Why craft something if you can buy it?

The old-fashioned crafts were once commonplace, and most people had mastered at least one of these vintage skills. But nowadays, precious few still practice these skills of old that were once so widely spread. The crafting of handmade items is seen as something time consuming and unnecessary. But I think that the practising of these crafts are vitally important to human beings.

For in the crafting of beautiful handmade items, you will find a joyfulness and a confidence that you can’t get any other way.

When we create something with our own two hands, we find that it has a deep beauty. The kind of beauty that cannot be replicated by machines. Because its beauty partly comes from the love that was instilled into it while it was made. So no matter how much longer it takes to create something handmade, we prefer it over its premade counterpart. Because we gain a pride and confidence when we see what our hands can create.

But if we want these old-fashioned crafts and vintage skills to be able to pass through the ages. We need to master them for ourselves and pass them on to our children. Lest they be forgotten altogether. Like my parents, passed on their skills and crafts to me, and I’m passing them on to my children. So that we all might feel empowered and live a life filled with freedom, that is more self-sufficient than would otherwise be the case.

There is beauty in handmade items that mass-produced ones miss

I think we all see the beauty of the simple and handmade. The beauty comes more often than not, not from the perfection. Rather, the beauty comes from the imperfections. The grooves that the fingers made on an earthenware bowl, the imperfect stitching on a handsewn dress, or the rough carvings of a whittled wooden horse.

These imperfections are not a sign of defects but rather a sign of the love and dedication that went into the creation of an object. 

In our family, we all own multiple handmade clothes. A good chunk of our socks have been knit by my mother, and my daughters call them grandma socks because of that. They love their colourful knitted woollen socks and find them beautiful. Not because of a lack of imperfections, but rather thanks to their imperfections, since they show their grandmother’s hand in them. The same goes for the trousers, shirts and many dresses they own that were all sewn by their grandmother. They are all unique, and they were all made with love. Which makes them far more beautiful than their sweatshop counterparts.

Craftspeople have a passion for their craft that shines through the objects they create. And I consider my mother and myself one of these craftspeople, and I hope you might consider yourself one too. Or if you desire to be able to call yourself a craftsperson. Then I hope that I might be able to help you discover what craft you want to master.

Why would you want to make handmade items?

So often, people have asked me why do I go through the trouble of making something. If it would save so much time to just buy it. Most often, I would answer that I simply liked making whatever it was that I was making and that I didn’t mind the time it took me to make it. But that is not the whole answer.

Because the truth is, is that everyone can buy their jumper. But only I can shear my sheep, comb the fleece, spin the roving into yarn, to eventually knit the yarn into a jumper. No one else could ever have that same jumper. And no one else’s hands know how to do all those things. But my hands know how to do all these things and more. And I would never give up this knowledge for anything. When you can create something with your own two hands, it gives you more than simple pleasure. It gives you a pride and confidence that nothing else can. It somehow gives a purpose to a life that could just as easily have been consumed by consumerism.

So ask yourself, what would you like to create with your hands?

Because few things can make you feel as accomplished as looking upon something that you have created with your own two hands. Not to mention that there will be a beauty to whatever you produce that is impossible to be replicated.

The loss of old-fashioned crafts & vintage skills

For generations, we passed down our old-fashioned crafts and vintage skills to the next generations. But with the onset of the industrial revolution, factories were able to replace these age-old crafts and the craftspeople who practised them. Now many of these old-fashioned crafts are mostly forgotten. And for some, there are only a handful of people practising them. I know that the crafts I’m most passionate about are nowhere near as close to extinction as some others, like coopering. But nonetheless, I find sorely few people who also spin their own yarn from raw fleeces.

The problem with preserving these crafts for future generations. Is that most of the old-fashioned crafts are terribly difficult to explain on paper. I tried to teach myself how to spin yarn from a book (John Seymour’s book of self-sufficiency), but it was very difficult to learn it like that. And I struggled to create a strong and even yarn for a long time. It wasn’t until I was able to see it happen in person. That it finally clicked, and I was able to spin better yarn.

So if we want to preserve these ancient arts. Then we must try and learn them from others so that we might master them and can pass them on to the next generation.

List of old-fashioned crafts and vintage skills

• Cooking from scratch
• Preserving food
• Baking bread
• Preparing dairy products
• Spinning
• Weaving
• Sewing
• Knitting
• Crochet
• Plant dyeing fabric & yarn
• Candle making
• Soap making
• Homebrewing
• Willow basketry
• Straw basketry
• Thatching
• Slate cutting
• Animal husbandry
• Seed saving
• Gardening
• Traditional hedge laying
• Dry-stone walling
• Blacksmithing
• Rope making
• Tanning leather
• Papermaking
• Pottery
• Coppicing
• Woodturning
• Wood whittling
• Bowhunting

There are so many more old-fashioned skills and vintage crafts. This is just a small list. I hope something in this list takes your fancy and will help you on your way to discover what craft or skill you want to develop.

Bringing up our children with the knowledge of old-fashioned crafts

If we don’t want all our old-fashioned crafts and other traditional skills that we’ve kept going and perfected over ever so many generations to disappear. We need to make sure that we pass our knowledge and skills onto our children. For if we don’t. There might come a day where no one can weave a basket anymore, hand spin yarn, naturally tan hides, or create hand-turned pottery.

I, for one, think that if that day were ever to come, it would be a truly sad day. For we would not only lose so much beauty in the world. But also lose part of our independence. For to be able to create handmade items that you can then sell on or use in your own daily life, gives you a more self-sufficient life. It gives you the freedom to escape modern shackles like the rat race and consumerism. And if you don’t want to pass on these skills to your children for the sake of beauty. Then surely for the sake of increased freedom in their lives.

