Create a snowflake!

I have mentioned several times that I'm not a crafter in the sense of what we call "Basteln" in German. You know, the kind of crafting you learn as a kid. I was the kid who didn't learn it.
One reason was of course - sorry for repeating myself - my strained relationship with glue. Another one was that I had no patience whatsoever for glueing halves of wooden clothespins together to make coasters or struggling with straw to create a crooked star.
I wasn't proud of most of the abominations I was forced to produce at birthday parties or in school - except the owl picture I made by glueing (!) on beans and seeds from a kit my godmother gave me to keep me entertained while I spent a few days with her once. That wasn't all bad and my mother indulged me by hanging it up in a corner next to our wall phone, so you could stare at it while talking.
I still wonder myself where I was hiding my patience (for some crafts) which suddenly seemed to come out in full force when I was already over 40. Okay, there had been a few years of intensive knitting before, too.

My snowflakes or stars cut from paper also weren't heirlooms worth keeping. Usually I went overboard and a last fatal cut destroyed everything. Not that it traumatized me, but I had friends who were practically pros at that kind of stuff and somehow expected me to join in the fun ... that they had.

I can have my own fun with snowflakes, though - virtual ones. Some of mine have been out there for years and I even recognize one or the other.
Do you know the website SnowDays - "It's Always Snowing Here"? Since 2003, millions of virtual snowflakes have been created on this site, about 20 of them are by me, the oldest one from 2010. You can search for them by the name you used and you can save your flakes as image, transparent or as a GIF.
I keep forgetting about this page, then I come back, make one or two flakes, forget about it again, then Flash went away and the site was down for a while, but came back - and so did I!

This is the flake I made today, #15,074,414.
Will you try it, maybe with your children?

Book review - Craft Psychology

When I first saw the title "Craft Psychology", I thought this sounded really interesting ... what was craft psychology?
Let's talk about the book by Dr. Anne Kirketerp that was published in English this year.

Kirketerp was already a craftsperson and a craft teacher before becoming a psychologist and working in academia.
Today she runs certified educational courses in craft psychology.
The book isn't just aimed at professionals who use craft in teaching or psychology, but also crafters like you and me who are interested in using their craft more intentionally to achieve well-being.

There are ten chapters:
1. Craft psychology in a nutshell
2. Definitions of and connections between craft and well-being
3. The Craft Psychology Model
4. Central Research Findings in Craft Psychology
5. Methods and exercises
6. Four ways to craft
7. Graduation and Interventions
8. From Utility to Passion: The Role of Crafts Now and Through History
9. Theoretical Foundation of Craft Psychology
10. Brief Summary 

"Craft psychology is the psychology of why people craft. It identifies how craft activities have positive effects on our physical and mental health. It can be used intentionally to effectively promote well-being."
Kirketerp notes that her "focus is primarily the hobby-based work that we do out of pure desire, because we love it and are good at it".

How do you even define craft? There are several definitions by researchers from different fields. Kirketerp herself defines it as "a mastery of passion-driven skills, resulting in products with some form of materiality". Other researchers use the words "skilled", "mastering manual skills", "to do a job well".

Maybe I'm influenced by artists telling people that making art is important and it doesn't have to be good art all the time to learn how to impress yourself and am transferring that thought to craft, but I don't necessarily agree on the "mastery".
No one is good at the beginning (except prodigies), so they are either unhappy with it and drop it altogether or they enjoy doing it so much that they don't care if it's "good" , and they may get better at it or not. I should know what I'm talking about 😉 Sometimes the moment just needs to be right for picking up the right craft.

As you may be able to tell from the chapter titles, this book really isn't about crafting itself, but the psychology behind it. If you like textbooks, you won't have a problem with that, but I have to admit that there were passages I was tempted to skip - I didn't - and others that were interesting because they explained my own behavior or feelings about or during crafting which I simply hadn't thought to analyze before, such as enjoying to get in the "flow", but also feeling like an outsider at my last crafting class some years ago (didn't finish it, never had the urge to join another one).

Kirketerp also explains her Craft Psychology Model showing how benefits of crafting, such as positive emotions, flow, achievement and more, can support well-being and shield against stress and angst, for example.
There are a lot of quotes from other researchers as well explaining different psychological theories or terms. The articles are referenced in the extensive bibliography.

What I had hoped for was a little less theory because some of it was really too repetitive for me.
There are bubbles with quotes from people Kirketerp interviewed, but there are outside of the text itself, without any comment. What I would have liked to see would have been those examples with explanations or some kind of relation between theoretical and empirical data.

