Craftfulness: Mend Yourself by Making Things
Written by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin
Narrated by Joan Walker
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Integrating mindfulness, neuroscience, positive psychology, and creativity research, Craftfulness offers a thought-provoking and surprising reconsideration of craft, and how making things with your hands can connect us to our deepest selves and improve our well-being and overall happiness.
We should get this out of the way: Craftfulness is not a “crafting book.” Rather, it is an investigation of the wisdom generations of men and women know to be true: that making things is a vital means of self-expression, self-realization, and self-help that sparks the mind, touches the soul, and rejuvenates the spirit.
Integrating mindfulness, neuroscience, positive psychology, and creativity research, Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin explore how the simple act of making something from scratch impacts mental well-being, and offer a brilliantly reasoned argument in favor of craft.
Process, not product, is the soul of a craft practice. Whether you knit, crochet, sculpt, weave, quilt, tat, draw, or bind books—working toward small, attainable goals gives us a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and control that is proven to positively impact our mental health and happiness.
Davidson and Tahsin illuminate how craft practice re-introduces balance into our lives and our habits by cultivating creativity, carving space for ourselves, promoting focus, creating a safe space for failure, and ultimately, how to make peace with imperfection.
Like Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soul Craft, Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, Craftfulness helps us to see our world in a new way, offering opportunities to disconnect from the world, and pay attention to ourselves.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Rosemary Davidson
Rosemary Davidson was brought up in County Down, Northern Ireland, along with her three sisters, many dogs, a pet sheep and several cows and horses. From her seamstress grandmother, she learnt to sew, and from her Great aunt Dolly, to knit and bake. From her father she discovered the recipe for itching powder and where to always find tadpoles in spring and wild strawberries in summer. And from her sisters, amongst many other skills, the fine art of leg-wrestling. She now lives in London with her two children and works at Random House, where she heads the Square Peg imprint.
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Reviews for Craftfulness
25 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting read about how to use crafts to help keep your sanity and how important it is to use creativity in your everyday life. It also emphasises how beginner efforts aren't always great but there's a great satisfaction in getting better at the endeavour.It's fairly short but good food for thought.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I listened to this on audiobook which ended up being really odd when they started walking through some craft projects at the end (Hoopla never has the bonus PDF content). To me, this felt like a puff piece on crafting with the aim of converting those who hadn’t thought about it before. I’m not in that demographic as I’ve been seriously crafting for over twenty years.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A rambling discussion, based on personal experiences, of how crafting can improve peace of mind.