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I finally found my reading groove this month, and that’s all thanks to some truly, truly incredible books. (Yes, I said truly twice, but DAMN, I read some good books this month!) What I read this month took me down two very distinct (but in some ways related) rabbit holes. Neither of these is a new research area for me, but they both really came out strongly this month.
Like many last summer, I was obsessed with images of the British diver Tom Daley knitting at the Tokyo Olympics. I followed his Instagram account, madewithlovebytom, swooning over his Team GB sweater and the adorable pouch he made to protect his gold medal. But one image struck me more than the others.
Shared in Daley’s Instagram Stories, it showed him knitting in the stands of the Tokyo Aquatics Centre while two of his teammates sit in the background staring at their phones. This image stops me, the contrast is so profound, and I screenshot it so I can remember and revisit it later. The image is a visual summation of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately – that time spent making something is an antidote to time spent mindlessly scrolling. Or to put it another way, if my hands are on something else, they can’t be on my phone.
A few months ago, while searching online for an article that was mentioned in String, Felt, Thread (one of the books I read in February) I came across this Master’s thesis that had been published online in 2014 – Piecing together creativity: feminist aesthetics and the crafting of quilts by Melanie Anne Pauls. And after realizing that it spoke to many of the same themes I was interested in, I did what any total nerd would do, and proceeded to print off the full 200 page thesis so that I could read it at my leisure. (Because I really, really dislike reading on screens.)