Craft As A Project V's Craft As A Practice

One of the things I love about writing the blog is it's self sustaining nature. By writing one post, and responding to the comments, another post appears. As was the case for this post. The lovely Karen suggested that I look at an article that was published originally on The Conversation by Susan Luckman about the health benefits of craft. And I loved it. It is such a step forward in terms of the public dialog about what craft is, and what it offers. Who else here would love to never see "Not your nana's knitting...." in an article ever again.

Some of you might know that I've been trying to write a book for the last couple of years. A book in which I'm writing about "Craft As An Elevated Life"*. I try not to talk about it too much based on a Derek Sivers clip about how talking about something makes us feel like we have already achieved it**...... but my book is essentially about the connection between hand making and our wellbeing. It is about craft as a ongoing practice, and in part I'm writing it to rewrite our cultural story about what craft is..... because clearly, as so many articles about craft demonstrate, craft has a marketing problem.

As I was reading The Conversation article today I could suddenly see that part of the problem is the difference between how craft is perceived culturally, and what I know that it is. That difference is the difference between a craft project and a craft practice.

You see craft is often presented as a craft project. You "work on a craft project". There are articles about "10 craft projects you can do in 20 minutes". Many of those projects look and feel trivial. They are made as simple as possible as that is one of the restrictions of magazines. They need projects that are accessible and they think that accessible means quick and dumbed down. What many of these projects lack is meaning. Craft done in this manner can seem trivial. A little project to keep you busy if you've got a bit of time on your hands. A hobby.

That is not how I see craft. The craft I know is the craft that elevates my life no matter what is going on, no matter how shit things are or how great things are, is not project based. It's my craft practice that fills me up; an ongoing practice where I repeat the same process - idea, design, materials, making, completion and then utility - over and over again. It's the repetition of process that is what enhances my wellbeing and elevates my life.

There is a depth to a craft practice that is little understood outside our bubble of makers. How craft, creating things, making things makes us come alive. How craft offers us a way to sit with hard things, a portable boredom solution, self expression, everyday beauty. And how craft offers us artifacts of the process and the part we played in it; the things that we make, reminding us of our agency, our patience, our skills and capacity.

According to Dr Martin Seligman - the grandfather of positive psychology - enhancing our wellbeing has five key elements. They are positive emotion, meaning, good relationships, flow or engagement, and achievement.

A craft project taps into maybe three of these five, giving me some positive emotion, maybe some flow and a sense of achievement. However, it is only through my craft practice that I tap into all five elements of wellbeing in a deep and more meaningful way.

Craft as a practice taps into all five elements of wellbeing over and over again. As well as giving me access to positive emotion, flow and achievement, my craft practice improves my relationships - both with the people that I make for, and with the community that exists around our shared passion for hand making. And it adds so much meaning to our lives as it enables us to truly live our values and then live among the artifacts of the process.

A craft practice embodies wellbeing. Craft as wellbeing, craft as life support for the everyday hard. Wellbeing that I know I have access to whenever I need it.

Craft is a gift.

Craft as it's generally portrayed through mainstream media is one dimensional. It's a simple craft project done as a hobby by someone who enjoys making things.

What I can't wait to see more of, as our understanding of what craft offers increases, is articles depicting a craft practice as a holistic way to achieve wellbeing. Not in the moment, or for a moment, as a craft project does, but rather as an ongoing practice for a satisfied life.

Can't wait to read your comments.

Felicia x

*I originally wrote an article for the beautiful Making Magazine using this title.

**Please kick my ass if I don't!!

Other blog posts that are on similar topics include The True Magic Of Making or Craft As Embodied Satisfaction.

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

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

The Perfect Beginner Knitting Project - In My Opinion :)

A few months ago I taught my lovely babysitter Steph to knit. She and I had talked about a few times over the years, and when I heard she was jetting off yet again, I finally got organised to get her started.

