Mighty Creative, with Kim Werker – Details, episodes & analysis

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.)

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!

• 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).

• 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.

• 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.

• Cheryl’s article about Morning Makes
• Sophie’s Universe blanket pattern
• Cutting up jeans
• Swatch loom
• Author Rachael Herron on Compulsory

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).

• 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.