This is how my work desk has started to look like on most days. Pretty craftsy!! On some days when I pause and look at this, sometimes I laugh. Growing up, if someone and that includes me too had to imagine me being craftsy at any stage in my life, they’d guarantee it wouldn’t be in this lifetime for sure. Not even close. Artsy, definitely yes, but never craftsy!
I don’t have an exact recall of when I first worked with needles, threads, yarns or other such things. Though I exactly remember how I had my first craftsy accident. I was curiously fiddling with a sewing machine on my own when the needle ran through my little thumb as though it would stitch it with something. Vaguely my first memory of working with crafty material is around the age of 11-12 yrs. Every summer, we’d pack our lives on the last day of our final exams and head off straight to my granddad’s house, a huge gang of cousins, my mother and her siblings. Such fun and memorable times. We’d have power cuts, limited water supply, no entertainment and we weren’t allowed to disturb our mothers if at all we got bored and it was absolutely necessary to help them with all the chores, but we used to have the most amazing times of our lives. We’d look forward to those 6 weeks of summer. We’d climb into the loft, pull out trunks of our mothers childhood treasures of books, comics, sketchbooks, diaries, games, chasing bugs in the yard, sometimes drift away from home in search of something, exploring life, experiencing freedom at its best. It was during one such summer holiday, my mother gifted me a long stitch frame from Anchor ( a company that makes varied range of colored threads). It was a pre-designed DIY kit with pre determined colors. Her mother had given her the cross stitch one when she was my age and so as a true tradition, she got me one. It was a red coloured train engine, with a smiley face. As I started with it, I hated it. I tried loving it, just because I was meant to and I further hated it. It took me 6 years to complete it. I had started when I was in primary school and by the time I finished it, I was in high school. This wasn’t all, through the school years, I detested each and every craft project. I would love art, but craft was equivalent to a death sentence for me. I once even outsourced a craft project and it was obvious. I was given a “FAILED” remark, made to stand out of class, humiliation at its best. I have no idea how punishing someone for not liking something would make them love it any better. I totally shut down to this idea that I will ever want to pursue crafts ever again in my life.
All along, through design college, through motherhood, while designing spaces, conducting art workshops, all the time, I was always using my own hands to make, but somehow I never took to crafts consciously or subconsciously.
When and how did this change, I can’t point out exactly. And today, I cannot imagine a day without all this in my life. I spin yarns, I weave, I make pretty things from all things waste, using my imagination and any medium that appeals to my heart and it feels magical. Surrendering to the calling of my heart was definitely the turnaround. I learnt that learning can happen at any age and am glad that the early life experiences didn’t deter me from doing what I do today. Yes it was a long, messy process. Sometimes I failed, sometimes I gave up as well, I didn’t feel good enough, I outgrew my work, I still do but I keep going at it. And am glad I do. I am learning to be patient with myself. My heart is a lot more fulfilled and I know a lot more is possible. So I pause and smile looking at my desk each time I recall the stories of my life.
