Mighty Creative, with Kim Werker

As I begin fiddle lessons (!), I see so many connections between my desire to learn folk music and my fascination with handcrafts.

I had seven minutes of relative quiet for recording, and I tried to make the most of it. Featuring: me, playing the violin, very badly. (And some crochet for challenging times.)

Wherein I learn to play Happy Birthday on the ukulele for a tuba duet and rekindle my commitment to dismantle the patriarchy. Really, there are no show notes other than that. You... are gonna want to hear this one.

We're gonna be in this for a long while, dear listeners. We'll be experiencing waves of grief over a long time. So it's time to focus on tiny joys, and on how our creativity can help us create some of those joys for ourselves. Show Notes That Discomfort You're Feeling Is Grief The 100 Day Project Discussion thread about our 100 Day Projects My first wee granny square I want to make next week's show like a call-in show and I need your help! Record a 1- to 2-minute clip including your name and location, what you've been making, and include a question if you have one! Email your voice memo to me at kim@kimwerker.com. If you're not able to record a voice memo but you want to participate, simply email me and I may read out what you wrote. Find our weekly Zoom chat schedule and info on our video chat room over on our community site. It's free to join, and it's a super place to hang out with other creative folks.

Time is so weird right now. It's movings so slowly, and so distantly, so fluidly. There are no good words for it, really, but I think we can all agree we're living in a Twilight Zone. In “normal” life, I talk with folks a lot about finding and making time for creativity and creative projects in our daily lives. But when time is all screwed up, and when we may feel inclined to think we have way more of it on our hands than we actually do, does the challenge of fitting in creative projects go away? It sure doesn't. Have a listen for some more on this, and for some ideas for fitting creativity into your quarantine time. (Hint: I'll be doing the 100 Day Project. Maybe you, too?)

We're nine days into self-quarantine because the last person we saw before going into self-isolation last Monday called a few days later to tell us he'd been exposed. In many ways, this isn't any different an experience than what we'd been expecting, except we can't go shopping for groceries and the like. Which, at this point, actually seems like a massive difference. My kingdom for a change of scenery beyond what we get walking the dog. I'm keeping the podcast going outside of my initial plan to release an eight-episode first season. I don't yet have a predictable schedule to work with for recording and editing, and my brain is half mush these days. So at the very least, what I'll send into your ears is what we have today: some musings on quarantine and updates on how I and our community are working to keep creative folks connected and making stuff, and maybe a bit of birdsong I recorded in the woods by my house a few days ago. It's a sound that brings peace to me, and maybe to you, too. Find our weekly Zoom chat schedule and info on our video chat room over on our community site. It's free to join, and it's a super place to hang out with other creative folks.

My friend Erin has been keeping me sane these last few days that have felt like centuries. She's a new friend. We've only known each other for a few months. But meeting her felt like we were always meant to be friends, and we started texting each other daily pretty much from the start. So in these days when I'm thinking about all the folks whose friendships I've taken for granted and haven't spoken with in ages, I'm also taking solace in the habit Erin and I made from the start of just checking in on each other every day. When I had to miss posting a new episode of the pod last week, for reasons that aren't even worth going into now, seven days and three hundred years later, I knew that my next episode had to break form. I needed to ask my new friend, who's a legit, bonafide psychiatrist, to come on the show and talk about how creativity is a tool that will serve us well in this overwhelming, mind-boggling time. Dr. Erin Griffiths is a holistic psychiatrist whose practice is entirely online. Our conversation made me feel better. A whole lot better. I hope it'll help you feel better, too. Find a video of our unedited conversation over in the Podcast forum; look for Episode 106. And hit reply to let me know what you want from this podcast in the coming weeks. My listening habits are already changing, and I suspect yours are or will soon, too. Let me know where you want Mighty Creative to fit in, if there are topics you want me to cover, if you prefer heavy stuff or light stuff or what. Finally, this podcast and our online community are made possible by Supporting Members. A major perk these folks have enjoyed for over a year is regularly scheduled video chats with me by Zoom. We all decided this week that these chats should be something all community members can take advantage of, so as of next week, all members of our forums can find times each week to hang out face-to-face online with other folks who love to make stuff. I hope you'll join us.

