The Craft Corps

Vickie Howell is recruiting crafters of every kind to join the Craft Corps in an effort to show that crafts aren't just grannies knitting tea cozies anymore, but that the crafting community is filled to the brim with all sorts of creative folks now.
The deadline for sending in your stories is the 15^th of this month.

Here's my story:

"I learned how to sew before I even knew how to read. My grandmother, a multitalented crafter doing everything from weaving and dyeing wool with natural ingredients to painting glass and jewelry making when she was younger and who's still my biggest inspiration and hero, got tired of having to sew up toys for me and decided that it'd be much easier to teach me how to sew for myself instead. I remember many a happy summer spent in my gran's craft room, sewing up a storm while my brother and cousins frolicked out in the sun. I started off sewing by hand, then after I had gained some more sewing confidence, chugging away on gran's or dad's (my mum prefers to knit, while dad is a very skillful sewer) sewing machine. I got my very own sewing machine for Christmas when I was 14 and I still use that same machine to make soft toys and doll clothes, so nothing has really changed since I first learned how to sew!
Oh, and I learned how to read when I was 7."

Now lets hear yours!

Comments

[Holly]

This is mine! (incidentally, thank you for pushing me into submitting, even though you wouldn't have known you had. I was planning on but like a lot of "I'm gunna do it", I just needed a little help to get there!)

"I'm a late bloomer to the crafting scene (I didn't actually start until January 2008!), so my poor mother, all this time, has been lamenting that she's "failed" me. Well, better late than never I say, and I seem to have arrived with a vengance! It's almost as if I'm making up for lost time.
I love to work on little pieces. Most of the crafts I do are handiwork size, so I take 'em with me on the go. One of my favourite things about portable craft is that I CAN take it with me and share it with people around me. I drive public buses, so while I'm waiting at the station to go on a new trip I'll whip out some embroidery or a teddy arm that needs attaching to a body, or a softie head that needs a nice big smile. I get a few people each day who ask what I'm doing and I explain my love of all things crafty, so I'd like to consider in some small way I'm helping to bring crafting back to the community! Like a crafting ninja! I hope one day to have a whole crafting bus full of crafting people, and we'd drive around and listen to music while we stitch and bead and knit and sew."

Not as interesting as yours but I hope interesting enough to make it into the book!

~Holly

[Kitty Vane]

I for one would love to ride on a craft-bus, spreading the love of crafts! Yay for craft-ninjas!

A craft-bus is actually a great idea, you could drive around, picking up passengers and teaching them different crafts, doing projects together and enjoying the company of fellow crafters along the way. There could be stops at craft stores and galleries and such, and you could even hold a car boot-style craft fair now and then.

[Holly]

I would adore that! Although that I would mean that I couldn't drive the bus (I'm good, but I'm not THAT good to be able to drive and teach french knots at the same time!) and that's one of my favourite parts.

Hmm, you know, that's a good idea. One of those ideas you file away for "if I won the lottery".