So raise your children with the old traditions of crafting handmade items. Items that serve a useful purpose while also being things of beauty. Show them by example how practising an old-fashioned craft or skill is implemented into daily life. Show your children different vintage skills. So that they may be able to choose for themselves which skill or craft they want to master.

Having been taught vintage skills myself as a child

I myself was raised this way. My parents taught me basic carpentry skills, knitting, cooking from scratch, vegetable gardening, crochet, herbalism, embroidery, foraging, sewing, jam making, and many more. They were able to teach me these things because they had been taught these skills by their parents. As well as having cultivated some of them themselves. I often take for granted that I was taught all these skills. And for a long time, I hadn’t been aware of the fact that it might be unconventional to learn these skills. But when I look around at my peers. I feel blessed that I was brought up with this knowledge instilled in me from an early age.

So give your children this gift of knowledge. You don’t have to teach them all of it, nor do you have to teach them crafts or skills that they have no affinity with. Because we want our children to enjoy what we teach them. Especially if we want them to carry on these traditions.

Combining old-fashioned crafts & vintage skills to create a jumper or sweater

So often, when trying to create something, we find we need other items. If we want to weave a basket, we first need some willow shoots. Which means we need to either grow some willow or buy them from someone who grows them. And so, we have the choice of either mastering an ever-increasing list of vintage skills or being dependent on vendors.

Personally, for most of my old-fashioned crafts and vintage skills, I tend to buy my supplies from a vendor. And of course local whenever possible. For that is how we can create a healthy network of craftspeople once again.

But for my first true love, which is spinning yarn, I went a bit further. Since I love every aspect of spinning, I love rearing the sheep, working the wool, and eventually turning my handspun yarn into a jumper. So instead of relying on others, I wanted to master every aspect of this ancient craft.

To create a warm woolly jumper, you need to start with a sheep. After which, you need a set of hands that know how to do a wide variety of tasks to create your woolly jumper. So how exactly do I create a woolly jumper?

Rearing your sheep

The ewe (female sheep) is lambing or giving birth, and you might need to help her out because the head is coming before the feet. So you will need to push the head back and pull out the lamb’s feet first. And all this needs to be done with a gentle firmness that requires practice. After which, you will need to ensure the lamb drinks its colostrum (first milk). You will also need to make sure that it is looked after by the mother so that it can grow up to be strong and healthy. Because an unhealthy sheep will not grow a good fleece.

Then a year later, after having cared for your lamb through the heat and fly-infested summer and the cold wet winter. You will be able to shear your lamb. And have the softest and longest wool fibres that it will ever produce. For unlike the older ewes this yearling (1-year-old sheep) will not have been shorn for about a year and a half. To sheer, you will need to keep your yearling sit still against your legs. So that you can sheer its fleece without clipping its skin. And because of this, the fibres will be longer and can be spun into strong smooth yarn that won’t feel itchy.

Working the wool

Now that you have the sheep’s fleece, you will need to skirt the fleece (removing any dung). Then you can comb the cleaned fleece into roving. You take pieces of the fleece and put them on your wool combs with the tips of the hairs pointing outwards. Combing your wool three to five times. Until you are left with only the longest fibres that now all lay in the same direction. To turn this combed wool into roving, you can use an old button with a hole and a tiny hook to pull the wool through.

To turn that roving into yarn, you will need either a spindle or a spinning wheel. I tend to use a spinning wheel since it makes quick work of any roving. The wheel will turn and turning the roving with it, and by adjusting the tension, I can control how quickly the yarn is pulled onto the bobbin. By turning the wheel faster or slower, I can control how quickly it will turn my roving. And this while my fingers put just enough pressure on the roving to turn it into yarn. I rub my fingers ever so slightly to make the wool stick together while I simultaneously feed new roving into my wheel to keep everything going.

It is something that seems so complicated but feels so natural to me after having spun yarn for so many years. After spinning the roving into yarn, I need to ply the yarn to give it strength. I will combine two or three strands to create one thicker and stronger strand of yarn.

Knitting the jumper

Then finally, I can take my yarn off of the bobbin and wind it into a ball of yarn and knit it into a little jumper. Now I knit my jumpers top-down using the book The knitter’s handy book of top-down sweaters by Ann Budd. It works really well for my handspun yarn since it is not always even in colour or thickness. This is how I knitted multiple cardigans as well as a tiny little jumper for my youngest girl. You work one stitch at a time and I do not dare imagine how many of those stitches are in one single jumper.

Yes, creating handmade items like this takes time and dedication. But it gives a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that you can’t get from anything else. Because not only is what you have created unique in the world but it was also made with love. It is more beautiful than any mass-produced item could ever be, simply because you can see how the hands worked to create this item.

I can only create this jumper because I learned and taught myself all these skills one by one. And it took me years to master all of them sufficiently to be able to put them into practice. So remember that when you want to learn old-fashioned crafts or skills. Try and pick one skill you focus on and master it before you move on to the next. Because we all want to do all the things. But by going one skill at a time. You will eventually be able to master all the vintage skills you wish to master.

What old-fashioned crafts do you want to master?

Out of the unending list of old-fashioned crafts and vintage skills. Are there any you would like to master? Please let me know in the comments. So that I might be able to help you on your journey to master a craft. For if we all help someone else with learning a craft or skill. We will be able to once again become a society of self-sufficient and capable people. I know that I’ve had a lot of people help me and teach me the skills that I now know. If you want to follow along with my continued journey to master more skills and crafts. Then why not follow me on Instagram.

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