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Hand Mind

I have started sewing a bit more seriously these days - never had a sewing machine until recently. Not sure why such an essential thing was missing from my home all these years. I work on my simple projects whenever I have a few minutes. They could happen between meetings on a workday, before going to bed or on sometime during the weekend. Being able to focus intently on a task where hand and mind have to work in synchronicity is deeply rewarding even if my productions are no work of art. Learning the basics is relatively simply but acquiring expertise is a whole another matter. 

I can do simple alterations now and sew a mask. But that is a far cry from where I dream of being in level of proficiency. My friend A who has been a life-long tinkerer, encouraged me to get a jump start on projects instead of building from ground up. Pick up something from the thrift store and up-cycle it using the the skills I have learned. As time goes by I will learn more and do a better job of up-cycling. Starting from zero will not be nearly as rewarding based on his own tinkering experience. Like the author of the handmind article says of these times:

"..one of the effects of Covidtide, I think, is that by forcibly breaking some of our technological habits it creatively destabilizes others. To have any one thoughtless pattern of life disrupted is to be put into a frame of mind that allows you to contemplate the deliberate disruption of a different thoughtless pattern. Thus all the people who, after three months of baking bread, are now saying that they’ll never go back to buying their bread from the supermarket. They probably will buy bread from the supermarket; but they’ll know what they are doing, and why. And this is useful knowledge."

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