Making

January 25, 2023

I love that we are created to create… to invent, to build, to dream up, to work with our hands-for fun and pleasure or out of necessity- and I feel a thankfulness to be able to do both. There is a satisfaction in making, in seeing our imaginings on paper or holding our thoughts and ideas in our hands.

Sometimes I feel that I struggle with trying to pinpoint who I am when I’m creating; am I a knitter? A baker? A seamstress? Weaver? Gardener? And I’ve found myself sort of shifting and wobbling back and forth, in and out when people ask me what I do. It’s a question I never really knew how to answer until I sat down to try and write this, my very first blog post and I realized that who I am is, simply, a maker.

As a young person, two of my favorite books were Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. I would read about these mothers who were makers out of necessity- they stitched the quilts, baked the bread, knit the mittens and scarves, butchered the chickens, spun the wool, wove the cloth, sewed the clothing- and I was drawn to that kind of living; a life that seemed so unrealistic in the 1990’s, a kind of living that no longer had a place. But it was those making stories and the old-fashioned handiwork that drew me.

As a kid, I would beg my grandmothers to teach me to sew and knit and crochet (they would, over and over again, but it never really stuck- I’m retrospectively grateful for their unending patience with me!) I loved making homemade pasta with my Italian great-grandma in her little kitchen that always smelled like olive oil and fried dough. I loved those slow practices but as I grew up and life got busy, there wasn’t much time to take my time at things.

It was my grandmother who bought me my first sewing machine at sixteen. I appreciate that she wanted to cultivate and nurture that part of me that wanted to make. I was terrible at sewing, but at least had fun trying to make my own garments. Later on, I eventually took a class where I learned to read a pattern and it changed everything.

A few years later I decided that I truly wanted to learn how to knit, specifically fair isle sweaters. It seemed incredibly unattainable. However, a friend and I decided to attempt it together and, with the help of Youtube and knitter friends, we completed our first color work sweaters. I’m completely hooked now. I’m never not knitting.

That same knitting friend was the one who introduced me to weaving and I’ve been hooked ever since. I am ever fascinated by cloth, thread, and fiber… the endless possibilities that exist within a length of string. There is something so satisfying in creating a piece of cloth whether it is for a kitchen towel or a cozy blanket to wrap a new little person in, to sew into a pillow or a pouch to hold knitting notions… I love every learning experience with weaving and am thankful even to learn from my mistakes. To make something functional yet beautiful is such a reward.

Then there’s the practical making- the meals, the bread, the pickles and canning, the actual home-making; that daily rhythm of making without thinking, the things we create to nurture or nourish … the quiet simplicity of working with my hands in dough or soil, in dish soap or piles of laundry, in fleece or fiber. I love seeing this in my family, in woodworking, in pottery, in music, in building- that continual creativity.

It has only been in the past few recent years that I’ve stopped and realized that I am living that life I was drawn to as a child- that life I was made to live, that I was intended to live, working with my hands and making.