I am technologically challenged.

I am one of those folk who seems to repel electrical equipment. I was having this conversation with friends over a New Years Day dinner. This scenario has happened far too often for me to think of it as just coincidence. I try to print something. It does not work. I turn everything on and off. It still doesn’t work. I turn everything on and off again. I blow on the ends of connections, I dry things off, I warm them up, I look on YouTube for a ‘how to’ tutorial, it still doesn’t work. Eventually I ask my husband/ friend/relative for assistance, they make ‘the thing’ work immediately and proceed to look at me with a mixture of pity, annoyance and gloating which is insufferable, but, I have to bite my tongue because at least they made ‘the thing’ work.

This has been happening all my life. On my walk home from secondary school, there was a certain street light on my road, that would often turn off when i walked under it, this happened so often, that at first it scared me, then because it became a familiar occurrence I ceased to bother about it, unless I was walking with a friend and it didn’t turn off!

I had not thought about this occurrence from my youth until we had our New Years Day conversation.

Anyway all this preamble is to say, I would write my blog more often if it wasn’t for my complete ineptitude in finding my way around my website in a way that consistently works.

I have been pondering for a while now, how can I be a creator making stuff in a world that is overburdened with stuff?

I am a maker through and through, it is just something I have always done. From making outfits for my dolls and then for myself, knitting, drawing, observing, getting ideas from my view of my environment that in my head immediately translate into designs……for things.

The beginning of a New Year is a good place to start with a new way of working, or actually acknowledging my new way of working as a thing that has been evolving from my disquietude at marketing more and more ‘things’

So, in an effort to be more conscious of the impact my things may have on the environment.

I am learning to screen print, so that I may create my own designs in house, having to rely less on out sourcing to other companies.

When I do have to out source, I use companies that offer sustainable options in fabric and paper.

My daughter is joining me to help develop ideas and products and as she is in her 3rd year of her Open University degree in Environmental Science, she knows a thing our two about the complex chains of impact that humans make on places and people.

Together with my husband and his business restoring old sewing machines, we will continue to explore ways of reusing old sails, ropes, seat belts, oilskins to create original and desirable and useful bags.

I hope to offer more workshops to folk, as shared creativity is a joy and enabling folk to explore their own abilities, create their own things and enhance their skills, creates confidence and independence and there is nothing so satisfying as loosing yourself in that contemplative creative space.

I’d like to think also that this year I might overcome my technology gremlin and view working on my website with positivity rather than trepidation….