Giving Back Policy

Soul Craft is about giving back. Me giving back to this craft and this community who have given me so much over the years - who have literally acted as life support.

But it is also about us giving back - as a community. What we are able to do - make things - is a privilege. No matter how tiny the amount of time we have in any phase of life, or how tiny the amount of money we have for supplies, we get to engage with this thing we love because we have the time/money to do so. We are also lucky enough to have the knowledge that craft is there for us when we need it. That is our privilege.

And so Soul Craft wants to share that privilege around. To create a bit more space and time for someone who doesn't have craft in their lives as a life support.

To see our Values and our Policies then please follow the links. But for your convenience I thought I would share our Giving Back Policy here.

“We believe in giving back. We know the power craft can have in our lives, and want to share that with as many people as we are able to. As we all know, making things with our hands can dramatically affect our wellbeing and support us in our everyday.

As such 10% of all profit made by the event will be invested in projects that improve the wellbeing of women through craft. Some of this money will be given in the form of scholarships and grants to people and projects within our community. Some will be in charitable donations through things like micro-loans. We will be fully transparent on where this money has been assigned, and a page will be added to our website after the event giving details.”

— https://www.soulcraftfestival.com/our-policies/

What our Giving Back looks like in reality? Well, that is what I am asking you?

This is our first year of running the festival and the first time we have attempted something like this. In the past we have run scholarships to The Craft Sessions but our Giving Back policy aims to target a larger number of women.

So my questions are;
1. Do you know of a community group that needs resources or even a cash grant. It could be for materials, for hall hire, for teaching support?
2. Do you think we should keep it totally within Australia or should a proportion of what we do be spent through charities like Give Directly or Kiva loans allowing women to support themselves and their families through craft?

We will take any advice you have for us - and will share after the event what we have decided to do.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this post. Please comment here rather than on Facebook and  Instagram just so we have all your comments in the one place.

Thanks as always for your support.

Felicia x

Handmaking as well-being

So the other day I went to a school information night and on the way I was listening to a podcast where Russell Brand is interviewing Sam Harris. And Sam said this (at around 28.47);

“Ideas are the most powerful thing we’ve got. Ideas are the operating system for human life and human culture.”

He went on to say that it's around ideas that we have conversation, conversation that is able to connect us through shared values. And really there were only two modes of being - conversation and violence. So without ideas, without conversation we have no way of coming together.

And I thought wow.

And then I went and I sat in the auditorium at school, and the wellbeing person started talking about the Resilience program the school is running, and there was a slide that said this;

“By developing daily practices we can change our own health and wellbeing, and impact positively on the wellbeing of others.”

And I thought shazzam! That’s what I’m talking about.

The resilience project was talking about using gratitude, empathy, mindfulness and meditation to improve wellbeing.

And here’s my shazzam….. I believe that the idea that "handmaking improves and supports well-being" is an idea worth spreading.

Try this on for size - "Making things with our hands as a daily practice changes our own health and wellbeing, and impacts positively on the wellbeing of others" said by me just now.

This is what I believe. This is what I care about. This is what I’m writing a book about – to promote this message*,  because handmaking isn't yet recognized in the same way that exercise or meditation is - as a pathway to well-being.

And yet, as well all know, in addition to impacting postitively on our well-being, making (in our case craft) has all sorts of additional benefits. Handmaking as a practice has a breadth and depth of meaning that just isn't present with many other well-being practices.

I believe;

Handmaking offers us a practice that supports us, connects us and ultimately changes us. Craft as a daily practice will elevate our lives.

Making supports us by giving us a way to touch beauty in our everyday, and experience states of flow, of joy, of dreaming, of creativity and purpose. This gives us space in our lives to breathe and be.

Making connects us to ourselves and to others, because the artifacts of our making practice are objects that hold our values, our beliefs and our intentions. They hold our love for our child, they hold the skill we learnt from our friend, they hold our environmental values, and our memories of a time and a place. The process of making enables us to create layers and layers of connection and meaning in our everyday.

And making ultimately changes us. By giving us a daily practice – something to bang up against time and again – we learn about ourselves. When we sit down to make we bring all our habits, our self-talk and our history with us. Making enables us to see these stories in all their shiny often destructive glory. "I’m not creative", "I’m not good enough", "I never finish things" "She's so talented compared to me". But then, if we make with some consciousness, we can slowly shift our stories as we practice new ways of being, and surprise ourselves with our capacity time and again.

No matter what colour our world is on any given day, golden or grey, a craft practice gives us something more than we have. And that more is precious.

Craft as an elevated life.

Felicia x
 

PS. I’m bone tired and have to get up in the morning to write – but happy making tigers! And thanks for tuning in to my mini-rants.

*And to talk about all the ways we can have a making practice that is freer from the cultural and personal messages we layer on top.