I went to the store and purchased her three skeins of Woolfolk Luft in the Black L06 colourway and a set of circular 60cm Addi Turbos. I know that sounds a little extravagant for a first project but a. Steph is ace and b. making is a sensual experience. Making something is all about the senses - we feel knitting in our bodies - and if we don't enjoy the sensations of knitting when we begin then why would we continue to knit? I wanted to make her first knitting experience a joyous one - one that would result in a beautiful product, and make her happy - so I purchased some of the most delicious yarn I could find.

I've talked many times about how materials matter and I passionately believe it to be true, especially when you are new to the sport. Now obviously, Woolfolk Luft is taking good materials to the extreme, and not all new knitters need to start with Woolfolk ;), but in this case I wanted to thank her with something special.

So, as Steph was looking after my smalls for one last time, I asked her to come 30min early so I could teach her before we had to head out the door. I'd already got the cowl started for her by casting on, and knitting the first row of the Purl Soho Lovely Ribbed Cowl - which I believe is the perfect newbie project! We had 20 minutes to chat all things knitting.

And here we get to the opinionated point of the blog post!

Teaching Steph to knit reminded me that I have always meant to post about what I believe the perfect project for beginners actually is - in my opinion. And I keep forgetting!

You see, I believe that a lot of beginner knitters start with the wrong type of stitch pattern. And that worries me. It worries me because maybe they won't stick with knitting because they think it is too hard, or maybe they will get confused and think it is stressful. And people need knitting, and the world needs more knitters. Knitting brings so much joy to the universe.

Beginner knitters are often encouraged to start with garter stitch - and they often get flumoxed. Which makes sense - as garter gives you no indication if you are getting your knitting right or wrong as you can't tell. Garter stitch is a red hot mess to look at, especially if you are new and you don't understand how it works. Initially looking at garter is like looking at a plate of spaghetti and trying to find a pattern in it.

If they are lucky, some beginner knitters will be encouraged to start with stockinette stitch - which I still don't like - but it's an improvement on starting with garter.

Stockinette is simpler to look at and understand, which means that some folks will be able to see if they have made a mistake, but it doesn't teach you to recognise the stitch you have on the needles - as you are repeating whole rows of one stitch then the other stitch, paying little attention to what you are doing. Stockinette also feels like a waste of an opportunity to learn about reading your knitting from the very start - especially as you would have needed to learn both a purl stitch and a knit stitch.

My hypothesis: Rib is the perfect stitch pattern to begin your knitting career with, as it teaches you to read your knitting from the start.

I believe that the perfect beginner knitting project is some form of 2x2 or 3x3 rib. Through knitting rib you learn that there is a V at the front of a stitch and a purl bump at the back! It is simple, repetitive and beautiful. And by learning the structure of our knitting from the getgo then we knit with less fear and we are more confident knitters.

A few years ago I wrote a post called The Secret To Becoming A Great Knitter and it was all about learning to read your knitting, about understanding your stitches and what they looked like - for freedom, and for joy. In that post I describe how to understand your stitches and how to read them; what they look like and how to recognise them.

Reading your knitting is something you can learn from the very start of your knitting career, as Steph has just proved.

Steph had her 20 min lesson before she started her evening's babysitting, and then we went out for a couple of hours. She had knitted till we got home, then we talked about where she was at. She did take a little film of me demonstrating a knit stitch and a purl stitch, which she took with her on the plane in case she forgot, but that was her whole lesson. About 30 min total.

Fast forward a couple of months and she has a cowl. A beautiful usable wearable cowl.

Photo she sent me via an insta story! xx

This cowl gave Steph repetitive practice of the two basic stitches in knitting. She watched, and tried to learn what they look like, and she was successful. Look at that pretty cowl. No counting, no keeping track.

A simple clean rib shows the newbie knitter what stitch is what. There is a simplicity and grace to it that builds confidence.

