Jun 30, 2010

The love of making things

Look what I found! It’s my beloved Make-it Book.

I was the third child. My sister’s baby book is full. My brother’s baby book is half-full, and mine — well mine has one sweet lock of my hair. I say “sweet” because at least this small token seems like a “sweet” memory of my busy mother’s love in a book of blank pages and lost memories.

I remember favorite dolls, but they were really my sister’s. I loved the red bricks, tinker toys and lincoln logs — but they were really my brother’s.

But the Make-it Book — it was mine, and oh, how I loved it! I loved making things then, as much as I do now. McCall’s Giant Golden Make-it Book, published in that good year of 1953, was a compilation of projects previously published in many of the then currrent McCall’s and McCall’s needlearts magazines. It contains “more than a thousand things for boys and girls to make and do; the most complete book of crafts and activities ever published.” Ohhh! Topics include needlework, animals, gardening, cooking, woodworking, dolls, gifts and crafts.

I made the yarn holder from an oatmeal container, sock dolls, magical crystal rock gardens (when my tidy mother would let me play with ammonia and bluing), and small animals from rolled-up washcloths and rubber bands. What cheap entertainment! The projects were all fun to make and fun to play with. It’s interesting how looking at something can so intimately take you back and you’re seven years old again.

Look at the inside cover — see the little owls and birdies. Look at the quaint front page with the happy family all crafting together. Look familiar? Yet it was reading the introduction from the editor, here in 2010, that really caused me to pause. Listen to this:

“McCall’s Giant Golden Make-it Book is planned as the point of departure for countless happy hours of creative play. Every child delights in making things with his hands. With this book to help him, any child can have fun. Today, when so much of his entertainment is purely passive, when so many of the things he lives with are so completely manufactured and complex, the fun of making things offers him much satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.”

Aside from glaring lack of gender neutrality, which obviously went right over my head so long ago and caused no lasting impairment, does the rest of this sound like it could have been written today? They thought kids were passive in 1953? They thought to point out “completely manufactured and complex” in 1953? 

There’s more: “We hope that the child will do much more than blindly copy the ideas in this book. All the information is given with the hope that the child’s imagination will suggest many variations and other related activities. The suggestions for the use of second-hand materials — money savers — means that almost anyone can get started on some project immediately.”

The book is about more than making things — it’s about spurring creativity and imagination! 

And, the first full page spread is called “useful throw-aways!” Does anyone else remember getting excited at having a glass jelly jar, egg carton or tin can to play with on a long, hot summer afternoon? I have to admit, my heart still sort of started to pound looking at this page and the challenge of “oh, what could I make with this?”

Maybe we should stop recycling and think of ways to use what we would recycle. I love Harney’s Yellow and Blue camomile and lavender tea. It comes in these beautiful blue tins and by now I have a cabinet full of empties I just can’t throw out, um, recycle. On our day-trip to Hunt and Gather in Minneapolis, I saw a wonderful storage cubby made of square tins stacked and attached together — with a couple of spare hours and some paint (or not) I’ll have a new desk organizer made of “useful throw-aways”!

Shop owners: you are in a wonderful place and time to affect whole new generations who are too busy experiencing “passive” activities and “manufactured and complex” goods. You can offer not only children, but adults as well, “much satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment” by making something with their hands.

Shore up your enthusiasm and teach someone to sew, craft and make things! It will do everyone a world of good.

Susan

Note: You can buy your own copy of the Make-it Book on Amazon. All book images and book quotes copyright McCall’s Giant Make-it Book, 1953, Golden Books, New York