why craft : digital productivity

When I started this blog way back in 2008, I intended it as a place to reflect on the intersection of craft, digital and community - three things that are important to me in both my personal and professional life, on a micro and macro scale.

Yet since returning to blogging after what was, in effect, an extended blogging maternity leave, my posts have become almost exclusively a record of what I've done and things I've made. This is not, in itself, a problem and it has been a nice way to ease myself back into e discipline of regular blogging... but it is not what I initially intended my blog to be.

So I have started to ask myself why this has happened and so, in asking this question and following my subsequent thoughts, I have also moved closer back to the reason I started to blog.

When I started blogging I had few commitments in my life, expect perhaps going to work every day and part-time study. But even then my place of work is/was a constant source of inspiration and my study was a driving force behind my decision to blog. I remember being able to sit on the sofa knitting after work whilst watching films and TV programmes and having the luxury of spending whole weekends just sewing and listening to Radio 4.

How simple those days seem now I have two pre-school children and next to no spare time for myself. Radio 4 is still my constant companion but It often feels like all my spare thought capacity is taken up with Thomas the Tank Engine (and his numerous Friends) and other more practical things such as my new and extensive knowledge of child speech and language development, and paediatric cardiology.

Yet somehow, despite now being busier than I have ever before, I also seem to be making more than before - both on my own, and with my children... how can this be the case?

And one reason which is at the front of my mind is digital...

• Smart phone and tablets have given me space and time to find inspiration and information during the tiny moments of calm which arises in my days due to the additive effect of tablet reading
• Sites such as burdastyle.com and ravelry.com allow super-fast access to patterns, ideas, resources and expert knowledge for making
• Hints, tips and ideas from productivity sites such as unclutterer.com and lifehacker.com have genuinely helped me to become more organised and have given me space to get things done
• And apps and utilities such as Blogsy and Google Drive allows me to work on documents whereveer I am at a given moment, rather than being tied down to what we now call the grandad box in our house.

Then there is the act of blogging itself which I am sure has played a part in providing me with the enthusiasm and inspriation to do more. By making myself think about and analyse what I have done I am inspired to build upon and improve my own work.

And so I hope too that this new start in thinking about why I craft will have a similar effect on my future thoughts and will be the start of many future outpourings. I look forward to seeing where this will lead me.

 

Posted with Blogsy

baby surprise : hand-made vs hand-crafted

I have been knitting for almost 10 years now and have noticed that over time my tastes have changed.
At first I threw myself into projects head first - anything I thought of I would fearlessly set about designing and (attempting) to make. I learned any necessary skills on the way. I basically wanted own and wear exactly what I wanted.

My knitting skills developed a lot and I eventually became a competent knitter. I had occasional successes but mainly I produced little that was wearable/usable.

Everything looked 'hand-made' in the worst possible way.

Over time my desire for unique and self-made garments moved to a passion for knitting from vintage patterns. Tiny stitches in fine yarns appealed. Maybe this was a subconscious desire to distance myself from my hand-made first knits.

I had more successes, but many projects still lie unfinished. I learnt more and more advanced techniques and tricks to recreate garments from a time when hand-knitting was a common way to acquire a special item of clothing rather than the consumer driven fashion of today.

However, when I first became pregnant I no longer had the motivation, time nor energy for knitting complicated adult-sized garments. Nor did I have the time to care for delicate hand-knits. Also my ever-increasing baby-bump meant I may not fit into anything I did manage to complete.

Fortunately I now had an extremely important, very small, and as yet unborn person whom I wanted to shower with my knitting affection and so developed my appreciation for the knitting patterns of Elizabeth Zimmerman.

I now have two small boys and have made many of Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jackets and the accompanying booties and hats. I have not yet tired of them. Rows and rows of cleverly increasing and decreasing garter stitch - comforting, interesting, intriguing and with a genius twist at the end when sewing it all together. For me it is the perfect knitting project when heavily pregnant.

Elizabeth Zimmerman's patterns were created not just with the end result in mind, but also with thought to the enjoyment of the process of knitting itself. This suits me well when I have few precious moments to knit and want to make the most of this time.

Zimmerman designed as a knitter, for a knitter. Her work embraces the process of the craft itself. The resulting finished garments looks exquisitely 'hand-crafted', as opposed to the rough-and-ready 'hand-made' of my first forays into knitting.

I never did quite finish this jacket for my son who took me by surprise when he arrived a week early. Despite the best of intentions I never got round to sewing on the buttons. Instead I am left with two rows of button holes due to Elizabeth Zimmerman's genius instructions to make holes on either side of the jacket and sew the buttons over the holes once baby is born (and its sex is known) neatly ensuring the holes and buttons are properly aligned with minimum effort.

It is just this sort of detail which makes Zimmerman's patterns such a pleasure to create.

why craft : craft manifestos + 2.0

The Hobby Princess craft manifesto investigates the question 'why craft?'

Others have expanded, commented and quoted ...

Thoughts from the Bus Stop
Caterina.net
I am yer Grammar
Folkology
BoingBoing
Edge Perspectives

Other sites talk about the Craft 2.0 and the Slow Craft movements.

There is a commen thread throughout that technology, whilst not the primary cause, is certainly an enabler of the movement.

J Meredith Warner talks about the way in which knitting can metaphorically knit communities together. The internet allows these communities to be knit in new ways with threads from far-reaching people and places uniting. Is the internet creating a new folk art/craft for digital natives?

why craft : sharing + inspiration

One thing I've noticed since I've started this research is that I've been spending more time buying fabric, yarn and planning what I will make next. Of course, this is a bit unfortunate, as this MA will surely eat into my time I have to spend doing such things... but it's not an insurmountable problem!

I have also noticed that I'm tending to focus more on craft that digital in this blog, so I thought I would try to bring the two together in this post.

One reasons why I have an increased urge to create is the inspiration derived by seeing other people's work whilst researching this project.

The web allows people to share their creations to a wider audience and across larger geographical areas than ever before, exposing the work of many home crafters to a potentially vast audience. Seeing other people's creations inspires and a virtuous circle is created.

why craft : material things

I was recently out with a friend when he asked me:

'are you still making material things?'

I questioned him on what exactly he meant. His response was…

'you know, things with fabric and knitting'

I wondered if he also intended the other meaning of material… and with it the implications of being 'materialistic'?

Craft is material in many ways... it frequently results in a material, physical object - a possession.

I like owning things, especially things that are unique and made just for (and by) me. I enjoy being complemented on something I have created... I could be said to be 'materialistic'.

I sometimes think one of the attractions of craft is because it is anti-consumption/anti-consumer connotations.

Yet... craft today can be an expensive hobby. Many knitters and sewers have a stash larger than they would ever have time to use. The ‘new wave’ of craft involves boutique shops, artisan yarns and exclusive accessories.

And…

skill + time = money -> ‘high end’ craft objects are very expensive (and desirable).