hear what classes you are most excited about in the comments.

I really hope you like them.

Felicia x

Scholarships to our 5th Annual Retreat are Open!

We are pleased to announce that the applications for scholarships to our 5th annual retreat are now open!

Our annual retreat is an incredibly welcoming space, so please consider applying even if you don't know anyone else that is coming. Over half the participants come by themselves and many a friendship has been made at the retreat as everyone relaxes into a weekend surrounded by other people who understand the joy of making.

A couple of things to note!

- These scholarships are available to anyone facing ongoing financial stress who has a love of making.

- To really make coming to the event possible, the scholarship also includes a $500 stipend to be spent as you see fit.

- This year we are offering two full scholarships so please apply if you think you qualify.

Please note that scholarship applications close on Saturday April 29th at 5pm.

Felicia x