People teach garter to newbies as they believe that it's simpler - I believe this is based on the idea that the person only has to learn the knit stitch, and not a purl. Which makes sense, but it is a false economy. Garter is confusing to look at - one row sits on top of the other disguising the stitches. Many experienced knitters can't fix mistakes in garter as it is such a hullabaloo of a stitch pattern.

Yes, learning rib will mean they will have to learn two stitches rather than one, but actually a knit and a purl are incredibly similar in their form, so it's not difficult to learn both. In each case you simply insert the needle tip, you wrap your yarn anti-clockwise through the middle of your two needles, and then you pull your needletip through and pop the stitch off. The only difference between a knit and a purl is whether you insert your needletip from the left or the right. With a bit of practice and concentration it isn't much harder to understand two stitches rather than one*.

If we pay a bit of attention, rib gives us a basic understanding of what a knit stitch looks like on your needles, and what a purl stitch looks like on your needles. By the end of knitting the cowl you know that the front of the stitch looks like (a V) and what the back of the stitch looks like (a bump). Knitting then makes sense, as do the two basic stitches.

This is why I love rib stitch for beginners so much. Steph had so much confidence that she was off to the shop to buy yarn for a TCS Simple Hat. She is almost done already and is waxing lyrical about the joys of knitting. We have another convert!

I'd love to hear about your early knitting experiences and whether this approach would have been helpful?

And if you want to learn to knit, buy some beautiful materials and try this cowl. It is a total winner.

Felicia x

* I have one exception to the rule of teaching rib to newbies and that would be for small people. Small people don't necessarily have the capacity to pay enough attention. Instead with small people, my preference when teaching is to use circular needles and get them to knit a hat in the round..... I'm happy to finish off the top, or instead you can do a square top which kinda make ears. They love the ears.

Breaking The Rules

So I was always the kid with the why. Why should I do it that way? And why can't I do it? And why and why. And why.

That said, I was also incredibly happy when someone gave me a good reason ie. a good reason was simply one that made sense to me. I wasn't unreasonable. I just wanted to understand.

Perhaps it didn't make me the easiest child to parent, but what it did do is make me a great researcher. If someone couldn't answer my question to my satisfaction, I would just keep searching and asking, and harassing and pestering, until someone could explain to me the why.

The thing about a why though is that it is specific to the person giving you the answer. Often the person's why doesn't apply to you given your circumstances, as you will have different needs and values to them.

And so even now, when I (finally) get a good answer to a why-based question, I often find myself again asking "but why?". Oh so annoying, but oh so true.

The bigger why, is why is that answer true?

Which is how (and why) point 5 of The Craft Sessions Manifesto exists. It speaks specifically about why stating

“It’s your craft. There are no rules to how things should be done. Do them in a way that makes sense to you.”

— me in The Craft Sessions Manifesto

Now if you have ever been to an old school craft shop of any kind, or been taught anyone like my Nana, you will know that most people think that there are many many rules around crafting (and life*). And many people believe that rules are there to be followed; that that is the point of them.

I don't. I believe that rules are often specific to a person, a need, a value, an intention or a method. And I believe that you should choose to do whatever makes sense to you. Follow the rules or break the bloody rules. Both are valid choices in many circumstances.

This came up for me recently as I'm in the process of making a lone star quilt for my middle kid, and I'm breaking the rules. I'm making it out of linen and a basic rule of quilting - that I break all the time - is don't quilt with linen as it distorts. This is particularly true when you are trying to quilt something that is complicated and precise, like a lone star quilt. If you aren't precise as you quilt, then you end up with distortion, and distortion means your quilt will be lumpy and possibly not fit together very well. It definitely won't be flat. As linen is the queen of distortion, it isn't great to quilt with. It shifts in all directions and doesn't have enough structure to be precise. Quilting with linen leads to wonky quilts.

I made the decision to make this quilt from linen as the quilt my kid wanted me to copy was naturally dyed. I'm not planning on doing much natural dyeing in the near future, so I thought the Watercolour linens from Purl Soho might be a nice substitute as they aren't flat colour, which more closely mimics natural dyed fabrics. Yes, I could have used shot cotton (which also has a different warp to weft like the linen) which would have had stability but I was in love with the Watercolour linen colours.

