24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being: December 14
To make and to mend.
Welcome to 24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being, a digital Advent calendar for slowing down and making space for presence, creativity, and gratitude. If you missed a day you can catch up here.
When I go to my single box of seasonal décor, the first ornament I make sure to hang up is one that
sent me a few years ago. “Make crafts not war,” it says, the words embroidered along with a sunflower on a small cotton bag.That this time of year would see a surge in DIY and craft projects is maybe no surprise. Darker, slower evenings are a call to retreat with our ideas and creative endeavors, to spin stories, to fabricate with our hands.
There are wreaths, there are paper stars, there are salt dough ornaments, there are dried orange slices. The list goes on. It’s often a season of making. Even for those of us who aren’t in the habit of making and creating during the rest of the year might feel the pull right now.
In an age where everything can be purchased, the act of making a paper snowflake or a garland feels more radical than ever. These aren’t practical or useful items. They are items of decoration, of beauty. We make them simply because we want the joy of making them. Because we see and feel the value in a moment spent using our hands.
Taking this time to create instead of consume influences our overall perspective, changes how we view the world around us. In the introduction to Making Things: Finding Use, Meaning, and Satisfaction in Crafting Everyday Objects,
and Rose Pearlman write:“In writing this book, we’ve asked ourselves how making things changes the way we see the objects in our home. How does the process of weaving a bag or basket or bowl from rope help us to pause and consider these objects from a different vantage point? How can making things—even remarkably simple things—get us to reconsider how everything else in our lives get made—even those items we might never imagine endeavoring to make ourselves?
We’ve found the answers lie in the making itself. Getting out of our brains and into our bodies—getting lost in the rhythmic meditation of knitting or weaving or tying wire into knots—allows us the time and space to think more critically, to make more creatively, and to consume more thoughtfully.”