An exploration of how our creative hobbies and interests can help to keep us grounded during times of uncertainty. Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. This week, we hear from and laugh with ceramicist Alex Simon. Um, the pickle pipes. The simplest of altered books with folded pages. Making T-shirts. April Rinne's article, Coronavirus: Time for a Flux Mindset. Let's talk about it. Subscribe to Mighty Creative on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Soundcloud or search for it in whatever podcast app you love. And if you're enjoying it, please rate it so more people can find it and get more in touch with their creativity. Support the podcast by becoming a Supporting Member, and enjoy super perks, too.

I tried so many creative challenges and failed at every single one. In this week's podcast, hear about what I changed in my approach that finally led me not only to succeed at finishing a challenge, but that enabled me to establish a daily creative practice that didn't stress me out but made – and continues to make – me so happy. Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. This week, we hear from macrame artist Katie George. This is the La Croix project she mentions. 😍 right? In the pod I list four things you can do to set yourself up to succeed at forming or maintaining a healthy creative practice and habit. Plus a bonus you can (I mean, should if I'm gonna get all prescriptive about it) apply to the beginning stages of doing or making anything new. Here's a direct link to the group Alice formed that's just for folks working on a daily project or creative habit. Joining our online community is free! If you'd like more help identifying what you need and want from a creative habit so you can design one that's easy and natural to keep, the Year of Making ebook will help. And be sure to subscribe to my newsletter so you hear about workshops as soon as I announce them. Support the podcast by becoming a Supporting Member, and enjoy super perks, too. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Soundcloud or search for it in whatever podcast app you love. And if you're enjoying it, please rate it so more people can find it and get more in touch with their creativity.

I first learned about the concept of distributed cognition when I was an undergrad studying linguistics, but I didn't know what it was called until I studied it again in grad school. For an absolutely impenetrable "explanation," read this. For our non-academic purposes, let's consider distributed cognition a way to extend our individual ability to keep stuff in mind. We might ask our spouse to help us remember to take our vitamins each morning – this is a way of extending our own memory to be aided by the memory of another person. In today's podcast, I wax on about lists. Making lists is, to me, the ultimate (and delightfully simple) distribution of my cognition. Without making lists, I am a constant victim of my routine failure to remember to do all kinds of things, from the trivial to the very important. Putting these things down into a list means I can rely on the list instead of on my flaky memory – I take each item out of my brain and put it onto paper (or into an app, or whatever). When it comes to our creative projects and fantasies, getting stuff out of our heads can be just as useful as it is for us to get anything else out of our heads. When we use the tools we have to distribute all the myriad things that are constantly swimming around in our minds, we help ourselves to think more clearly, and to fit more things into our days – because we stop losing things to our fallible memories. Have a listen, then hit reply and tell me about the creative lists you keep! Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. This week, we hear from artist, designer, and crafts instructor Robert Mahar, whom I did not fangirl upon meeting, I swear to you. I had the pleasure of taking an embroidery workshop from Robert at camp last spring, and it was fabulous. I still pull out the massive project every now and then when I need a quiet thing to do. My list-making system of choice is a bullet journal; I carry mine with me wherever I go. I do not make fancy spreads in it. In fact, I do not make any spreads in it whatsoever. (I have in the past, but I never keep up with them, so I've just stopped wasting my time with them). In addition to my daily to-do lists, I take notes from meetings and workshops in there, jot down project ideas, and put in anything else I want to protect from the bottomless abyss of my unreliable memory. I use a Leuchtturm1917 dot-grid notebook for my journal. And a Pilot V Razor Point Pen, which feels amazing against the grain of the paper. I stick one of these onto the back cover of the notebook so my pen is always handy. Also, my husband and I share a grocery-list app (also a Google calendar, and I don't know how other people who live together can manage without one of those), and I use Todoist as an online list-maker (usually for things in the future I want to be reminded about). I mentioned my unrealistically long Ravelry queue. I do want to apply such an approach to other kinds of projects I want to make, too. In the podcast I said I'd do this in my bullet journal. But maybe it'd be more useful to keep all the lists on a Trello board... Support the podcast by becoming a Supporting Member, and enjoy super perks, too. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Soundcloud or search for it in whatever podcast app you love. And if you're enjoying it, please rate it so more people can find it and get more in touch with their creativity.