So I decided to break the rules. I did this with the full knowledge that my quilt might not work and that it would probably be lumpy. I took measures to avoid as much distortion as possible by making sure as I was cutting I cut along the grain or cross grain. I was careful with my seam allowances, and measured often to make sure I wasn't stretching the diamonds. It was a crazy amount more work, involved a reasonable amount of torturous picking and unpicking, but I have a quilt. And I love it.

But it is distorted.

Distorted quilt piece (especially to the left of the picture) to match my chipped nailpolish?

I tell you my story because I keep remembering this wonderful woman from Brisbane, who made the journey to a Handquilting workshop I did in country Victoria a year or two ago. She took the time, and made the arrangements, to come all that way to do the workshop simply to ask a question.... which was "Can I use this fabric (that I love!) on the back of my quilt?" You see, she had been to her local quilting shop and been told a definite no. "No you can't use that kind of fabric on the back of your quilt." She didn't understand why, and was so frustrated by the answer that she came to my workshop to ask whether what they had told her was true. She said "I know you will tell me the truth".

I've thought about her often, as she illustrates to me just how confusing and tricky it is to be new at a craft.

The tricky thing about breaking rules, is that you need to first understand what the rule is about, where it comes from, and how it became a rule. This is the why behind the why....

And the even trickier thing about the many people who tell you about "the rules of craft" is that they often can't tell you why a rule is a rule in the first place. The fact that they don't always know, often makes it tricky to assess whether breaking a rule is the way forward for you, on a given day, for a given project, with a given outcome in mind.  Because by breaking the rules will generally give you a different outcome.

Of course it's not true that you can't use a fabric you love on the back of your quilt. Of course you can use whatever bloody fabric you want. There are no quilting police - I hope.

I know that the ladies in the quilt shop were trying to be helpful to a newcomer, and were simply telling her their rules of quilting based on their understanding of what a quilt should be. Their idea of a quilt is ye old "a quilt should be precise and neat, last for at least 100 years, be flat and slightly stiff, be quilted to within an inch of it's life". They love those kinds of quilts and they teach that kind of quilting, based on what they value.

I love and value different things. I want my quilts to be snuggly not stiff, I want them to have movement. I love linen, and I like the biasing that happens to linen when you quilt it. I don't mind if my quilts only last 40 years. I'm OK when they occasionally tear as they aren't perfectly flatly quilted and so, sometimes catch on a passing tree as my kids drag them around the garden. I'm ok when they wear more quickly than they need to as they are too lightly quilted or because I've used fabrics like flannelette.

We like different things in a quilt and as such it's OK that we follow a different set of "rules" when we are making a quilt.

Biasing and lumps on my little boy's quilt. And yes some of that binding is flanellette. And the spots are a thick cotton/linen blend. Not a quilting cotton in sight :).

Breaking rules is tricky when you are a beginner as you can't tell which rules are important for your project and which one's don't apply to you. And of course breaking the rules is still really tricky even when you have experience, if you don't know why the rule is the rule. Breaking the rules can lead to disasters, and deciding whether to ignore them can be a confusing conundrum.

But breaking the rules can also lead to beauty, to a quilt that takes your breath away as it is made with the things you love**.

The way forward? The way forward is to always question the why. To find out what is behind it. Is it simply aesthetics, longevity, values, useage, personal preference, x, and y, and z.....? What is it that makes that rule a rule? And do you care? Then if you still can't decide, experiment and see what happens. All new ideas and techniques had to start somewhere, and they often came from experimentation. Innovative, interesting things often come out of smashing rules, so smash away.

Any thoughts? Disasters? Triumphs?

Felicia x

* My nana had a rule that "young ladies should only drink lemon squash". Apparently this applied even if the young lady in question was 30.

** For a set of rule breaking quilts go have a look here.