Stash Less - Know thyself.

Stash Less is an ongoing series where I talk about creating a inspiring, not overwhelming, reasonable, useful stash. Have a look at my Stash Less project here....

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So over Xmas I was in London as the fella is British, and as is tradition when I am there, I hit a few of my favourite craft shops and do a little purchasing. What is available in London is not necessarily available to us in sunny Melbourne, and so I take the opportunity to stock up. And really what is stocking up if it is not stashing. Knowing this was on the horizon I did some thinking about how to approach it and came up with a plan.

The single biggest thing I have learnt through Stash Less is that knowledge is power. Knowledge is the only way I can change my behaviour, and the most important part of the equation for me is looking at my patterns of thinking.

But knowing oneself is hard, as our thinking is coloured by our past experiences and frames of reference. We are masters of self-delusion and confabulation when it comes to the truth about who we are, and why we do what we do.

I've found that it takes careful conscious examination of the feelings I am experiencing as I'm directly engaged in certain behaviours to understand what they do for us - what the reward is. If I try to think about it after the fact, I'm already in self-justifying mode. There is always a reason for me to think I need more and to excuse anything. My brain can be deviously unhelpful when it comes to the truth.

So what knowledge did I use to help me navigate my purchasing - purchasing that I have given myself permission to engage in - while still sticking to my Stash Less principles of conscious consumption?

A Quick Note: I wrote this next bit while I was in London so excuse the time warp.....

1. Everyone loves a "treat" - but "treat purchasing" rarely = joy

Being in London is a thrill. Yes, it's a little damp and cold at this time of year, but it is xmassy and busy, and the lights are twinkling. It is a city that has stuff going on, stuff that beckons one to be part of it. And it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking "treat". Being in London is a treat and so I should behave like I am treating myself. This carries over into all sorts of wacky places. For example my kids have had soft drink three times in the last week - this is unheard of in my nearly 12 year parenting career. In the last year they would have had it thrice and one of those was our wedding. I'm eating foods I wouldn't normally eat too and not feeling good because of it - because y'know, it's a treat? And then there is purchasing. It is easy to arrive somewhere and purchase based on the "well being here is special and I would love something to remember it by".

So knowing this is how I feel, and the desire is real and distracting, I give myself permission to do this in some small way, with a proviso or two. Firstly it must be something really special that we don't get at home. Secondly I must really truly love it.

This was easy this time around as I spotted some beautiful ethical naturally-dyed sock yarn - even though I am not a sock knitter - and so purchase I did. I get one of these a trip normally. We are away for six weeks this time so I'll report back how this goes...

UPDATE: I was successful. This was my only treat purchasing as far as my supplies went.

2. I lack clarity in the face of pretty.

Pretty is distracting, and confusing. We humans get tangled up by it.

As a tactic when my kids were little and needed distracting, my brother would point and say "LOOK!!! There is a monkey with a shiny thing" and that is exactly what happens to me in the face of a shop of beauty. I am like a little kid looking at the monkey. I don't think clearly and can only look fascinated and excited. This can lead to purchasing chaos. I buy things that I love the look of but don't love to use - they are often things that are pretty but don't feel like my deep style.

In order to get around this this week I did the following;

- I went back to pinterest as my Visual Diary and carefully examined what I love. I also looked up a few instagrammers who styles I loved and noted the materials they used on my favourites of their garments.

- I looked at, and rewrote, my making list to see what I could make in the near future.

- Before I left Melbourne I did a quick inventory of what my sewing cupboard lacked. This wasn't necessary for the wool cupboard as I know that I have enough to go on with for some time.

3. Get really conscious And really clear.

I'm about to described the simple process through which I figured out what to buy in Point 4, but bigger picture I needed to get really conscious this week about reminding myself why rampant unstructured purchasing doesn't make me happy.

To do so, I went right back to the start in my head and thought about;

1. How stash overwhelm makes me feel - and how satisfied and joyful I feel when my stash is smallish but has things in it that I truly love.
2. How getting conscious about my purchasing fits with my values - I value the earth and my impact upon it. I don't want to live as a true minimalist - but I do want to be considered and conscious.
3. How purchasing this way is not deprivation but freedom, as true freedom requires restrictions. "Through discipline comes freedom" Aristotle.

4. i was intentionally considered

I did a reconnaissance mission where I went into my favourite London fabric store with the intention that I would not purchase. I went right through the store looking at what they had - and then walked away.

For three days I thought about what I would be able to use and what would be good as basics to stock up the cupboard with. I thought a lot about the Sweater Quantity/Dress Quantitiy rule for purchasing to make sure I didn't just buy a little to little to make what I really wanted to make.

Then I wrote a shopping list which included fabric and purchase amounts.