My husband sent me a screenshot the other night, of a comments thread on a NY Times recipe for Spicy Sesame Noodles with Chicken and Peanuts: He sent this to me because he knew I'd appreciate it from my crochet editorial days. And boy did I. What he didn't know is that I'd already recorded this podcast episode, and that I talked about this very thing in it. The episode is about the derivative nature of crafts – and not in a bad way. In a good way, which involves learning from each other and remixing what we learn to create new things. And it's about craft instructions being guidelines that are not the law! We can chose to change anything we want in the projects we make. Sometimes things may not turn out like we want them to, but that's half the fun. Hit reply and tell me about a project you made by mixing in elements from a few different sources, or by going off-book from a pattern! Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. Today we hear from artist Zoe Osenbach, who makes incredible works out of found objects. Discuss this episode in our online community right here! Support the podcast by becoming a Supporting Member, and enjoy super perks, too. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Soundcloud or search for it in whatever podcast app you love. And if you're enjoying it, please rate it so more people can find it and get more in touch with their creativity.

Welcome to the new podcast! This episode is about the very thing that kept me from making the podcast for nearly three years. Prerequisite procrastination. What a pain. I put my finger on what to call this particular subspecies of procrastination during a video conversation with members of our online community (we do things like talk about the specific ways we procrastinate; you should get in on this). Listen for what this wee beast is, and what we can do to defeat it so we start making things we really want to make (like, as I said, this podcast). Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. Kicking things off is a clip of ceramicist Sean Forest Roberts of Forest Ceramic Co. talking about some incredibly intricate mugs he makes out of dozens of layers of colour. You have to see it to really get it. Since I met him and learned of his work, I have been desperately coveting a Galaxy mug 😍. Here are some of my favourite things to do when I'm stuck in a procrastination rut: Set a timer. I can do anything for 20 minutes, and often all I need to get out of my head and into making something is decide to just do it for a few minutes. Doing it a little bit is far better than not doing it at all. Along similar lines, this tired cliche: Done is better than perfect. It is so tired. And it is so true. (You will notice that the sound quality of the Camp Thundercraft clips this season are not the best. I considered the task of cleaning up the audio one of the prerequisites that kept me from making this podcast for ten months. I have cleaned them up, believe it or not, but really, I just needed to stop worrying about it and just make the episodes.) Consider whether I really want to do the thing I'm putting off. There's a section in Make It Mighty Ugly where I write about gut feelings. Sometimes we need to do something that makes us uncomfortable, because we grow from it. Sometimes, though, we feel uncomfortable because it's a terrible idea. We do ourselves a great service when we get to know the difference. Throwing my first try under the bus. Sometimes, I procrastinate because I'm so excited about the idea of making something that I become terrified that the thing I make will be awful. So I make my first attempt an effort at making it terrible – doing it too fast, or not reading the instructions closely, or using crap materials, or whatever. This way I can't be disappointed, and I will at least be making something. After this first terrible attempt, there's nowhere to go but up. Discuss this episode in our online community right here! Support the podcast by becoming a Supporting Member, and enjoy super perks, too. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Soundcloud or search for it in whatever podcast app you love. And if you're enjoying it, please rate it so more people can find it and get more in touch with their creativity. None of the things I'm mentioning here are ads, but in some cases I am using affiliate links – these help to support my work and the podcast.

The podcast is back, with a new name! It's still about what motivates us to make things, how to make space in our lives for creative adventures, and how to have more fun with it all. But the format will be simpler than it was a few years ago and the episodes will be pretty short. Listen for more details! Look for new episodes of Mighty Creative in February, 2020. For now, be sure to search for the new name in your podcast app, and subscribe!

Betsy Greer is a writer and maker who lives in Durham, North Carolina. For the past fourteen years, she’s written about craftivism, the place where craft and activism intersect, and she loves discovering the ways in which people use (and have used) the two together. Currently, her main craft project is You Are So Very Beautiful, in which people make affirmation signs then leave them out all over the world for others to find. Show Notes and Links My hat out of handspun yarn. Action + Craft newsletter You Are So Very Beautiful Betsy's book, Craftivism. The article Betsy spoke about writing: ‘This company saved my life.’ The Noble Woodsman finds a life with purpose. Find Betsy on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Check out this short video about You Are So Very Beautiful:

In this first episode of Compulsory in two years, we return to our roots with an honest conversation with quilter Cheryl Arkison about the power of habit in creative life, and about embracing the mess of, well, pretty much everything. Show Notes and Links Cheryl’s article about Morning Makes Sophie’s Universe blanket pattern Cutting up jeans Swatch loom Author Rachael Herron on Compulsory Learn more about Cheryl Arkison and her work at cherylarkison.com and connect with her on Instagram and Twitter.    

