I have always known this about myself, but I think that recently I have become a lot more aware of this fact. I’m not just a consumer, I’m a maker. I see the world through the eyes of someone who wants to be involved the design and production of her environment.
If I like something my first reaction to it is “I wonder if I could make that?”
I am not just talking about knitting. I love to make my own clothes. I love to sew. I love to knit, and I’ve been designing my own sweaters and socks and wraps for about a year now. I think the maker part of me is what causes me to garden and to can and to bake. When I lay awake in bed at night, I dream up dress designs and tasty cakes and fantasize about the flower arrangements that I might make with the flowers from my garden.
One day I was standing in Anthropologie– which, by the way, is probably my very favorite clothing store– and I had a familiar thought. Of course, it is common for me to stand in the middle of Anthropologie and feel that creative inspiration, and sometimes I have to leave because I find myself standing in one place, spinning like a merry-go-round, round and round because I can’t decide what I want to focus on. But I was standing in Anthropologie last fall, and I saw a sweater that not only made me think “I can make that,” but actually made me go home and make it.
My maker compulsions are not isolated to knitting or even to sewing. A few years back, while visiting Washington DC for an ALA conference- this was while I was still in grad school- I went to this great tapas place. The food was so lovely. The sangria was, too. It was so lovely that I went straight home and made the entire meal on my own. I felt a great sense of accomplishment. And since then, I’ve recreated meals regularly ( with varying success.)
I want to do more to embrace this part of myself. I want to encourage the creative maker in me, because when I make it makes me feel whole. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time feeling whole lately.