Making Miscellany, 2:10

What I didn't make in October

Hello, hello, and happy 1st of November!

As usual, the past month has gone in a blur, sped up by the (mostly deligthful) fact of an extended half term holiday for my eldest daughter, and marred only slightly by us all getting sick in the final days of the month. Today, I have something a little different for you: the things I didn’t make that month (and what, if anything, I made instead).

A very soft, very beautiful, very cuddly rainbow unicorn for my daughter’s fifth birthday

I’m not sure if there’s some sort of biomarker that’s triggered right before children turn five that activates unicorn adoration, but without any warning or obvious source material (I can think of no books, songs, or television we’d encountered featuring the mythical beasts), sometime this summer, my eldest daughter W became preoccupied with them. In an early hint of her infatuation, one August day as we were riding the bus, she asked if we could make a “very soft” one when we got home. I explained that I didn’t have unicorn materials at the ready and reminded her that her birthday wasn’t too far away. She didn’t mention the idea again, and I forgot about the conversation until …

Two weeks before her birthday, she and a friend were chatting as we left the school gates about their impending celebrations. “I’m getting a drum kit” her friend reported. “My mummy’s making me a unicorn. It’s going to be very soft and very beautiful with rainbow hair" she replied without missing a beat, as I listened on in horror.

In the following days, I began to idly (read: frantically) browse unicorn sewing patterns. I landed on this one. I started thinking of sourcing “very soft” fabric. I realized the unicorn in the pattern was wearing clothes, and that these clothes would necessitate the purchase of additional patterns. I began totting up costs, and thinking about time, and wondering if I could get it all done. I’d got myself pretty deep down a unicorn-shaped rabbit hole when I had a moment of clarity.

I’ve made my wee ones a small menagerie of handmade toys. Some have become favorites … taken on adventures and played with before being cuddled up with at night. Some have had very brief moments in the sun, before being largely forgotten about. I am happy I made each of them.

But the unicorn brief gave me pause. Could I drop everything I was working on and try to deliver a unicorn? Maybe. Would the unicorn be everything she’d hoped for? Almost certainly not. The older she gets, the more W (wonderfully) has very clear ideas about what she does and doesn’t like. Her requests and specifications for the unicorn were many and varied. I felt pretty sure that the unicorn I would make and the unicorn in her head would be very different. I imagined devoting all my spare time to feverishly sewing a unicorn that was almost immediately cast aside … and decided that neither of us needed that. So, reader, in what felt like a momentous moment in my personal development as a making mama, I turned down my child’s request to make them something and … I bought a unicorn.

What I made instead…

Poor chesnut fairy had face planted without me realizing …

For birthdays, we pull out a celebration ring, which I love decorating with a mix of wooden figures that feel symbolic for our small people and the year they’ve had. Inspired by the amazing work of Natalie Trusler and using felt and yarn leftover from previous projects, I made this wee unicorn for W’s birthday celebration ring. I “mounted” it on a tooth pick stuck in blue tack, so it could be removed after the fact as a little pocket unicorn talisman. I had such a fun afternoon stitching away on it, with no pressure and no plan.

I also used the time I would have been panic sewing a unicorn to making some little treasures for her small birthday walk with friends: a nature scavenger hunt, with a little felted acorn to congratulate each child on completing their walk/hunt.

I have enjoyed making two Emi dresses, with scrunchies from leftover fabric.

And, while they weren’t quite done for the day itself, I directed my making energy into some items I knew W would love and use: really twirly dresses! This is the Emi pattern from Waves and Wild, and these have been a big hit … the twirl factor is immense!

A very beautiful, very sparkly rainbow princess dress for my daughter’s Halloween costume and/or elaborate family costume

Related to the love of unicorns, princess adoration has been at a fever pitch in our house in recent months. While my initial suggestion of a Where the Wild Things Are* family costume was met with mild enthusiasm (I have wanted to do this since my littlest was born, imaging W would be Max and the rest of us would be wild things, but have never had the time/energy to make it happen), pretty quickly my daughter, completely unsurprisingly, declared she wanted to be a princess for Halloween.

