Makers – this gruntled worker

The studio manager issues a gentle reminder that the doors will be open in exactly twenty minutes. I wistfully eye the other holiday market vendors with their neatly-arranged tabes. While they’re chatting away with each other, my husband and I are muttering under our respective breaths while struggling to assemble and reinforce our table with industrial-sized clamps and dollar store zip ties. Our inventory of cat toys, hats, note cards and leather bags is scattered on the floor well beyond the confines of our assigned space. Though this is our sixth year participating, we feel like rookies each time. What is wrong with us? I wondered.

One problem is that we are constantly changing our offerings, which means reinventing our booth display each year to accommodate new items. The other participants, who have a more consistent inventory, literally roll up with single suitcases on wheels and create simple, elegant, and seemingly effortless tablescapes. We, on the other hand, make our way up Broadway with our stuff precariously balanced on a U-Line industrial plastic cart (the kind that caterers use to deliver lunches to office buildings), a metal table that doesn’t fold (though we have a total of THREE folding tables at home) and three new metal grid-wall panels, held in place with a haphazard web of bungee cords. The grid, our latest acquisition, was supposed to add height to our 4-foot table to fit even more of our stuff. And this year, we have lots of stuff.

Let me back up here. Since 2012, my boyfriend-turned-husband and I have participated in this amazing fair, which is organized by our neighborhood yoga studio-slash-community-center. Over the years, we have had our same corner booth location, in the main room near the shelves of yoga blankets and cork blocks. We are always flanked by a jewelry maker and her husband and the (very popular) ladies who have a waiting list for free chair massages. Over the years, we have formed a little family of sorts with the other sellers, and we have repeat customers who tell us that our catnip fish and origami mobiles now grace the homes of friends and family on other continents. This is not bad for a nights-and-weekends husband and wife side-hustle that basically pays for our crafting habit and gives us an excuse to binge-watch entire seasons of shows like A Million Little Things (which, by the way, I highly recommend).

But I digress.

Why were we so stressed out this year? It’s partly because we didn’t do the market last year (AKA The Year of Endless Physical and Occupational Therapy), when my hands and neck were in constant pain. Sewing and crochet, which, along with writing and drawing, were my only stress-relieving outlets, were out of the question. Two months ago, after a year of weekly OT, I regained my strength and stability enough to begin cautious crocheting while wearing a black plastic custom thumb splint I designed with my therapist. I was determined to make as many hats and cowls and cards and cat toys as possible in the limited time I had. Never one to under-do things, I approached my side-hustle, stress-relieving hobby with the ambition and joylessness of a first-year investment banker (I can’t vouch for the amount of joy felt by any investment banker, at any point in her career, but I would have NONE. Ever). This felt like work, not fun.

We eventually did get our table assembled, we sold a bunch of stuff, and we also managed to pack up and get home without losing anything, including our minds, on the streets of Manhattan. As I counted our earnings, I promised my husband that the 2019 market would be different. All we needed was a different table setup and a few small changes to our product line, right?

Exhausted from the day and from pushing our awkward caravan of stuff down eight blocks of Broadway, he offered a weary smile in response.

Next year will be different. I promise.

I am obsessed with Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman’s show Making It. If you’re a crafter like me, and use the word glitter as a verb, you’ll like it, too. I knew from his standup special that Offerman was a talented woodworker, but I didn’t know that he also ran his own woodworking studio in East L.A. Amy Poehler is not crafty at all, so it is fun to watch her bounce around the craft barn in overalls, marvelling at words like decoupage and pool noodles (the latter feature in many of the winning projects). The overall winner gets “the satisfaction of a job well done” along with $100,000.

This show is a crafter’s dream. Eight contestants undertake a series of two challenges per episode: a three-hour “Faster Craft,” like a spirit animal or a Halloween costume, which is followed by a more time-intensive “Master Craft,” such as a kids’ play space or a holiday front porch decoration. The winner of each challenge wins an embroidered patch for their denim apron, and one contestant is sent home each week. The judges are Simon Doonan (known for his iconic Barneys window displays) and Dayna Kim Johnson, who works as a trend scout for Etsy.

The contestants are a fairly diverse bunch in terms of their backgrounds and preferred media. My favorites are Billy, who makes a taco truck stocked with felt cartoon pig head-filled pork tacos. While Johanna and Amber can be counted on for colorful, upbeat displays, woodworker Tiem reliably comes up with dark and moody interpretations of the challenges (his Rice Krispies Roman Colosseum is filled with the candy carnage of beheaded gummy bears). Paper artist Jeffrey attests to the healing nature of crafting; when tasked with creating a family heirloom display, he shares that upon hearing that he was gay, his parents sent a black funeral wreath to his workplace.

As a crafter myself, my only beef with this show (and carnivore Offerman would say you can’t have too much beef) was that we don’t really get to see the anguish of the initial planning process or the actual sourcing of materials for these projects. Is there a huge storeroom in the back of the barn that contains candy bones and pool noodles, or do the contestants get to order these supplies ahead of time? I need to know this.

What is also missing from this show is the typical backstabbing antics of the contestants and the harsh cruelty of the judges. The contestants even help each other as the deadlines approach, sharing supplies or helping to assemble the final pieces of a costume. We don’t see what goes on between episodes; we do not have unlimited access to night-vision video footage of the contestants in their bedrooms. When each challenge is over and the eliminated contestant leaves, the show simply ends.

When interviewed by her former colleagues Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, Poehler said she wanted to make a show “that didn’t make you feel stressed out or humiliated.” Her onscreen chemistry with Offerman seems effortless, and their ad-libbed banter (including groan-worthy pun competitions) is adorable.

Before each episode, we hear the tagline Life is stressful enough. Let’s make a show that makes you feel good! The show delivers on its promise.

Category: Makers

Hobby Jobby?

Making It: Competitive Crafting