THE DINNER

6:30 p.m.

Her home in West Hill

Homemade macaroni and cheese, whole wheat baguette and green salad.

THE DISCUSSION

Wendy’s home in West Hill is not so unlike the others on her street.  She reminded me repeatedly of her house number to prevent me from getting lost on the neverending boulevard that weaves so typically and so confoundingly through the subdivision she lives in.  Once inside, her handmade creations and vintage thrift store finds create a more unique impression.

Wendy trained as a nurse, despite the fact that she was passionate about the arts.  While she liked the emphasis on “caring for the person rather than focussing on the disease”, “the stress of shift work combined with the demands of being with people at their most vulnerable is a type of stress that is hard to fully understand unless you’ve lived it.”  She is quick to point out that her front line nursing experience, “a debt she owed to herself and her profession,” can be applied to anything.  And it certainly  “takes away the connotation of everyday things being the daily grind.”

Now “everything has come full circle.” Wendy says that “nursing has taught [her] to be disciplined in [her] business” even though “it is also an art”.  For her “there is something so primal about being creative. And there is something so primal about being a parent.  A lot of it comes very naturally.  There is a huge connection there.  My artistic side was dormant until I was starting my family.”

She now balances her family and her craftwork with a nursing job and wishes “there were more hours in the day and that we needed less sleep”.  She can certainly laugh at the late nights she spends on the etsy website where over 170 000 vendors sell their handmade goods and discuss everything from parenting tips to politics.

“Friendships and the community in the forums are what attracted” her to the etsy website.   She had not chatted online before, “but because it was crafters and mostly women and mothers in their 30s” she was soon involved, chatting online for months before she actually opened her online store and began selling her work.  Wendy is quick to point out that “there is some amazing stuff” being made and sold on the site.  Though Wendy’s husband teases that her craftwork is a “hobby, not a business”, she shares his concern that people undervalue their work. “It takes hours to perfect your craft no matter what you do” and people who are making things by hand rarely get compensated based on their time.

There is also a pleasure that is hard to value monetarily. “It is such a basic need to create and to design and to put what we have in mind into reality.”  Wendy believes that “in these trying and scary times what is simple and obvious is what we need to focus on.  People are so scared these days that they are really easily losing perspective.”

Once a brand name aficionado, she now wonders “why would you not want to share the wealth?  Where is my dollar going when I buy a brand name purse?  Why not give it to someone who has put their heart and soul into making something that no one else on the GO train is wearing.  With brand names, you are paying more for something that actually costs less to produce.”

She clearly understands that the totalling of the costs of mass production does not include the environmental toll.  Handmade work “is definitely less dipsoable because a big part of the movement is to use recycled or repurposed materials.  There is a second use for materials so I often find beauty in some piece that was once something else.”   Her work turning vintage curtains and bedspreads into purses, cards and clothing is done on vintage machines that are “cheaper to pick up from a second hand store and have fixed” than the newer models “that don’t last as long”.

She is concerned that “the art has fallen by the wayside.   How many people know how to sew? It is no longer considered necessary.”  Despite her concerns for the future and commitment to finding what is of value from the past, Wendy is “more content than [she's] ever been in [her] life”.

Pressed about plans for the future, “the big huge definitive plans – one’s sitting at the computer and the other is in the high chair here.”  Though she may go online to a virtual community to find others who recognize the value in her unique handmade pieces, she is definately a part of the neighbourhood when she explains that all she hopes for her children is that “they’re happy in whatever it is that they do and that they can follow their hearts.”

STILL DIGESTING

Wendy prides herself on the fact that she gives things purpose rather than being a collector with a basement full of things that will never get used.  I admire her neatly stacked shelves of fabrics and marvel that the flighty girl who used to spend her allowance before she even had it now has the presence of mind to anchor herself in her family and work so that she can follow her heart into the design of her handmade projects.

Even in the first few days of this project, I realize that I will have more material than I can enter into these blogs.  Like Wendy, I will have stacks of unique and beautiful material waiting to be crafted into other projects and purposes.  But while my notes sit, the stories people are sharing do their quiet work on me and I hope on those of you reading.   The people I write about most certainly have a purpose, but my greatest reward has been the feedback from those closest to them who like the chance to glimpse them through another set of eyes.

Wendy says it takes an artistic sensibility to see the value in vintage things.  I think it is just as important to see the value in people and the possibilties that are waiting to be worked into being. There is so much beauty in the material we have to work with.  And so much possibility in the design of how we live with it.  As I am crafting my choices this year, I am aware that we need to be more than collectors and that it is imperative to create not just meaning but use for what we are given.