Craftfulness - Hardcover

Tahsin, Arzu; Davidson, Rosemary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525610421 ISBN 13: 9780525610427

Publisher: Appetite by Random House, 2019

Synopsis

Craftfulness is the idea that making things with your hands makes you feel better, and can offer the same benefits as mindfulness and meditation, yoga, running, playing an instrument or singing.

Integrating mindfulness, neuroscience, positive psychology, and creativity research, Craftfulness offers a thought-provoking and surprising reconsideration of craft, and how making things with our hands can connect us to our deepest selves and improve our well-being and overall happiness.

We should get this out of the way: Craftfulness is not a "crafting book." Rather, it is an investigation of the wisdom generations of men and women know to be true: that making things is a vital means of self-expression, self-realization, and self-help that sparks the mind, touches the soul, and rejuvenates the spirit.

Integrating mindfulness, neuroscience, positive psychology, and creativity research, Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin explore how the simple act of making something from scratch affects mental well-being, and offer a brilliantly reasoned argument in favor of craft.

Process, not product, is the soul of a craft practice. Whether you knit, crochet, sculpt, weave, quilt, tat, draw, or bind books--working toward small, attainable goals provides a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and control that is proven to positively impact our mental health and happiness.

Davidson and Tahsin illuminate how craft practice re-introduces balance into our lives and our habits by cultivating creativity, carving space for ourselves, promoting focus, creating a safe space for failure, and ultimately, how to make peace with imperfection.

Like Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soul Craft, Ken Robinson's Out of Our Minds, or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, Craftfulness helps us to see our world in a new way, offering opportunities to disconnect from the world, and pay attention to ourselves.

About this title

About the Author

ROSEMARY DAVIDSON has worked as a publicist and editor at Bloomsbury and Vintage, Random House where she launched the Square Peg imprint in 2008. Taught by her Glaswegian seamstress grandmother, she started to make her own clothes as a teenager. She continues to sew and knit and has recently added pottery to her craft activities. She lives in Hackney and doesn't like curtains, can't drive a car or use a drill. And she can't crochet or felt either. But she's willing to learn.
ARZU TAHSIN has worked in publishing for over twenty-five years, beginning her career as a temp at Virago and going on to edit and publish outstanding authors such as Khaled Hosseini and Malala Yousafzai. She cannot remember a time she was not working on one craft project or another. From mosaic tiling to Japanese woodblock printmaking to bookbinding, she has found it hard to focus on a single craft, and feels all the better for it.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Our Craft Ethos
(It’s the making that matters)

“I keep a diary that is part writing and part drawing. While I am drawing I feel self-conscious when I start, but very soon the floodgates open and I lose myself in the process.”
—Lisa Gornick, filmmaker, drawing

Central to the ethos of craftfulness is the idea that the act of making is where the magic happens. The sense of pleasure and purpose when working on a project gives craft its meaning. Hand-in-hand with the tremendous enjoyment in the moment when absorbed in a craft process that we love, is the added bonus of seeing the object of our imagination grow, evolve, take form and come into being. The slow, steady, incremental results of our labour serve the function of a reward.

We have yet to meet a crafter who finds their pastime burdensome, or who feels reluctance at the idea of returning to it day after day.

But, crucially, it must be your choice and your interests that dictate your course. Any task that you are compelled to do by an outside force, be it at work or in school, is unlikely to be as joyful or pleasurable as something that inspires and excites you and that you have embarked on purely for your own personal enjoyment.

Of course, crafting is not for everyone, but everyone can benefit from periods of intense concentration on an inspiring project or activity. It is important to respond to your instincts and if they dictate birdwatching, baking or badminton, take heed! Arzu likes crochet; Rosemary can’t get the hang of it and doesn’t see the point. Why crochet, she asks, when you can knit? Arzu concurs. Each to their own. Don’t stress and only do what you enjoy.

Bringing your awareness to the present moment through mindful meditation, and through any focused activity in which you are alert to what is happening right now, has been shown to regulate mood, reduce stress and anxiety and improve sleeping patterns.

A mindful state is where you notice your thoughts, see your actions, but are not compelled to engage with them. You become an impartial observer of what is playing out in your head, whereas before your thoughts may have aroused paralyzing negative feelings and self-judgement. The space between thinking and observing your thoughts is where the work happens.

About this edition

• Publisher: Appetite by Random House
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0525610421
• ISBN 13: 9780525610427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224