You may have heard about or seen posts and hashtags for Me Made May. Me Made May began as a challenge started by Zoe from the sewing blog So, Zo… What Do You Know? As Zoe explains on her website: “I’m the creator of the popular online challenges called Me-Made-May, which ask sewers/knitters/crocheters/refashioners to wear their handmade clothing and accessories more, or in different ways, during the month of May. The aim is to encourage people to develop a better relationship with your handmade wardrobe.” Even if it’s just one accessory or garment you’ve crafted with your own hands, you can celebrate the Me-Made-Challenge and make a point of proudly wearing your handmade textiles in your day-to-day life.
I started thinking about the act of intentionally using your handmade textiles—how this practice lets us enjoy them, notice which pieces we return to, and even identify what’s missing from our collection. A daily practice of wearing our Me-Made pieces with intention. A shelf in your closet full of your crocheted and hand-knit sweaters. A space to keep your handmade cowls and scarves within easy reach for a quick stroll. A drawer in your kitchen filled with handwoven towels.
Just as keeping our handmade pieces within reach makes them part of our daily wear, setting up spaces to craft and intentionally saving time in our days to make becomes a daily practice. If fibre prepping for your next spinning project makes your eyes sparkle. If you feel the needles in between your hands and see the sweater grow through little bits of time, and these acts fill your cup. If you plan and design your own tartan, you can weave towels that make you smile every time you use them. Join me as I muse about making with all your senses.
Presence and Space
As we live in a world full of distractions and stimuli, being present in the moment becomes a huge challenge for even the most disciplined of us. Having some routines to reclaim the space to be present becomes the most important way to protect what we want to achieve or work on. There are two rituals we follow as a family every morning after breakfast: Tea and Coffee times.
One is preparing tea with my youngest child. We keep a tray with our teacups and teapot, and every morning my husband and my son choose a tea to prepare, set the water boiler to the right temperature and prepare us all a small cup or two before filling my son’s tea thermos for his day at school. Usually, on warm days, a green tea will be chosen, while Pu’ers or ginseng will be the choice for cool days. The fact that we keep all equipment clean and ready to use on a handy tray makes our daily tea ritual an easy and seamless experience of our day-to-day.
After walking our kid to school, we come back to a quieter house, the perfect time to enjoy the first cup of coffee with my husband, while preparing for the day ahead. I keep a corner of my kitchen where I keep all my coffee prep tools, an easy space to access that lets me prepare and enjoy my daily house-brewed cup in my favourite cup.
Look around your living space. Could you create a space to practice presence for your craft? A basket with a spindle and fibre near the spot where you wait while the water boils can make space and presence for your craft. A corner of a kitchen island with a clamped lock pop and two containers, one with fibre to be processed and one with processed fibre, can create the space to be present in your fibre prep. A hand card clamped on a side table, a diz, a container with hand-dyed braid and a container to keep the dizzed top, by your e-Spinner can be the perfect space to fibre prep for your evening spinning. A blending board clamped on an unused corner of your table, an array of colours in fibre and a container for your prepped fibre hold space for your presence in the quiet time of your week, whether you Take Back Fridays or Wednesday evenings for your craft.
If you have your spinning and fibre prep tools at the ready, maybe what you need is to look at your calendar and schedule a date with yourself so you can hold the presence to hold your space.
Time
Often, even if you are holding the space for the things that you want to be part of your life, all the things that we need to do fill up the days and before we know it, we are too tired to even use the tools and beautiful materials we have at our reach.
Schedule it
Just as you make time to go for a walk with a friend, a lunch date with a partner or an ice cream date with a child (or yourself), I suggest you add your craft time to your schedule. Blocking time, at least once a week, to enjoy time on a craft that fills your soul will allow you to enjoy your present with the best present you can give yourself, time.
Make it a routine
If you know you get a lull of time when you get home, when the world seems a bit quieter, get into the habit of spending 10 or 20 min enjoying your craft. I am used to waking up very early for the gym, in my rest days, I love to use that time to do more of something I also love, some days is an extra cuddle time with one of my kids, other days, I brew a cup of tea while listening to some of my favourite music, a spindle on my kitchen table or my current knitting project are the perfect companion to that extra quiet time to start my day.
