Today’s New Crafts

When I began to write this for posting tonight, I had no clue what to focus on. I grew up thinking there was “nothing new under the sun,” because that’s what I was told. In other words, all that we are doing with crafts now, according to that saying, is a repeat of older ideas. But just now, I looked over at my printer, doing its job, and realized that the computer-age has opened up a whole new area of crafts - computer-related crafts.

That can mean something as simple as printing a pattern, or using a graphing program to design a pattern. It can mean printing a photo or graphic image onto special paper to iron onto a piece of clothing, right at home. No more travel to a specialist to do that work.

We can do fancy labels and tags for our crafts, right from our homes. We can learn a whole new craft with online tutorials, both written and video-style. We can sell our crafts from the comfort of our homes. We do not even have to leave home to ship our sold items - we can print shipping labels, pay the postage, and have the package picked up at our door, all from home.
It is an amazing world we live in today, and I love it.

We even have swaps and exchanges online. At one time, we did this by way of “sewing circles” or by mail. “Sewing circles” were better, for me. We didn’t all sew. We did other crafts, too. But that might be the one thing I miss - the live people, the smell of coffee perking on the stove, fresh apple pie brought in by one of the girls, whispered gossip about somebody in the neighborhood.

Yes, I do love today’s world, but I also miss some of the personal touches of yesteryear.