Winter is traditionally prime crafting time because the rhythms of life slow down and we are inside more hours of the day. It's also colder outside and most fibers are great at keeping us warm and toasty! There is a period of winter, however, (typically when the holidays are over and the nights are still long) when the gray days start to blend together and...

🎉SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT🎉 We've been hyper-focused on the importance of wellness since the beginning of the year and we're working hard to share a special tool with each of you soon.

Crafting with others creates a form of connection that builds our interpersonal skills and expands our social circles. It fills our social tanks and boosts our moods. Crafting for others takes us outside of ourselves and connects us to the wider world. It gives our work purpose, meaning and requires empathy. 

The concept of crafting can be very isolated and individual, but it is clear through personal experiences and scientific studies that having a sense of community in conjunction with creative pursuits benefits our health in a variety of ways!

This week, we look at some of the common aches and pains we crafters experience, and how some simple ergonomic improvements can reduce our risk of injury, increase our productivity, and keep us crafting! Explore our exercises tips to stretch and strengthen our core crafting muscles.

We’ve been talking crafter wellness this month, and we’ve already covered a lot! We’ve looked at how crafting can be beneficial during time of stress like a global pandemic and to one’s overall mental health. Going a step farther, we considered crafting’s impact on emotional wellness, including how the fiber arts can help us through seasons of grieving. Yet, when most people think “health and wellness,” they are...

We previously looked at how crafting impacts our moods, feelings and emotions. While it’s clear that science supports the idea that crafting can be therapeutic, can something as simple as knitting a hat or crocheting a blanket really help us through some of our darkest hours? In short - yes. Crafting not only lifts us, it heals us.

We makers already know that our fiber arts are enjoyable and participating in our hobbies makes us feel happy, but science has shown it goes deeper than that. Crafting can actually build emotional stability - read on to learn why!