Author: Betsy

Creativity, Robots and Seals! Oh My!

| Betsy

When you get right down to it, I love lots of things. For starters, I love the seaside, coffee, exploring new cities, 80s nostalgia, people who challenge me and Lionel Richie.

I also love animals. While my love for marsupials has been well documented here, there is one other group of animals I overlooked when listing animals I adore. The “sea” animals. Seals. Seal lions. Sea otters. Creativity and its power are tops on my list, too, which is not surprising seeing how often I write about it. Loving creativity also means loving creative people of all sorts, like people who make robots.

While checking out some amazing robot photos today, I was floored by all the helpful things new robots are doing. Helping people eat! (It’s actually called “My Spoon!”) Catching burglars with a crazy-looking web! (Kind of like a tiny metal Spiderman!) Moving the dead post-apocalyptic disaster! (Creepy, yet fantastically awesome!)

I also found something combining three loved things, creativity, robots and seals!

I was especially endeared by the invention of a robotic seal named Paro, who was invented as a companion for the elderly and/or lonely. It turns out this little guy also helps children with autism and individuals with Alzheimer’s! While my cat ran away during the playing of the below video, I found it fascinating, especially around 3.24 when it shows how Paro is providing companionship for an older woman living by herself.

Want more? There is a sweet video over here showing Paro’s effect on residents in a Japanese nursing home that made me cry. The accompanying news story is here, which may also make you tear up when an elderly woman mentions someone stole her cat. (The video link above also answers my burning question of why they made a seal instead of, say, a kitten.)

Some other nice things you might like:
*Bad Banana Blog
*Ranch dressing recipe from CRAFT
*Life size blue whale (link from Tiny Choices)
*Lovely interview with the amazing Diane Gilleland.
*Discovering where the time goes when you’re on line with Rescue Time

Yarn Bombing, Craftivism, Knittivism… It’s All Just About Making Life Prettier.

| Betsy

The other day there was a story about “yarn bombing” in The Vancouver Sun. It resulted in numerous comments, either praising or criticizing these public acts of crafting. It’s amazing how people have to get either really excited or really pissed off to comment on newspaper articles. Six in one, half-dozen the other, it’s “What geniuses! The toast of the town!” vs. “What kind of crazy art school dropouts made this crap?” It makes you wonder what all the people who were too non-plussed to hit the “Comment” button thought while reading it? Call me a dreamer, but I’m thinking they thought it was pretty cool, too.

But I digress.

I think the article missed a very important point surrounding all of this. These knitted cozies and covers are also tokens of love to the cities and towns that they grace. They are emblems of creativity finding its place among the concrete jungle, and artifacts of thankfulness to the streets we walk down or the lamp posts we pass each day. Our city is ours, not the domain of someone up in City Hall or in the Chamber of Commerce.

While maybe not noticeable at first, cities, like us, have pulses and beats and soundtracks. London sounds different than Cairo, Mumbai moves to a different beat than Milan. Some small mountain towns run on the sounds of snow plows, while others on the steady sound of tourists.

Make your city your own again, and see what it has to teach you. And once you listen and learn a bit, think again about public acts of crafting. These items are more than something to cast aside, they are our tiny thank yous to our towns, cities and hamlets. They are thank yous, they are makeovers, they are love letters.

Suggested Reading:
Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project
Anything by Jane Jacobs
City A-Z: Urban Fragments
Sharon Zukin’s The Culture of Cities

The photo, taken from the article, is from the upcoming book, Yarn Bombing.

Creativity Wins Again.

| Betsy

Some girls may have had Auntie Mame to look up to if they found themselves worried about being single later in life, I had Miss Eglantine Price from 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Played by everyone’s favorite amateur sleuth from Maine, the always wonderful Angela Lansbury.

She lived in an old house in the countryside in England, were she was taking lessons to become a witch via correspondence school. Thanks to WWII and the bombing of London, she ends up with 3 children taken away from the city for safety’s sake. This clip is the beginning, which is just the start of the loveliness.

Perhaps one of the most endearing things about Eglantine Price’s character is the way she so earnestly wanted to become a witch to help the war effort. How did she wish to exactly? Well, you’ll just have to watch the movie. But, I will say it’s a quite sweet example of how with a little extra thought you can use your creativity to help further any cause or effort you wish.

And in case you missed it, there was a lovely bit about craftivism and Knitting for Good! in the Times Online the other week, which you can read here. Also, online is the Craft Cartel Podcast I did with Rayna, which you can listen to here! Thanks so much!

How Quickly We Forget. (And Bushfire Donation List)

| Betsy

Seeing that I was sick on Valentine’s Day, I never got to post the following photo. I still don’t understand how these hearts in the big plastic bag made it pass the cut and were allowed to mingle with tiny pastel hearts that say “kiss me” or “in love” or even the somewhat pathetic attempt to remain hip, “u r the 1.” It may seem completely unrelated to the rest of the post, but deep down, I think it makes sense somehow?

It’s been a few days since the bushfires caused havoc in Australia. It’s out of our radar now for those of us outside of Australia. Old news.

We have other conflicts and troubles and fights and skuffles to take care of, so there’s a few days spent on illuminating a disaster and then it’s time to move on. It’s always after the news cameras turn away their gaze that people need your help most. I’ve been sick for the past few days and largely away from the computer, and was worried because I hadn’t posted the links that my new friend Bev had sent me. What was I worried about? That they would disappear? That something bigger would happen? Something closer to home?

Has our culture truly turned into one of “out of sight out of mind?” Do problems only resonate with us if and when we are personally touched by them? Sometimes I think this is true, sometimes I completely disagree. I guess then maybe the answer is quite simply, sometimes. If there is a personal connection to an issue/event/cause that tugs at your own heartstrings already, when someone comes along telling you more or asking for donations, we’re more likely to step up and listen or check our pockets for extra change.

I struggle with why I feel the way I do about certain issues and how those close to me don’t feel the same sense of anger or confusion or change. I know it’s often due to some minor event in someone’s life that brought attention to various things, meeting a Somali refugee on the bus, having a classmate with spina bifida, reading an article on teenage suicide in a magazine at the doctor’s office. And I wonder if later we can recall the moment our feelings changed and why, or if we just find ourselves with the urge to fight, help or save.

I like the fact that something I read about today may intertwine with the way I act in the future, even if I don’t really know what it said or where it was. It’s all about that resonation, the way ideas and things and people sink in you and stay no matter what the news or our friend or our country is telling us. It means that not everything is out of sight out of mind.

So you want to help raise money for bushfire victims? Here are some good places to start:

Handmade Help
*A new Melbourne-based craft blog that will keep you up-to-date on crafty things for sale whose proceeds are going to help fire victims.

The Toy Society
*The well-known secret service of softies who collect toys for kids in need!

Curly Pops
*50% of all the sales in this shop up until Feb 22 will go to the…

Australian Red Cross Bushfire Appeal

Rainbow Comfort Packs
*Collecting toys for children affected by the bushfires

Rayna’s collecting donations and selling crafts for the Australian Red Cross over here

For more information about the fires, check out this collection of bushfire news from Melbourne’s The Age.

Also interesting is an article on what caused so many people to die in the fires. You can read it here.