A Year of Making

Over the last year, Miriam Felton chronicled making something every day. She posted photos on Facebook and Instagram and tagged them #yearofmaking, and I loved following along. She didn’t seem to focus on anything major – just making or working on making something every day. She cooked, she knitted, she sewed.

Yesterday I baked cookies, took a snapshot, and found myself thinking that I’d like to embark upon a year of making, too. Audacious commitments aren’t my thing – I’ve never followed through with plans to take a self-portrait every day or anything like that, and even knit-alongs tend to totally stress me out.

But a year of making sure I make something every day? That’s loose enough that I think I can do it. And I certainly want to do it.

I’ve already said I intend to sew a lot this coming year. I haven’t yet mentioned that I’m cooking more, and that I want to practice drawing, too. And there’s the soap-making I’m pretty much set up to do, too.

Cooking was never an interest for me, but it’s a necessity I’m tackling more and more. Greg has always loved cooking, but the grind of work and daycare pick-ups and early kid bedtime means our evening meals are no longer an opportunity for chatting over relaxed cooking. No, they’re more an exercise in managing a tired family’s collective mood and getting Owen into the bath before his head spins around. So I’m cooking a couple of nights a week, now. Or, at least I’m putting food on the table.

I subscribed to Weelicious Menus – it’s inexpensive and has so far been really inspiring. Most of all, I find it accessible to an inexperienced cook like me. So cooking will certainly be a part of my year of making, and I’m surprised to feel genuinely excited about that.

And drawing? It’s something I’ve always struggled with. But I don’t really allow myself to struggle anymore – instead, I like to think of various skills as belonging to categories like I rock that, I have no interest in doing that ever, and I want to try to come up with a way to try that out and/or get better at that. Kirsten Moore’s daily bird project has been hugely inspiring to me in this regard. She drew a bird every day, and within a few months her birds were downright stunning. I don’t need to achieve stunning, but I would like to feel somewhat competent at sketching things without it being a daunting a production.

So, yeah, I have a fairly wide variety of activities that should keep me inspired and busy. And I’ll be approaching this as taking very small steps that will hopefully add up to a grand journey.

Which is all to say: Year of Making.

Follow along on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, eh? And join in!