After two years on hiatus, Compulsory Podcast is coming back! Listen for a brief update about what's changed (and what's staying the same), and how you can help keep the show going long into the future. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you get the next episode as soon as it's out (here are the iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud links). To get unedited clips, episodes and commentary before each new show comes out, support the continuing production of Compulsory over on Patreon.

Lauren Venell is an artist and designer specializing in editorial props and product development. Her work has been published in titles by Chronicle Books, Klutz/Scholastic, Uppercase, Monsa Books and Quarry Books, among others, and featured in several media outlets including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Everyday with Rachel Ray and on Canal+ Television. She has launched several of her own successful toy lines including her current line, the Deep Creeps, which can be found in stores across the globe. In addition to her creative work, Lauren speaks at events about small business financial topics. She has aired two bookkeeping classes through Creative Live and contributes in-depth small business articles to several creative blogs, including design*sponge and Craftzine. From 2009-2011, she co-founded and programmed the Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs. Lauren lives in San Francisco with her husband, her daughter and an ornery parrotlet named Elvis. I spoke with Lauren at Craftcation Conference in March, 2015. A couple of days after our interview, the human-size burrito costume she told me about was picked up by some huge websites and went viral. That's why this episode is out before the second season of Compulsory has started. It's a stand-alone Special Burrito Bulletin for all you burrito-obsessed people out there. Because of the huge amount of attention the burrito is sending her way, Lauren tells me that the contact form on her website isn't working. If you need to reach Lauren during this particular time of burrito virulence, she kindly requests that you do so via social media (see below). Relevant Links: Lauren's website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. THE BURRITO Sticker mandalas Deep Creeps

Rachael Herron is the bestselling author of the novel Splinters of Light, the five-book Cypress Hollow romance series, and the memoir, A Life in Stitches. As we discuss in the podcast, I've read Rachael's blog for about a decade. So much is my admiration for her dedication to her writing, craft, job and family that I interviewed her for my book Make It Mighty Ugly. She walks her talk, man. She walks her talk. Special for all you listeners out there, Rachael is offering her Udemy course, How to Stop Stalling and Write Your Book, free till the end of March 2015. Relevant links: Rachael Herron's website and blog Rachael on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Ravelry Rachael's books on Amazon Photo album of Rachael's #sketchdaily project To get future episodes of Compulsory immediately when they drop, subscribe to Compulsory on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. And if you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating or a full review, so more people can find it.

Joel Watson is a cartoonist who writes and draws a webcomic called HijiNKS Ensue, which he describes as "a semi-autobiographical comic about a lifelong geek and aspiring artist who turns his back on an unfulfilling but financially stable career in order to pursue art full time and set a better example for his daughter." My conversation with Joel from Episode 6 went about fifteen minutes longer than what's included; this bonus episode is the remainder of our chat. We talked primarily about stay-at-home working parenting, and I enjoyed the conversation so much that I didn't want it to languish alone and un-listened-to on my harddrive forever. Relevant links: Joel Watson's website and webcomic Joel on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram Craftcation Conference, at the end of March 2015, where I'll moderate a panel on this exact topic with some very smart, very interesting women. To get future episodes immediately when they drop, subscribe to Compulsory on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. And if you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating or a full review, so more people can find it.

Joel Watson is a cartoonist who writes and draws a webcomic called HijiNKS Ensue, which he describes as "a semi-autobiographical comic about a lifelong geek and aspiring artist who turns his back on an unfulfilling but financially stable career in order to pursue art full time and set a better example for his daughter." I’ve read Joel’s comic for years, and I interviewed him for my book, Make It Mighty Ugly. It’s something he said during that interview that inspired me to reach out to him again, to talk specifically about his compulsion to make art and tell stories, and how he balances his need to do those things with the needs of the audience he relies on for his livelihood. Relevant links: Joel Watson's website and webcomic Joel on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram To get future episodes immediately when they drop, subscribe to Compulsory on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. And if you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating or a full review, so more people can find it.