Celebrate it
You did it, you planned it, and you actually did it, and now, you have a colourful, in-progress project shining in the morning sun. Take the time to appreciate it before you step out back into the world. I love to take work-in-progress photos with my phone. When I look back at the photos, I see how often I get to enjoy these beautiful crafts that fill my years together with photos of places and people that fill my days with joy. I also love to take photos of my control cards, so if I misplace the real thing, I still have the notes to remember.
If you like bullet journals and calendars, I love adding an emoji heart to my day if I got some crafting (as well as a happy face if I got to exercise that day). Looking back at my calendar, I can see how many days I prioritize joy-filled activities in my week and my years.
Time to become proficient
If you would really like to advance into an aspect of your craft, prep your improving skills corner, and make a date with yourself, it could be something you do for 10 min every time you sit down with your craft to warm up, or maybe is something you work on a full weekend to really sink your teeth on it. Remember too that time spent in fibre preparation informs you on how to spin the fibre afterwards.
Your Senses
One of the favourite things I like about being a multicraftual is the opportunity to use all my senses when crafting.
Hands that feel fibre and fabric, that coordinate, thread, draft, select, and enjoy the materials and product of my labour.
Breathing, and my sense of smell from the woolly smell of the yarn, or the blocked fabric that I like to wash and add a drop or 2 of lavender oil. How my breathing changes to a slower rhythm when I have settled down, and I am in the middle of my craft.
My eyes that let me enjoy the changes of colours, as well as the subtle and evident changes of texture of my materials and my works-in-progress, that my other senses adapt to as needed.
My ears that can recognize the clean snap of a lock of fibre, or listen to my tools and spinning wheels noises, so I can coordinate my treadling so the yarn I am producing is as consistent as possible.
And finally, my sense of taste, which allows me to enjoy a hot drink when I take a break from my crafting to enjoy the place.
Materials
When starting a new craft, many times we source things that may not work for us, as we don’t always know if we are going to like those materials or not. With time, our stash of fibre may be so big, we may never be able to work with it all. Some of the materials, we realized, are not what we enjoy working with or may not be the quality you enjoy working with.
Make space. Getting rid of things we are not looking forward to working with will make space for things we are really excited about. Learning to discern what we want to work with from our stash, as well as selectively acquiring some things that fill in the gaps, will help us have a “breathing stash” that inspires us and stretches our skills.
When bringing craft materials to your space, choose materials that are good quality. This doesn’t necessarily mean expensive, but avoiding felted or weak fibres will make your time fibre prepping a pleasure instead of a chore.
Tools
Your most important tool is your hands; they help you discern felted fibres from beautiful locks, and everything in between. Remember to treat them well, and they will treat you well back. Now, once you have your hands ready to handle all the fibre tools, consider the points below.
As most tools are more expensive than a couple of braids of fibre, I would suggest you get the best quality you can afford. Whether a spindle, a spinning wheel or a pair of hand carders, the more you play with it, the better you will become to take advantage of its full potential. Explore different ways to use them up.
Hand Carders are a perfect example; you can do so much more than rolags on them. If you clamp a hand carded to a table, you can have a mini blending board, a wool locks opener, a fabulous surface to diz fibre off to make dizzed roving. As you progress in your fibre preparations, you may find some of the fibres you work with may benefit from a hand carder with more teeth per inch, or even cotton hand carders for short fibres. Then you may choose to save up for a second or third pair of them.
While having an arrangement of tools may enhance your fibre prep experience, the more time you spend with a tool will allow you to produce beautiful fibre prep faster.
I hope you get your presence, time, senses, materials and tools all in one place so you can have a satisfying and creative fibre prep experience next time.
If you want to learn more about fibre prep and tools, check out our Spinning courses in the School of SweetGeorgia. Please come share with us your fibre prep journey at the SweetGeorgia + Co, where we share and explore as multicraftual makers.
Check out more of Greta’s articles here>>
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