Making stuff

Total word count: 46,000
Today's word count: 1,500
Cups of coffee: six!
What's playing: Nothing. I spent most of the day watching Audrey Hepburn films, as predicted earlier, and all the work I've done has been in the last hour.

I really admire people who make things. Anything, from art to glass to furniture to fantastic meals to little carved wooden bears (to choose a very random example). Our culture is so focused on the acquisition of stuff. We go to any shop and there are shelves and shelves of Stuff just sitting there ready to be bought. We don't see the work that goes into them, and most of them are mass-produced and made by machine anyway. There is satisfaction in owning something handmade by a real, flesh-and-blood person, perhaps even someone you can meet or talk to.

One of my resolutions for this year was to learn dress-making. There is a freedom in being able to make your own clothes. What you wear isn't dictated just by what's fashionable and what's in the shops - you can create your own style and wear one-off things that no one else has. And if you see beautiful fabric, you can actually make it into something rather than just staring at it with vague longing.

It would be great to be self-sufficient, too. When we lived in Zimbabwe, we had a vegetable garden, egg-laying chickens, herbs, fruit trees and nut trees. We could grow a lot of our own food. I would love to live like that again one day. Planting a small herb garden in our tiny back yard would be a good start, and I'd like to do that this year.

Anyway, here are some awesomely creative people whose blogs I have been following for inspiration (and don't get put off by the word 'craft' - it doesn't have to be all tea cosies shaped like cats):

Posy Gets Cozy - various cool crafts and a beautiful site.
Art Junk Girl - an artist who does collage work that I really love.
Dress a Day - this is a dressmaking blog I've been reading for years.