Sparkle Crafts

Sparkle Crafts: Crafting and Breathing

For me, crafting is a daily spiritual practice, much like yoga, heartfully preparing meals, and, well…breathing. I work outside of the home and my son goes to school, but somehow we carve out moments to work with our hands, because it’s magic, much like gnomes who do mysterious toy car repairs in the middle of the night, tooth fairies, the coming of Spring, and, well… breathing.

At the age of nine, my son still writes notes to the gnomes whenever he’s at an impasse trying to fix something, or would like to show them something he made. He clings to the magic, and while he may pick up on our role in it, I hope he never loses the wonder it stirs. The whole world is more alive when you can imagine what is unseen: the helping hands and the mischief-makers, thirsts that may be quenched by a drop of dew and the industrious miners who chipped away at that piece of quartz underfoot. We don’t push it, but rather we follow his lead and find that our hearts are re-opened to the magic in the world, as we see it through his eyes.

I like to think that watching me consistently (admittedly, perhaps compulsively) crafting and making on a daily basis since he was an infant, might have something to do with the holding-on to magical life. Creating is an act of magic. The feeling of wet wool becoming firm, felt fabric beneath your fingertips can make you feel like you’re beyond Ordinary Wizarding Level. Folding paper into an airplane, creating monsters and dragons from beeswax, and turning a ball of yarn into a scarf for Nonna, is all so magical when you look at what you started with and what you end up with in the end. I hope this translates for him beyond crafts into the worlds of cooking, gardening, and making friends, etc. What we start with and what we end up with and the recognition of the process as something beautiful seems as fundamental to me as, well… breathing. Sometimes the process is labored, but hopefully, worth it because it sustains us.

Perhaps Oliver won’t carry around a project bag everywhere he goes, like I do, but he’ll always know that his hands are capable of turning an ordinary material into something extraordinary, and that is a gift I’m proud to have given him.

It’s been an honor to share project ideas for you and your little ones in the Sparkle community over the last few months, and I hope you enjoy the new series with Andrea and Danielle of Crafting Connections.

May your hands make magic and your hearts be full!

With love, Shannon (and Oliver)