I love the idea of homemade Halloween costumes. I love seeing the amazing costumes people make and share on Instagram. I love the idea of repurposing/reusing/upcycling for Halloween, rather than buying stuff that’s used once and forgotten. So I started looking at patterns. And then I opened the Vinted app, saw the thousands of secondhand princess dresses for sale there, and asked W to pick one she liked.

In the end, the dress she picked never came … the seller never shipped it. When it started to look like it wouldn’t arrive — and W expressed interest in being a “pumpkin princess”, a brief I felt more able to successfully fulfil than a princess in the Elsa mode—I briefly relapsed and started pulling out all my orange fabric remnants (there was a surprising number!) But ultimately, W was happy wearing an old witch hat of mine and a cape I made her last year to friends’ Halloween party last weekend, and trick-or-treating didn’t happen, thanks to some Halloween-timed Covid! All’s well that ends (mostly) well … the littlest family member is still on the mend.

What I made instead: Nothing! It was an exclusively reuse Halloween! And that actually feels like a very nice win.

Handknit socks for a friendly stranger

A few weeks ago, I was out and chatting with another parent while our kids played when they noticed my socks poking out of my boots.

“I love your socks. Where’d you get those? I’ve been looking for socks just like that!”

“Thanks, I made them.”

“Do you sell them?”

“Oh no, I just knit for fun.”

“But I would buy them!”

The tenor of this conversation (which carried on from here for quite awhile, and led to me trying to explain as briefly and in as friendly a way as possible why I don’t knit to sell) will be familiar, I’m sure, to any of you reading who knit or sew. It’s kind and well-meaning, with the other person tending to assume it’s some sort of shyness or lack of confidence that’s holding me back from selling the things I make. When in reality, it’s quite the opposite … I value the things I make, and the hours it takes, too much to sell them at a price that anyone would want to pay. Even simple socks are the product of so many hours of knitting (at least for my slow fingers!), and while I’m sure some people knit them to sell, I can’t imagine I ever would. But ask me to help you learn to knit, and I will show up with yarn and needles very happily!

What I knit instead: This month, my knitting time was devoted to finishing my own pair of socks, begun in July (much needed, my sock drawer is starting to look a bit bare, and my mending pile is giving me the side eye!) and to trying, if not quite succeeding, to finish my Paul Klee … the final bottom hem ribbing is almost in sight!

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I write none of this to poke fun at the whims and fancies of my sweet five year old or to take issue with the friendly inquiries of an unknowing stranger. But this month, I’ve been thinking a lot about respect for ourselves, our making, our time. The examples here are all obviously requests from other people, but I think, whether the end product is for someone else or myself, for me to really feel good about making something, there have to be two ingredients present in large amounts: an enjoyment of the process and confidence that the product will be appreciated, by myself or the recipient. Those essential ingredients can vary in their quantities: if I really love the process of making something (like a funny little felt unicorn), I care much less if the end result is the most useful or used item in the world; my enjoyment in making it is enough. On the other hand, I might not find sewing the pile of velour leggings I’ve cut for my small people particularly thrilling when I finally tackle it (hopefully this weekend) … but knowing the leggings will be highly useful makes up for it. But there are certain conditions—tight deadlines, pressure, expectations—that are sure to suck the joy out of making for me!

It’s easy to always focus on productivity and what we, as makers, are churning out; I do think it’s nice sometimes to talk about the things we decide not to make, the requests we turn down, the projects that don’t materialize, or that we abandon, too! So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this special “What I didn’t make” edition of the Making Miscellany … and I’d love to hear what you didn’t (or did, as the case may be) make this month!

And with that, I’ll leave you with the other way I spent some of my non-making time this month … enjoying the beautiful change of the seasons in my corner of northwest England.

May your weekend be filled with making, or not!

Katherine

*Sidebar: If you, like me, love children’s books in general, and Where The Wild Things Are in particular, you might enjoy this from Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen. I’m a big fan of their books (especially, no surprises, Extra Yarn, and their Substack is delightful and thought provoking.