I also found it disappointing that only a few crafts were mentioned, the bubbles were mostly about knitting, for example. I used to be an avid knitter for years when I was younger, and in my opinion you can't just compare knitting to any other craft 1:1. That starts with not every project being portable, but also with the setup, with how many tools you need or what size, and it also has an influence on the idea people have of the "meaningfulness" of a craft. 
There is a list of examples of crafts (to be honest, "lubricating brakes" was a surprising one to me) of which not many are mentioned in the text itself.
The author concentrated on the crafts she's doing herself, I get that, but from the title I had expected more.

The book is not that difficult a read, though, even if you are not familiar with psychological research - which isn't a topic I had delved into that much about before - so you can definitely pick up some interesting facts that may make you understand things better.
For me one of those was the explanation of Default Mode Network (DMN) and Central Executive Network (CEN) - two of the brain's networks - which told me why my brain insists on going through everything embarrassing I did since I was 4 if I can't sleep at 2 a.m.

The author also gives you a few recommendations on how to use your craft intentionally. They won't be working for everyone, I know two of them don't for me anymore, but they are interesting nevertheless.
One of them - and actually that was what first caught my attention when the book was announced - is to have at least ten projects going at the same time which differ from each other in the level of challenge or purpose or surroundings (something to work on when you are alone or with others), so you can always pick the perfect one for the moment. If I have that many, they become WIPs that might never get finished. I have the infamous WIP drawer to corroborate that, but maybe I could make them count as part of the ten ...

Kirketerp also recommends not just doing coupled activities meaning you shouldn't always have the TV running - something I do although I usually just block it out once I get into the flow - or an audiobook, etc. while you are crafting.

I'm ambivalent towards the book. I enjoyed reading parts of it, others not so much because they were too theoretical and repetitive for my personal liking.
I would have been interested in some things that are missing (I admit that some of this interest is based on my own experiences, for example that of wanting to craft, but not being able to do it anymore the way I'd like to, and the consequences from that ... sorry if you feel I'm droning on about my thumb, but this has been a massive change for me). I also would have liked to see more crafts covered.

That is just my personal opinion. I don't regret reading the book, but I also don't think I would want to read it again. Maybe I should have made some notes while reading it to keep those, but that's something I'm notoriously bad at, at least with private reading.

What's happening here?

Today I want to talk about something that's kind of personal.
If you have been following me for a longer period of time, you know I don't share much from my personal life.
You do get a glimpse into my brain weirdly jumping between randomly selected topics which also says something about me, but you don't really know what I'm doing between those brain jumps.

Do I like cooking (no), what books am I reading (mostly vintage crime at the moment), what am I watching (okay, you do know about the silent movies, but there is more), do I have hobbies beside crafting (movies and TV shows), how do I feel (all over the place), what do I play (this and that), what do I look like (very long hair and glasses)?
Of course there's much more.

This blog has been mostly about crafty things for many years. I showed you what I made, I showed you what others made, I told one or the other story and for a while I shared movie quotes, but all in all this has been a blog showing my creative side and that's what it has always been supposed to be.

When I got back into blogging more again, however, this changed, and if you have been around before you may wonder why that is.
There are several reasons and not wanting to be creative is definitely not one of them.
My brain is still coming up with more ideas than I can realize in general and especially at the moment, and that has to do with both ability and motivation.

There are more days now when my hands just won't play nicely. If I don't think of taking a break at the right moment, I start messing things up because of that, then I start ripping up, but instead of stopping there, I get stubborn and try again which usually doesn't work out well. It's amazing how angry you can get over tiny beads (and yourself).
My problem is that it seems my head doesn't want to acknowledge those new limitations and adapt to them ... or maybe my muse doesn't.
I used to fiddle for hours without a break, but as much as I tell others it's okay to take breaks, I have a hard time accepting it for myself.
Having to rip up a WIP, however small it may be, because of a stupid mistake - oh, so stupid sometimes! - can get very frustrating which isn't good for motivation. Having no motivation means I sometimes don't even start.

Another hit for my motivation was that my sales have dried up. I'm not talking trickling, but dried up.
Don't get me wrong now, I'm not begging for sales here. I get it, times are getting harder and harder, postage is high (my customer base was overseas), jewelry is not a necessity, but the web still abounds with it and I'm just a tiny fish in that sea.

It has changed my view on my personal crafting, though.
I'm hardly ever wearing my own jewelry for lack of occasion. I don't get out often enough to and that's not going to change. I know there are people who say you should wear jewelry and clothes for yourself, but I never felt like dressing up at home and wear much jewelry.
So why make more just to stack it in a drawer? Or rather, where is the line between making something to feed my creative urges and making something just to - well, having made it?
For me, there really is a difference which is one reason why I could never have done this full time.

