Category: DIY

Yesterday I was showing my husband the bracelet I made (and by “made”, I mean I savaged* a store-bought bracelet and added an evil eye bead). Part of the modifications involved bending a head pin. I did a…passable…job, for a first-timer.

He asked why I don’t just ask our chain-mail-making friend to do it for me.

Because it’s better to make your own stuff, is why.

There’s nothing nicer than making something. I don’t know if it’s ancestral memory of when we had to make everything ourselves, or maybe it’s the novelty of handmade in a world of mass-produced. But something about holding something that wouldn’t exist if not for you is wholly satisfying.

Granted, the bracelet I “made” was put together using stock parts, but still, my hand was involved in the final product. I make other things, too: I knit, I bake, I cross-stitch, I paint a teeny tiny bit. Oh, and I write, in case you missed that somehow (!).

Friends and family have seen (and read!) the stuff I’ve made, and the comment is nearly always the same:

“I could never do that.”

Of course you can! I taught myself to knit with YouTube. I learned how to bake bread by making some really shitty bread. I’m learning how to draw right now, and believe me when I say that my drawings suck mightily. But that only means I’m learning.

Do you ever wonder what happens to all the writing I talk about? The daily quota has to go somewhere, right? Some stories don’t come together and get put on hold. Some, frankly, suck ass and get tossed. But I’ve gotten better only by coming back again and again and making something. Every night when I go to bed I want there to be something I made that wasn’t there before. It’s a powerful feeling to leave your mark, however small, on the world every day.

Have you made something recently? Go on, do it: make, bake, saw, sew, glue, paint, grow, make a tremendous mess. Life is too short to be passive. Go create something that’s all yours.

*Yes, I mean “savaged”, not salvaged. I ripped that sucker apart.