I am grateful to ArenaCreations’ help in creating this, my new website. As part of Hearthlight’s launch we are selling bags of suede and leather offcuts (see below). This article explains a bit about the connection between the website and the craft.

Modern Human Hands

I give thanks for my two unique hands and their capacity to use this keyboard and thanks, as I write now with little time to spare, to the teachers who taught me to touch type at school. Writing, is one of the crafts that has chosen me.

(Lisandro Serra Delmar 2021, glass, lead and crystal)

Most children today can skillfully use their hands to easily direct a computer keyboard or mobile telephone, and they seem to instinctively know how to swipe a screen or enlarge an image. Even if they have had very little access to technological devices it is as if that information is in the air around us and they absorb it through their bodies. They learn these skills because of the age we live in. That is a given. I question if there is a need to focus on teaching them, especially to pre school or even pre teen children.

Craft

There are other capacities of the hands that do need to be taught and encouraged, so that they do not get lost in the mists of history. The human hand is the most wonderful creative tool. From a baby looking in wonder as he learns to move his own hand in front of his face, to a toddler learning to use a knife to cut apples, to children delighting in their first solo creations, to the adults who find peace and solace in using their hands to weave or whittle or sew.  These natural gestures reside in our bodies too. They are just a little more hidden sometimes.

I have always loved to use my hands. I was lucky enough to find mentors who supported me. Firstly an old spinster friend who patiently helped me to reuse old magazines and cards to make new artwork. She also taught me how to make a new bar of soap out of the too small pieces. She never wasted anything.

When I was a teenager I spent hours in the Craft Design and Technology block at my school. My greatest achievement was turning a bowl of wooden apples from different woods. Most of the wood I used was from trees that had fallen down in the hurricane of the 1987. The creation was filled with melancholy for me at their passing, and satisfaction with the result.

As a young adult I travelled the world and worked in support of lost children and lost crafts mostly in Central and Southern America (more about those travels on another occasion).

As an older adult I completed the Pyrites Practical Skills for Teachers development course which is run by another mentor and friend, Bernard Graves. The course includes wool felting and dying, leather work, willow basketry, green woodwork, blacksmithing, how to build a kiln for clay and process clay from the ground, and how to make a stained glass window decoration. (https://pyrites.org/courses/pstdc-courses/)

WOMBLE…Waste and Other Materials Blatantly Littering the Environment

Another major change I notice between my father’s generation and that of my nephews and nieces is the ability to lightly ‘throw away’….well, anything really. “Where is ‘away’?” is the question I often ask myself and the children around me.

When I was a university student a friend and I set up a recycling project. It was before the days of doorstep recycling collection and we considered ourselves quite revolutionary for our time. We went to a treacle factory and took away large metal barrels and washed out the stickiness ourselves. We placed them on each of the streets in our neighbourhood. We designed leaflets explaining to the residents what to recycle, when to put out their recycling and when it would be collected. We called it WOMBLE, in honour of our inspiration, a TV programme of our time!

Ourselves, our home

I love to combine both these endangered skills: that of creating with my hands and re using what might otherwise be thrown away.

Our roundhouse home is built of oak that had been discarded as unusable for building.

Now, married to a leather worker, one of my little missions is to circulate the waste from his craft…..beautiful veg tanned leather. I love patching our twin boys clothes with it.

If you would like a bag please email myself (contacthearthlight@gmail.com) or Lisandro (info@gauchoninja.com). £10 a bag, including postage……and encourage friends and family to get CRAFTING! And please share with me any photos of what you have created with these fabulous fabrics.

MIXED SUEDE AND VEG TANNED LEATHER OFF CUTS FOR CRAFT PROJECTS, PATCHES, GLASSES CLEANERS ETC

£10 FOR 500g including postage