The same goes for embroidery. How many embroidery hoops can you put on a wall, especially if the walls are full already? 😆 My favorite pieces - Nadine on her island, Foxy, the cat inspired by dem Dekan, and the Guardian of the Woods - are set up between my Steiffs now.

I'm definitely not saying that I'm going to stop making things, not even jewelry. I have to find a way, however, to make it work for me, my muse, and especially my body (and my available space).
For years, I had been filling a lot of my time with making stuff, though, and now I needed to find something for the times when I won't be able to do that.
And that's the reason for my blog having changed. Something I can always do and actually love to do is diving into rabbit holes. I've always done that more or less, but haven't shared it as much before and I try to stick with certain topics now.

Valerie Hinojosa from Washington DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
"Down the Rabbit Hole"

So this might not be as much of a crafty blog as it used to be, but it will definitely be more of a trip into my weird brain. Often I don't know myself why a certain rabbit hole looks tempting to me.
Anyhow, you are most welcome to visit and I hope you will be finding something interesting and maybe surprising 😉

The lantern

About a month ago, I shared my handmade miniature ring binders with you and promised you to share a picture of the office in the lantern that I made them for, once it's done.
As I had mentioned, the lantern is a goodbye gift for a dear colleague working in the IT department which is why my friend had the idea for the miniature office.

She also had the idea to get the mini electronic devices - I doubt any of us three working on this collaboration would have come up with something handmade quickly, so they are store-bought - and felt in the color of the carpet at work, and my favorite, to turn a game token she ruthlessly stole from her mother into a desk lamp, an idea which got realized by her husband.
Then she made the small pad of sticky notes for the desk and added an extra big note as a reminder for an appointment.

Her husband who is a talented woodworker (I'm already looking forward to setting up the beautiful candle arch he made for me) took the wooden bars off the glass, so you can see the office well even with the door shut, then he made the amazing desk and wall shelf and added the LEDs.

You already know that I made the waste paper basket and the binders, then I put together a quick poster with an IT joke which my friend printed out and put on the "wall" with tape. Tape is omnipresent at work.
It's a little difficult to see from this view, but the two green items on the desk are fat little pencils that I made from a wooden shish kebab skewer and cut labels that I painted green to remind of a well-known German pencil manufacturer.

In this picture you can see the details a little better.

I can even imagine our co-worker being able to add more to this little office if she feels like it.
It was big fun, and if we had been able to get together to work on this, who knows what else we would have come up with? I think we make a pretty good team!

Last but not least here's a picture of the whole lantern.

Random Saturday - Hidden object games and jewelry making

I do like playing hidden object games. Puzzles, a nice adventure story, that's just what I need sometimes (nomograms are another one of my passions) to shut out the world. 
What do those games have to do with jewelry making, however, you may wonder now.

The stories of the games I like playing best usually take place in some kind of medieval, fairy, wizard, magic, or maybe period drama (20/30s are fun) etc. setting. One of those, you know, that look great, but that you probably wouldn't like to live in although that may be open to discussion. The backgrounds are very detailed, especially in the puzzles in which details are important to make the hidden objects more difficult to pick out.

I wish I had paid more attention from the start when jewelry was shown in those puzzles. Now there's no way to say how many pieces there actually were over the years. Because you know, this was obviously handmade artisan jewelry that was shown there, wire woven or beaded, and that was what made it so interesting to me.

After a while it made me wonder if the persons who designed those scenes were always the same and if they drew the inspiration from pieces they had made themselves or had seen elsewhere. Latter would mean they had to study them closely.
Not that I see how I could ever get an answer to that.
Now I'm a little mad at myself for not making screenshots every time. Once I got aware of these pieces, I intended to do so each time, but then I forgot and didn't bother to go back to the scene or couldn't even find it anymore. Okay, so it's not a matter of life or death, but doesn't a little collection sound like fun?

For now I just have this one picture of a peyote piece for you, and unfortunately I forgot which game it belonged to (I will write it down in future). Depending on how many more I'll find, I may either keep this post up-to-date or I'll set up a new page for it on this blog.
And how knows - maybe others will help growing the list.

And it starts ...
If pictures look blurry to you, by the way, the reason for that is that I had to take a picture instead of a screenshot

From "Nevertales: Smoke and Mirrors" - bead embroidery

From "Whispered Secrets: Everburning Candle" - wire weaving