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The True Magic of Making.

May 19, 2017 thecraftsessions

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!

In The Craft Sessions, Thoughts On Craft
← Experimentation and the Fringe and Friends 2016 KALThe Case For Pushing Through. →

Welcome! I'm Felicia - creator of The Craft Sessions and Soul Craft.

This blog is about celebrating the connection between hand-making and our well-being. These posts aim to foster a love of hand-making and discuss the ways traditional domestic handcrafts have meaning and context in our everyday lives.

I love the contributions you make to this space via your comments and learn so much from each and every one. x

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The Year Of The Scrap - One of my favourite uses for a couple of balls of dk/sport weight yarn is a baby version of #grannysfavourite by @tikkiknits. I’ve made this little sweater so many times - because the result is something really special and it’s such a fun little knit. ✨ This is the 3rd size which is a 3-6month size and I’m using one 200m stray ball I had. The reason this is such a good scrap knit is that it is top down and seamless, and looks super sweet sleeveless if I run out of yarn. ✨ How to make the most of your scraps? I knit the yoke, then the body before using my kitchen scales to weigh what yarn I have left for the sleeves. I then divide it into two balls based on weight and knit till I run out of yarn. When I get to the end of the first sleeve, I leave it on the needles without casting off, and knit my second sleeve to make sure I haven’t weighed it wrong. I cast off when I have two sleeves the same length. ✨You can knit this pattern with as little as a ball and a half. ✨ Even if you don’t have babies in your life this is a wonderful charity knit for organisations like @knitonegiveone, especially if your scraps are machine washable. ✨#theyearofthescrap
On the blog today: How Artefacts (Craftefacts) Elevate Craft (and our lives). ✨This is one of those posts that I’ve been pondering for an age. About the super power that craft has to elevate our lives by providing us with a visible representation, an artefact, of the process. How these “craftefacts” capture our history, our feelings, our capacity and our values, at a given point in time. Living among them adds a richness and depth to our lives that is incredibly special and life elevating. ✨ The experience of living with the things we have made doesn’t have a word, and so I created one - craftefact! A little silly and clunky perhaps but the only way we can talk about ideas is if we have language. I’d love you to read the post and let me know if you can come up with something less silly😊. And I’d love to hear how living among the things you have made affects you. ✨This photo is of my biggest two wrapped up in their quilts on a lazy school holiday morning. ✨#craftefacts #craftasanelevatedlife
This Sunday just gone was my beautiful friend @faragoanna ‘s  exhibition opening of her #daddyasbirds exhibition. I know many of you have been following along as Anna has created these paintings over the last year, since the sudden passing of her husband Adrian. The opening was a chance for us to come together to celebrate his life but also to celebrate this incredible project Anna undertook in part to sit with her grief. What she did was incredible, and if you’d like to see it the exhibition is on at Monsalvat until March 3rd, so please head on out there. I was taking photos in the day with my real camera so I stole the first photo from my lovely friend @_jay_emm and the second from my lovely friend @twinklettes. X
I’ve been a little quiet in this space because of some life stuff (and I’ve been in this stunning place), but I’m still checking in when I can, still listening and still learning alongside so many of you. I’ve been pondering the incredibly simple but profound idea of when you know better, do better. What’s become clear to me is that doing better is a ongoing process, not act. So many resources have been shared but I wanted to highlight a couple that I’ve found incredibly helpful recently... Firstly everything from @wherechangestarted. In particular there have been some super clarifying posts over the last few days about what our responsibilities are, about the important distinction between anti-racism work and activism and what “doing enough” looks like. Please also watch the saved stories on @astitchtowear ‘s feed if you haven’t seen them. And head to @sophiatron and @tikkiknits and @yumichild ‘s feeds to bear witness to racism in australia today, and to hear their wisdom. I’m away from this space again this weekend so I’m turning off comments as I can’t check in. Hope your weekend includes a little craft! X
The Year Of The Scrap - One of my favourite uses for a couple of balls of dk/sport weight yarn is a baby version of #grannysfavourite by @tikkiknits. I’ve made this little sweater so many times - because the result is something really special and it’s such a fun little knit. ✨ This is the 3rd size which is a 3-6month size and I’m using one 200m stray ball I had. The reason this is such a good scrap knit is that it is top down and seamless, and looks super sweet sleeveless if I run out of yarn. ✨ How to make the most of your scraps? I knit the yoke, then the body before using my kitchen scales to weigh what yarn I have left for the sleeves. I then divide it into two balls based on weight and knit till I run out of yarn. When I get to the end of the first sleeve, I leave it on the needles without casting off, and knit my second sleeve to make sure I haven’t weighed it wrong. I cast off when I have two sleeves the same length. ✨You can knit this pattern with as little as a ball and a half. ✨ Even if you don’t have babies in your life this is a wonderful charity knit for organisations like @knitonegiveone, especially if your scraps are machine washable. ✨#theyearofthescrap On the blog today: How Artefacts (Craftefacts) Elevate Craft (and our lives). ✨This is one of those posts that I’ve been pondering for an age. About the super power that craft has to elevate our lives by providing us with a visible representation, an artefact, of the process. How these “craftefacts” capture our history, our feelings, our capacity and our values, at a given point in time. Living among them adds a richness and depth to our lives that is incredibly special and life elevating. ✨ The experience of living with the things we have made doesn’t have a word, and so I created one - craftefact! A little silly and clunky perhaps but the only way we can talk about ideas is if we have language. I’d love you to read the post and let me know if you can come up with something less silly😊. And I’d love to hear how living among the things you have made affects you. ✨This photo is of my biggest two wrapped up in their quilts on a lazy school holiday morning. ✨#craftefacts #craftasanelevatedlife This Sunday just gone was my beautiful friend @faragoanna ‘s  exhibition opening of her #daddyasbirds exhibition. I know many of you have been following along as Anna has created these paintings over the last year, since the sudden passing of her husband Adrian. The opening was a chance for us to come together to celebrate his life but also to celebrate this incredible project Anna undertook in part to sit with her grief. What she did was incredible, and if you’d like to see it the exhibition is on at Monsalvat until March 3rd, so please head on out there. I was taking photos in the day with my real camera so I stole the first photo from my lovely friend @_jay_emm and the second from my lovely friend @twinklettes. X I’ve been a little quiet in this space because of some life stuff (and I’ve been in this stunning place), but I’m still checking in when I can, still listening and still learning alongside so many of you. I’ve been pondering the incredibly simple but profound idea of when you know better, do better. What’s become clear to me is that doing better is a ongoing process, not act. So many resources have been shared but I wanted to highlight a couple that I’ve found incredibly helpful recently... Firstly everything from @wherechangestarted. In particular there have been some super clarifying posts over the last few days about what our responsibilities are, about the important distinction between anti-racism work and activism and what “doing enough” looks like. Please also watch the saved stories on @astitchtowear ‘s feed if you haven’t seen them. And head to @sophiatron and @tikkiknits and @yumichild ‘s feeds to bear witness to racism in australia today, and to hear their wisdom. I’m away from this space again this weekend so I’m turning off comments as I can’t check in. Hope your weekend includes a little craft! X
Blog
How Artefacts - Craftefacts - Elevate Craft
How Artefacts - Craftefacts - Elevate Craft
about 2 days ago
Thinking About Combining Yarn Scraps
Thinking About Combining Yarn Scraps
about a week ago

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