I want to learn a new handicraft. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m not really any good at things that require precision, patience, an eye for detail, yet I tell myself wouldn’t it be nice to learn how to screen-print. To do crewel-work embroidery. To hand-stitch a quilt. To make a linocut! To take up pottery or jewellery making or crochet. I google online classes and in person workshops and teach-yourself books. I just want to do something with my hands, to create with the wild passion of an amateur who has fallen in love with something new. A kind of giddy limerence for making. Trouble is, I can’t quite pin myself down to one thing long enough to really give it a go. I spend long hours – cumulatively speaking – daydreaming of a stretch of a week where I have nothing to do except fiddle with paints or fabric or scissors at a large farmhouse table. A table of scrubbed pine that sits in a bright kitchen that gets the sun in the morning. Of being shown how to sew, have my mistakes fixed by an expert, time for trial and error and the pleasures of experimentation. I want to know how to create my own material world, I want not to buy!
One thing that’s behind this is the way I’m trying to improve my flat in increments. When I moved in, four and half years ago, I could only afford to paint the walls. Since then, there’s been some small adjustments, one a year or thereabouts. I had a windowsill tiled. I replaced the grim toilet and sink. And this past week I had the carpet in my bedroom pulled up and a wooden floor laid. I slept in my living room and worked in my living room. The temporary loss of one room shrank my world in a way that disturbed me, made the boundaries between sleeping, waking, and working dissolve and as a result, I felt grubby and confused. The relief I felt to get my bedroom back! The ground under my feet pristine and peculiar. My new friend Sheena came over for a glass of wine that day and she said, ‘this is your nest’, ‘It is!’ I said and burrowed deeper into my corner of the sofa like how a cat twirls to adjust the comfort level of its recline. I think my desire to make things is in part because it is hard to afford paying for more extreme interventions in my flat – like ripping out the kitchen or bathroom – both in financial terms and in the disruptive, psychic ones. I felt shocked by how at sea I was simply because a room became out-of-bounds for a few days. But slowly tinkering with the more adjustable elements, the colours, textures, and arrangement of things is accessible, practical and I realise, I’ve also cast it as moral in my head. Make my own curtains, I think (I tried to convert a frilled tea towel into a small curtain last week and broke the needle in my sewing machine). Hand-paint a design on some tiles, I think (I ordered some tile samples but have never got around to it). Make your own artwork (I played about with potato cuts but didn’t have the right kind of paint, and I rushed the cutting, so it looked pathetic). Stop buying shit Amy, I tell myself, make do, take your time! The financial and environmental imperatives nagging away.
But it’s also definitely about some other attempt my subconscious is pushing forth. Create things. Make things. Make marks. You are here. You were here. I have a lovely large crochet blanket my mum made for me. I pull it over myself while I watch TV. When I go to bed, I neatly fold it on the sofa and the cats like to sleep there. Sometimes I find myself undone thinking about how my mum has handled every stitch.
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Afters
Arrangements in Blue is out now in paperback - you can buy it here.
I’ve got a couple of events coming up. On 5 April I’m taking part in The Beautiful R.A.P. Rhythm and Prose Party at the Wellcome Collection. The line-up is a delight and the event it free! And before then on Tuesday 26 March I’m joining a brilliant line-up, including
for One Track Mind at the beautiful Wilton’s Music Hall.I’m contemplating introducing some paid content on this substack. There are some ideas I’m toying with but if that interests you, please let me know what you’d like to see!
Decades ago I did a paper making workshop and still have the frame thing in the shed somewhere though I doubt I'll ever make another piece of paper again. I used to make bread once a week or take all day to cook a meal starting with toasting and grinding my own spices etc. These days, I can't be bothered to cook much and finding time to garden is getting harder too. I've never been interested in embroidery or knitting and don't have patience to learn those skills. But I can spend two hours on two or three sentences, trying to work out where they fit, the order of the words and so on. I was talking with a neighbour the other day; all the kids have left now and she's unsure what to do with her time outside of work. I feel "lucky" I don't feel that way but I've worked hard to get to the place where I am at the moment (like you, living in a place of my own, though I'm not there enough). Perhaps as we get older and decide how to use our time, it gets easier? And choosing to go for a walk with a friend is always time well spent. A recent wake up call after some injuries: "you've got no muscle strength in your legs" despite all the walking I do. It seems that musculoskeletal strength will help stave off dementia (I'm caring for elderly parents who have dementia) so that seems to be another "creative activity" that needs doing as well ...