The process of reconnaissance and then walking away to ponder was incredibly helpful, as I got really really clear on what I wanted. This would not have been possible if I had just walked in and tried to purchase - I would have gone all deer-in-the-headlights-confused in the face of all that possibility.

When I went back three days later I was able to put my rolls up on the bench, and was in and out of there in 15 minutes.

I did the same at Liberty London - recon, wait three days and then purchase clearly.

 

5. What I purchased

So it wasn't all roses and clarity. There was a small bit of chaos listed below as "The Total Fail". But for the sake of future learning I'm going to include an inventory in this post. It will give me something to look back on to see what I actually use and how long it takes me.

• Yarn
  • Treat Purchase - sock yarn as shown above - already on the needles.
  • The Stock - 12 balls of Felted Tweed that was on sale. Felted Tweed is one of my alltime favourite yarns for kids based on how beautifully it wears and how light it is. The girls need cardies as they are currently growing like weeds.
  • The Total Fail - I made an error. Upon arrival we figured out one kid forgot his scarf so rather than buy one I purchased two skeins of yarn to quickly knit one.... only to find he didn't really like the colour. I then purchased two more skeins of yarn in a colour he liked, only to run out of time to make it with all the xmas frivolity. He had a cold neck. I have yarn I don't want or need.
• Fabric (mainly in the top photo)
  • Top Blue Check - 2m for a shirt for the fella. This will take a while till I get up the courage.
  • Next three - cushions for the new sitting spot/lunch table/knitting nook/reading corner.
  • White Check - Dress quantity for me. I don't know what dress yet but I know this will be perfect. It's light and airy and delicious.
  • Bottom Dark Blue Check - Winter frocks/smocks for the girls.... I may steal this.
  • Not shown - (but it should be) 2.5m of Liberty Sweatshirt Fleece in the most sensational print. It is for the girls - winter frocks for over leggings and maybe some trakkies.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you approach this. And whether it has changed over the years with your self knowledge and changing stash priorities.

Felicia x

Our (Pretty) New Festival Page!!

Soul Craft is about the good stuff - about craft and connection - and especially about conversations. And so we've put together a new Festival Program - In Detail page to really showcase the depth and breath of the talks and demonstrations on offer as part of our Festival Day Pass.

This program is about all the things that are important to us - about our connection with ourselves, our impact on the earth, about learning and sharing about how we make and why.  It's about how hand making affects our well-being. But it's also practical - about technique, about how to get started with a new-to-us craft, about how other people make time and space in their lives to make.

It's about having the conversations we have been having on this blog over the last few years in real life. The Festival Program is about how craft fills us up and how craft makes us feel!

If you missed out on the masterclass you wanted to do - as many of them have sold out already - then never fear as many of our teachers are also sharing their knowledge, wisdom and joy as part of our Festival Program. Come and meet Elizabeth Barnett, Andrea Mowry, Natalie Miller, Jen Beeman, Anna Farago and Melissa Wastney in real life.... you will love them.

We really hope you love the program - and that there is so much depth and breadth there that you will be struggling to figure out how to fit it all in :)!

You can buy tickets here.

Felicia x

Why Making Matters More Than Ever

So often we are distracted from the life we want to live. In this world of busy, this world of attention-grabbing media, a world where we are constantly encouraged to reach outwards, to grasp at our cultural obsessions with happiness, so often we are so distracted we don’t even know that we are looking for something. We get lost in the passivity of a life where our attention is elsewhere. A life where the very thing we seek is impossible to hear over the roar of messaging about what we should have and who we should be. We are sold desire as way of living – desire for more, desire for the shiny happy life that we are told is possible if we just do/have/say/be/think XYZ…..

We spend much of our time watching other people’s shiny happy lives on Instagram and facebook. Often we are so deep in the distraction and desire that we forget that the landscape could look different or even that there is a landscape to look at. Distraction, leading to desire, leading to discomfort, leading to more grasping at the distraction to make the discomfort go away.

In this age of distraction, of screens and content and possibility filling up every gap in our day, we forget that we have a choice. We forget that we don’t need to be living a life where we are so distracted we forget to look up. We forget that the thing we yearn for cannot be found in the amongst the distraction. That in order to live the life we yearn for, which for most of us is simply a life well-lived, that we need to step out of the steady stream of information technology, and of busy, and get active about our lives.

I am not immune.

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Desire is a driver, a motivator. In fact, a sincere and uncompromising desire, placed above everything else is nearly always fulfilled. But every judgement, every preference, every setback spawns it’s own desire and soon we drown in them. Each one a problem to be solved, and we suffer until it’s fulfilled. Happiness, or at least peace, is the sense that nothing is missing in this moment. No desires running amok. It’s okay to have desire. But pick a big one and pick it carefully. Drop the small ones.”

