National Craft Making Month Challenge

[ladythmpr]

Hi all!

October will be here in 2 DAYS! Since 2008, October for me has been National Craft Making Month, or NaCraMaMo for short. NaCraMaMo started as a community on LJ, and I started a new nacramamo community on DreamWidth when I moved here in 2017.

In short, during National Craft Making Month in October, you work on a craft every day for a month and post pictures of your work daily in nacramamo. nacramamo is very free-form; you can work on the same project every day or work on different projects every day. Crafting is also very loosely defined; it's basically anything that you do with your hands that results in a tangible object. For example, I count baking as crafting, but I don't count making dinner as crafting (but you might!)

A lot of people use nacramamo as a jumpstart for Halloween projects and Winter holiday gift making.

I'll be there, though who knows what I will be doing or how often I will post (I sure don't!) even given the "daily posting" in the community description, because this is the second October I'm dealing with some as-yet-diagnosed fatigue thing. But I love the crafting challenge, so I'll be giving it the best shot that I can.

I'd love to have you join me, giving it your best shot.

Comments

[althea_valara]

Joined, and added the community to my list of cool DW comms. I don't know if I'll have the oomph to craft every day, but it sounds like a fun challenge AND I'll be crafting more in October anyway as I have some things that really need doing, plus Nerdopolis (another crafting challenge) is kicking off another tournament on Ravelry in October, so. Yes. CRAFT ALL THE THINGS!

[ladythmpr]

Great! i'll see you there!

[light_of_summer]

This sounds great!

Um, I just need to think about how I'm going to allocate my energies—I've learned about some other challenges, here, in more artsy mediums, that are also tempting...🤔

My most obvious craft project to take back up would be...aha, I thought I'd left an unfinished Knitted Knocker on the needles, but I see that I have two complete pairs ready to donate, though I need to find out where to take/send them, as the collection point I used in the past has gone out of business. I'll send that email now!

...Aaaannnnddd: Email sent! ✅😊 Even if I don't participate in nacramamo (TBD), that's one step closer to getting them where they'll do some good. Thanks for the nudge!

[ladythmpr]

Hey that's great!

You're more than welcome to join in at any point, even if you can't manage the whole month.

[light_of_summer]

Thanks so much! I have joined and subscribed, and am looking forward to it. 🙂/\🙂

I did a little skimming through some of your posts from last year, and was delighted to see your mentions of washing yarn—that's something I need to do, too, and your posts got me to do a web search for how-to instructions. (Why didn't I think to do that before?) (Too many distractions, probably.)

I bow before your Goddess-ly management of feeding five(?) people with varying eating restrictions. 🙇‍♀️🤷‍♀️🙇‍♀️ I have some significant eating restrictions, myself, and can at least somewhat imagine the level of challenge involved in juggling that for a whole family!

Re my earlier comment, I heard back from a Knitted Knockers collection-point person, today, so I know where to send the finished ones, now. (Sadly, there's no nearby local drop-off any more...) So, mailing the ones that I finished some time ago will be a craft-related thing for me to do in October.

I tried to start knitting a new KK, yesterday, and think I succeeded in getting a new ball of cotton yarn to center-pull (your beneficent influence!), but I messed up the start of the knitting three times in a row. 🤦‍♀️

Starting a KK is always the hardest part—double-pointed needle management for very few stitches, with high odds of twisting and confusion. Now, I know that I can't reliably start one while participating in a monthly Photo Group Zoom. 😝

Onwards!

[ladythmpr]

Knitting with needles is like magic to me; I've never managed it. I look forward to your posts!

[light_of_summer]

I think I know what you mean. Long ago, my grandma tried to teach me to knit. I think I was probably about eight, at the time. Although I had already gotten fairly comfortable with crocheting, I just could not knit when she tried to teach me.

Looking back on it, I suspect that part of it my difficulty was in mentally visualizing what needed to be done and remembering how to do it. I think I find crocheting easier to visualize than knitting, which seems to require some weird combo of visual memory and tactile/kinetic/proprioceptive memory.

When I retried knitting, in my 20s or so, I had no trouble teaching myself the basics from a booklet, so my trouble at age 8 may have been parly just my age. But I still can have trouble when I try to do something that's hard to think about or physically hard to hold onto, like knitting two socks at once on two circular needles, or getting anything started on double-pointed needles.

Good for you that you knit, anyway, with looms!
🙂/\🙂

[dianec42]

Thank you for starting this!

My October will start extra chaotic, but I will join in when I can!

[ladythmpr]

I look forward to your posts!