Sew Crafty

RHYS BOWEN: I've always been amazed to see the number of comments we get here at Jungle Red when we feature a book to do with sewing or other crafts. I've never been in a Michael's craft store when it hasn't been busy. So it's fascinating to note that in this age of the cheap ready made, when you can buy a perfectly knitted sweater from China for twenty dollars, crafts still matter to us.

It's clear we are programmed to work with our hands. All those industrious ancestors who had to make their children's clothing or the child would run around in rags are driving us to carry on the skills, just in case.

Crafts are so important in making books into best sellers that my agent once jokingly suggested that I do a big World War II thriller that involved knitting. Or maybe she wasn't joking?

So for my Saturday list today I wondered what crafts my fellow Jungle Reds enjoy doing?

Here is my list:
knitting
beading
sewing (occasionally)
and of course I love to paint, both watercolor and oils.

LUCY BURDETTE: I used to do a lot more before WRITING took over! Like sewing, crocheting, canning...for one of my favorite projects several years ago, I took a ruined quilt that had belonged to my mother-in-law's mother and sewed a lavender sachet for everyone in their family from the pieces. (And they have a big family!)

HALLIE EPHRON: Rhys, I'm so impressed. Beading? Really? Say more!! And I hope you post one of your paintings, and I"m sure I'm not the only one...

And Lucy, lavender sachets! With home grown lavender?

I'm terrible at crafts. Truly awful. I think this is related to the fact that I also can't make a bed. Impatience doesn't help. Though I did quite a bit of crocheting in my 20s. And some quilting and embroidering, which I learned to do in elementary school. We cross-stitched a sampler on gingham and embroidered a map of California. I wonder with all the cuts if kids get any of the cool art projects we had.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Nothing. Zip. Terrible. (I can crochet, and used to make baby blankets and afghans all the time, with great delight. My Gramma Minne taught me to knit, and I've made sweaters.) But ah, these days, I gotta say, I think yarn is gorgeous, and I love craft stores. My reaction, however, is usually: "I wish I knew what to do with all this stuff."

Does flower arranging count? I'm pretty good at that, and love when the flowers come from my own garden. How about--magazine-stacking? (I have perfected that.) Does towel-folding count as a craft?

RHYS BOWEN: Flower arranging, Hank? Now that is a skill I fail at hopelessly. I put them in a vase and they sag in all directions. Pitiful.

JAN BROGAN: I embroidered during my high school years -- flowers on faded blue jeans mostly. And actually knit Icelandic sweaters in my twenties. The reason I knit Icelandic sweaters (they are the heavy monotone but multi-color ones) was because I needed a pattern to keep me engaged or I stopped paying attention when I knit and it got ugly. Real ugly.

I actually think knitting and other repetitive hand crafts are a form of meditation. But no -- I don't do it anymore. But I play a lot of guitar - and that's my hands, right?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Icelandic sweaters? Lavender sachets? Wow. Most of my craft chip goes into my garden these days - planning colors, heights and leaf textures.

I used to knit, as long as it was a square or a rectangle. Crocheted a quilt once, made a shawl once and a mosaic table top. Had brief flirtations with shell art, chinese brush painting and jewelry making.

Now I'm with Hank...does china stacking count? Re-arranging the vase collection? Hank, since you're so good at towel-folding can you give me any tips on folding a fitted sheet? Few domestic activities are as exasperating to me.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: What I can do: sew, simple garter-stitch knitting, embroidery, needlepoint. What I do do: ....uh..ironing? The knitting dropped out after college, and I stopped sewing after I had my second child. The needlepoint lasted until my writing career took off, as the many bargello pillows in my house can attest.

What's interesting is that my youngest daughter is expressing a keen interest in all these traditional crafts. For Christmas last year, she embroidered a handkerchief for each member of the family with a design and an initial. If we can clear a sewing space out of her increasingly unused play room, we're going to set up my machine and haul all the boxes of fabric and trims out of the attic. And a friend has offered to teach us how to knit! So who knows, I may be returning to the days of crafting.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hopeless. My lovely grandmother sewed and knitted, and gave up trying to teach me either. I swear the old Singer had a grudge against me, and knitting needles drove me to want to commit murder.

I drew as a child, pastels and charcoal, but these days my friends make fun even of my attempts to decorate the whiteboard calendar in my kitchen. I used to be a better gardener. And a better cook. At one stage in my life I was determined to make whole grain bread from scratch--if that's not an art, I don't know what is. Oh, and I took a weaving class, with dreams of filling the house with crafty yarns and looms. Result? One not-too-bad throw. (There was a character who was a weaver in the book-in-progress.)

I'm a decent amateur photographer but lack the drive and technical skill to be really good.

But--there is a but--I've wanted to make a quilt since I was in my teens and my grandmother and I day-dreamed about the quilt she'd buy me some day. I have a friend who's a brilliant quilter and who has encouraged me to actually give it a try. I wanted to do something that would give me quiet time, that would disengage my brain, and that was neither work nor chores, for those things seem to take up the majority of my life.

For months my friend helped me collect fabrics and work out a pattern. Finally, this Sunday, with much coaching, I cut and then hand-stitched my first few bits of fabric together. It felt like Christmas. I suspect, however, that this will be a loooooong project.

RHYS BOWEN: You're right, Jan. It is a form of meditation. I love to sit in front of the TV on a winter night and knit, making sure my brain winds down.

So let's hear from our Jungle Red visitors: are you crafty? What is it about crafty cozy mysteries that so attracts you?

And since this is the pub week for my new book, Naughty in Nice, please go to my website and, if you've bought my book, do enter the contest for a fun and fabulous French themed prize.