I firmly believe that crafting is self-care and I am making time for it this summer. The last time I needed to carve out some space for being creative, I decided to start Summer Craft Club. It was a shaggy, catch-as-catch-can tradition for two summers until COVID rudely interrupted, but now it’s time to kick it off once again. It’s Summer Craft Club, woohoo!
The first rule of Summer Craft Club is that you HAVE to talk about Summer Craft Club.
Sorry, Tyler Durden. But you can’t get the most important ingredient for Summer Craft Club otherwise – that ingredient being other moms who need a creative outlet, too!
Making grown-up friends is hard. Taking time for yourself is hard, too. But when we get together and make it an EVENT, all of a sudden, it’s on everyone’s calendar. That means that you’ll be more motivated to show up and put your work worries and kid concerns on the back burner for one or two hours because your friends will hold you accountable for showing up.
As a Gemini, talking passionately about my latest brain wave comes naturally to me, but I found the easiest way to plan our craft night was to take a light hand. I would send an email, casting the widest net possible, announcing a meeting date and time. Since this wasn’t the usual meetup, Summer Craft Club seemed to be the opportunity to bring together my friends from all different worlds: my son’s friends’ parents, my four-years-younger daughter’s friends’ parents, church friends, someone I met at a workshop and liked, a teacher we knew, my babysitter’s mom.
For our venue, I chose a local bar and restaurant with a large dining room and lovely outdoor space that didn’t mind lingering patrons. (For me, it was my hometown standard, the Redding Roadhouse.) Better housekeepers than me hoping to start their own Summer Craft Club could consider their own place, though I must admit that being out of earshot of the kids fighting over screen time was nice for me at the restaurant, ha.
My email let everyone know that this gathering was for everyone doing any creative endeavor. From designing planner layouts to making masks for their kids’ latest backyard plays to embroidering a pillowcase to crocheting a blanket, people brought every sort of thing. Just bring your project and hang out!
We started bringing books to show technique and offered quick how-to sessions for friends who wanted to try something new. I just got into embroidery the last time in 2019, and I can’t wait to show the returning folks how much better I’ve gotten!