— Naval Ravikant, Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris.

In part because we are away from home, I'm having an ongoing conversation (argument?) with one of my (gorgeous) children about the amount of screen time they have. This child believes that we are unfair with our (tyrannical) screen policy. He wants his life to look like many of his peers. And yet, what he doesn’t know is that every time we have a discussion about it, I can’t stop thinking about a conversation about screens that I had with his school principal of many years ago.

Mrs. X, the principal, was talking to my kids about our household screen policy, and she was laughingly shocked. She expressed her surprise about how little they were allowed by telling my kids that there was NO WAY she could restrict her daughter’s screen time in such a way. And that it would cause a family crisis if she was to suggest to her daughter that there was no TV before school. Mrs X. expressed the sentiment “Well that’s just the way the world is these days, isn’t it!”. Hands up, helpless.

I remember being shocked myself upon seeing the helplessness she felt in the face of our cultural move towards technology. I think my shock was increased significantly her job title. She was a school principal!! She had THE authority! Surely she must be used to using her authority to create policy. For a principal must inherently believe they can shape the world children inhabit, how they learn and what they learn? Yes?

And, if even a school principal doesn't feel empowered to go against the tide, then.....

My kid doesn’t know it, but this exchange changed me.

The shock I felt that day in the face of her shock, has been ongoing reminder to me that
I always have a choice.

Sometimes I forget I have a choice, I get busy, sucked into the flow of distraction that is our culture. I sometimes get screen-obsessed and forget that I am an active participant in my own life. And sometimes that phase can last for months before my passivity and discontent leads to me making choices to fix it.

But as a parent, I have to decide what my kids' life looks like while they are little. I must decide for them so they aren’t swept along with the raging river of distraction and desire. I need to try to teach them what it feels like to have space and calm, and control over their attention, so that when they inevitably go through periods of distraction and screen addiction and busy in their lives, that they will have a reference point of something other. They will know what it feels like to just be, a reference point they can seek out with intention when they look up from distraction.

I must do this for them. Which reminds me all the time that I need to do it for myself.

“Similarly, don’t trust technology too much. You must make technology serve you, instead of you serving it. If you aren’t careful, technology will start dictating your aims and enslaving you to it’s agenda.
So you have no choice but to really get to know yourself better. Know who you are and what you really want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself. But this advice has never been more urgent than in the 21st century. Because now you have competition. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the government are all relying on big data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. We are not living in the era of hacking computers – we are living in the era of hacking humans. Once the corporations and governments know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate you and you won’t even realise it. So if you want to stay in the game, you have to run faster than Google. Good luck! ”

— Yuval Noah Harari, Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

How does hand making come into this?

The world, our lives, are increasingly passive and increasingly distracted. While humans have always shaped their worlds to suit them and their particular tastes, we are increasingly having our taste chosen for us.

We have to be active in our own lives. I have to create the life I want - there is no freedom from this loop of discontent unless I intentionally create it. Technology and marketeers are working against us and without making an active choice there will be no quiet, no peace, no space. No good life.

While mindfulness and yoga are regularly suggested as practices that offer respite and access to the well-lived life, I want to put my hand up for !!hand making!! as an alternative practice that should be added to the toolkit of possibility.

Hand making as the key to a good life!

I know that my making practice is the anti-dote to distraction and desire, and busy discontent, because hand making inherently holds within it the skills, qualities and techniques one needs to live well.

Making litters our lives with intention and agency. It reminds us through it's process that we can alter our environment to suit ourselves. That we have choice and agency in our lives. We made that thing!!! Look at what we did…… And then long after the active part of the making is over, the things we have made surround us with reminders of who we are. We are makers. We are creators. We are active agents in our own lives.

Making offers us access in the moment to the space where happiness, or rather satisfaction, lives. In many moments of making we sit in flow; that special space where we need nothing more than what we have in our hands. We aren’t reaching or stretching. We are exactly where we want to be. We think differently when we are in that space. We feel different. We are different. We are whole.

Making offers us meaning. When we make we get intentional – about what and for whom and how. Our making holds within it our values, our thoughts, our interests, our style, our spark, at that moment in time. It allows us to live our values, and to value our lives. It offers us products - the artifacts of our making – as evidence of our persistence, our practice, our courage, our failures, our successes and our joy.

“Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. ”

— Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed

Maybe the thing we need is a revolution. A revolution of making – where hand making is recognized for what it is – a soulful practice that can make us whole. Maybe we all need to making something, anything, regularly as the antidote to distraction, desire and discontent. This making could be a meal, a garden or a sweater. Whatever it is, it will remind us of the innately human joy we get from actively living our lives, by reminding us of our ability to shape the life we live in – by making.

Love to hear your thoughts x

Felicia