Simply Crochet Magazine sponsors National Granny Square Day, celebrated on August 15 each year. It recognizes one of the basics of crocheting: the humble but infinitely customizable granny square. The goal of the day is to have crocheters submit pictures of individual squares that Simply Crochet pulls together into a virtual blanket.
I have been working on a project that uses granny square to mimic quilt blocks. I used the holiday as an excuse to sew together my first block:
Here is the square I am going to submit to the virtual blanket. It is a traditional granny square and made with special yarn that creates the rounds of colors without having to change colors. I was skeptical, but it worked fairly well.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats
I don’t have to tell you that the world has descended into chaos. We are well beyond dumpster fire, sailing into uncharted territory where there are most certainly large dragons dwelling.
I understand that it can be challenging to find any kind of peace in the midst of this nightmare. One practice that has helped me to quiet the external and internal noise is crafting. It may seem frivolous to suggest that something as simple as doodling a cat or crocheting a washcloth can ease the tension, but it works for me. I lose myself in the process of creation, a kind of meditation.
I know it works for others as well as I participate in two monthly craft groups. Some months, we work together on a specific project. Other months, we bring our own works in progress. There is food and fellowship, with a focus on the personal rather than the political. These groups spur my creativity and sense of community, giving me courage to try new things without having to be perfect.
March is National Craft Month and a great excuse to add a bit of crafting to your life, whether you pursue your lifelong passion or decide to learn how to do something new. Hoopla, a digital service provider for libraries, is celebrating with a curated collection of resources from books to television shows. You can access the list even without an account; check with your public library to see if they offer access to Hoopla. Your library may also have crafting kitso check out as part of their Library of Things. My library hosts monthly crafting sessions.
I make crafting a daily part of my day. I share a bit on social media but mostly just among friends. Online groups are not always as kind as they might be. (See The Craft Police.) Here’s a sample: I used washi tape to create a collage.
I grew up doing arts and crafts. It was part of my world. My grandmother taught me to crochet. Counted cross stitch and quilling were popular with my friends. Every Christmas, I completed ornament kits. Fifty years later, I still put them on my tree.
As I move into retirement, I have made arts and crafts a priority. Over the past two years, I have helped create two monthly craft groups. Having a community of supportive crafters has provided motivation for trying new activities and honing my skills in others.
My daily creative work takes places in a hybrid planner/art journal that I have designed over the past year. It is a mash up of bullet-journal style monthly and weekly layouts along with junk journal and collage pages. For 2026, I am using single-month journals with brown covers and dotted pages: literal blank journals where I can design and create the layouts and tracking pages that work for me. I have included a couple examples.
I have learned a lot about styles and setups for these kinds of journals from various accounts on social media. I joined a couple of Facebook groups devoted to junk journaling specifically. They were full of helpful information and wonderful examples. But, there was a dark side as well. Group leaders felt the need to carefully define the practice. Commenters were not always as diplomatic as they might be. Posters began requesting that people be kind when they shared their efforts. General questions were often seen as critical rather than curious; users were directed to Google to learn more before they dared to engage. Commenters began arguing with each other over the content of their comments.
It is a little funny, really. At its core, junk journaling is about gluing stuff down. Margarete Miller, a crafting blogger, says there are no rules. I have no plans to share my journal with the Facebook groups as I am not interested in critique. I do this for me: it is creative and mindful and fun. I do share with my craft groups. We may do a bit of critiquing, but mostly we enjoy looking at what each of us has created. I get a kick out of looking at past journals myself, remembering where I was, what was going on, when I made any particular page.
Mostly, though, the group dynamics are sad. Many people never try arts or crafts because they don’t think they are artistic. Faced with a blank page and told to be creative, they are paralyzed by their inner critic. Junk journaling should be the perfect beginner practice to combat that fear, as you are, again, gluing stuff down. However, by creating some ideal way to glue stuff down and pressuring people into opening their work to potential public ridicule, these groups end up destroying any potential meditative impacts of the practice. In fact, they add to the anxiety that junk journaling was meant to help alleviate.
I was reminded of a clip from The West Wing that shows these kinds of hostile spaces have been part of the Internet almost since the beginning. The website referenced in the clip was real. Aaron Sorkin, who created and wrote the series, joined the group and almost immediately got into trouble with the message board denizens. As much as things change, people tend to stay the same.
I signed on for the #100DayProject again this year, paying a small subscription fee to be part of the Substack. I posted a couple notes there but I only have so much time and energy for writing and sharing so will focus on this blog.
The #100DayProject is sponsored each year by Lindsay Jean Thompson. The goal of the project is spend 100 days working on a creative project. I started with a plan for combining poetry and gel printing. I followed through on that plan for 10 days or so and was pleased with the results. But, I had subscribed to a monthly quilt box and the second box was on the way while the first box sat explored but unused on the shelf.
My time is flexible and mostly my own, but I didn’t have time for both printing and quilting so moved on to the latter. My #100DayProject turned to quilting for a couple weeks. My subscription comes from Mrs. Quilty and is meant for beginners. Each box includes a quilt block in a different pattern and then several utilitarian projects that demonstrate different skills. Fabric in matching designs, often from the same designer, is included; each box also provides a couple quilting tools. You are building your toolkit and fabric stash as you learn. The video tutorials are detailed and easy to follow. I am very pleased. This is an uncompensated review.
As I have sharedbefore, I am part of Ali Manning’s Handmade Book Club. She highlights a different book style each month, and my goal this year was to make each one during the month it was featured, thus ending the year with 12 handmade books. I have completed January and February but March’s coptic stitch binding was more challenging as it included fabric covers and multiple signatures sewn in one at a time. So, I moved on to bookbinding for my #100DayProject. I made a few small, single signature books with gel printed covers and two Valen-zines from gel prints. They got their own folder as well.
All this to say that I have moved the focus of my project to a bit wider lens of having fun and doing something creative in one of my areas of interest every day. Easter is fast approaching and I need to start making cards.
I am dropping photos of all the various prints and quilts and books in a Flickr album if you want to see what I have been up to since February 23:
While I have a little “real” work to do, it can be done in an hour or so a day or a one-day sprint, which is my preferred approach. My syllabus is ready for my graduate class, I have finished up a project for a client and I get to spend next week vacationing with family and friends.
I have committed to do some kind of creative work each day: doodling, journaling and lots of paper craft from books to cards to gell printing. Being part of a monthly book making group has provided inspiration and motivation as we share resources and then do show and tell at our meetings.
This week, I worked on my art journal, using a combination of paper and sewing to create quilt-inspired art:
I also ended up making an accidental craft: I planned to sew together some crochet squares to make a box. But I thought it might benefit from some cardboard on the inside. Then, I thought it would be nice to at least cover the cardboard. By the time I did that and assembled the box using my own design, I realized it was too cool to cover up. It needs some tweaking so the lid is either held in place with side pieces or can go all the way back. That’s the beauty of making: designing and tweaking things using knowledge you have gained from others and other projects. Here’s the box:
At our August book club meeting, we made books using Japanese stab binding. I brought the directions and everyone worked on their own project. I didn’t take a picture of my little notebook but here are other examples of these kinds of books I have made:
I am grateful to have the time to lose myself in this kind of work.
