Compulsory, With Kim Werker

As I begin fiddle lessons (!), I see so many connections between my desire to learn folk music and my fascination with handcrafts.

I had seven minutes of relative quiet for recording, and I tried to make the most of it. Featuring: me, playing the violin, very badly. (And some crochet for challenging times.)

Wherein I learn to play Happy Birthday on the ukulele for a tuba duet and rekindle my commitment to dismantle the patriarchy. Really, there are no show notes other than that. You... are gonna want to hear this one.

We're gonna be in this for a long while, dear listeners. We'll be experiencing waves of grief over a long time. So it's time to focus on tiny joys, and on how our creativity can help us create some of those joys for ourselves. Show Notes That Discomfort You're Feeling Is Grief The 100 Day Project Discussion thread about our 100 Day Projects My first wee granny square I want to make next week's show like a call-in show and I need your help! Record a 1- to 2-minute clip including your name and location, what you've been making, and include a question if you have one! Email your voice memo to me at kim@kimwerker.com. If you're not able to record a voice memo but you want to participate, simply email me and I may read out what you wrote. Find our weekly Zoom chat schedule and info on our video chat room over on our community site. It's free to join, and it's a super place to hang out with other creative folks.

Time is so weird right now. It's movings so slowly, and so distantly, so fluidly. There are no good words for it, really, but I think we can all agree we're living in a Twilight Zone. In “normal” life, I talk with folks a lot about finding and making time for creativity and creative projects in our daily lives. But when time is all screwed up, and when we may feel inclined to think we have way more of it on our hands than we actually do, does the challenge of fitting in creative projects go away? It sure doesn't. Have a listen for some more on this, and for some ideas for fitting creativity into your quarantine time. (Hint: I'll be doing the 100 Day Project. Maybe you, too?)

We're nine days into self-quarantine because the last person we saw before going into self-isolation last Monday called a few days later to tell us he'd been exposed. In many ways, this isn't any different an experience than what we'd been expecting, except we can't go shopping for groceries and the like. Which, at this point, actually seems like a massive difference. My kingdom for a change of scenery beyond what we get walking the dog. I'm keeping the podcast going outside of my initial plan to release an eight-episode first season. I don't yet have a predictable schedule to work with for recording and editing, and my brain is half mush these days. So at the very least, what I'll send into your ears is what we have today: some musings on quarantine and updates on how I and our community are working to keep creative folks connected and making stuff, and maybe a bit of birdsong I recorded in the woods by my house a few days ago. It's a sound that brings peace to me, and maybe to you, too. Find our weekly Zoom

My friend Erin has been keeping me sane these last few days that have felt like centuries. She's a new friend. We've only known each other for a few months. But meeting her felt like we were always meant to be friends, and we started texting each other daily pretty much from the start. So in these days when I'm thinking about all the folks whose friendships I've taken for granted and haven't spoken with in ages, I'm also taking solace in the habit Erin and I made from the start of just checking in on each other every day. When I had to miss posting a new episode of the pod last week, for reasons that aren't even worth going into now, seven days and three hundred years later, I knew that my next episode had to break form. I needed to ask my new friend, who's a legit, bonafide psychiatrist, to come on the show and talk about how creativity is a tool that will serve us well in this overwhelming, mind-boggling time. Dr. Erin Griffiths is a holistic psychiatrist whose practice is entirely online. Our conversation

An exploration of how our creative hobbies and interests can help to keep us grounded during times of uncertainty. Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. This week, we hear from and laugh with ceramicist Alex Simon. Um, the pickle pipes. The simplest of altered books with folded pages. Making T-shirts. April Rinne's article, Coronavirus: Time for a Flux Mindset. Let's talk about it. Subscribe to Mighty Creative on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Soundcloud or search for it in whatever podcast app you love. And if you're enjoying it, please rate it so more people can find it and get more in touch with their creativity. Support the

I tried so many creative challenges and failed at every single one. In this week's podcast, hear about what I changed in my approach that finally led me not only to succeed at finishing a challenge, but that enabled me to establish a daily creative practice that didn't stress me out but made – and continues to make – me so happy. Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. This week, we hear from macrame artist Katie George. This is the La Croix project she mentions.

I first learned about the concept of distributed cognition when I was an undergrad studying linguistics, but I didn't know what it was called until I studied it again in grad school. For an absolutely impenetrable "explanation," read this. For our non-academic purposes, let's consider distributed cognition a way to extend our individual ability to keep stuff in mind. We might ask our spouse to help us remember to take our vitamins each morning – this is a way of extending our own memory to be aided by the memory of another person. In today's podcast, I wax on about lists. Making lists is, to me, the ultimate (and delightfully simple) distribution of my cognition. Without making lists, I am a constant victim of my routine failure to remember to do all kinds of things, from the trivial to the very important. Putting these things down into a list means I can rely on the list instead of on my flaky memory – I take each item out of my brain and put it onto paper (or into an app, or whatever). When it

My husband sent me a screenshot the other night, of a comments thread on a NY Times recipe for Spicy Sesame Noodles with Chicken and Peanuts: He sent this to me because he knew I'd appreciate it from my crochet editorial days. And boy did I. What he didn't know is that I'd already recorded this podcast episode, and that I talked about this very thing in it. The episode is about the derivative nature of crafts – and not in a bad way. In a good way, which involves learning from each other and remixing what we learn to create new things. And it's about craft instructions being guidelines that are not the law! We can chose to change anything we want in the projects we make. Sometimes things may not turn out like we want them to, but that's half the fun. Hit reply and tell me about a project you made by mixing in elements from a few different sources, or by going off-book from a pattern! Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project

Welcome to the new podcast! This episode is about the very thing that kept me from making the podcast for nearly three years. Prerequisite procrastination. What a pain. I put my finger on what to call this particular subspecies of procrastination during a video conversation with members of our online community (we do things like talk about the specific ways we procrastinate; you should get in on this). Listen for what this wee beast is, and what we can do to defeat it so we start making things we really want to make (like, as I said, this podcast). Show Notes Each episode this season begins with a short clip of a maker or artist talking about a recent project they were obsessed with. I recorded all of these in April of 2019 at Camp Thundercraft, a retreat for creative businesspeople held each spring and hosted by the folks behind Urban Craft Uprising. I'm very excited to be going back to teach two classes at the 2020 retreat coming up. Kicking things off is a clip of ceramicist Sean Fores

The podcast is back, with a new name! It's still about what motivates us to make things, how to make space in our lives for creative adventures, and how to have more fun with it all. But the format will be simpler than it was a few years ago and the episodes will be pretty short. Listen for more details! Look for new episodes of Mighty Creative in February, 2020. For now, be sure to search for the new name in your podcast app, and subscribe!

Betsy Greer is a writer and maker who lives in Durham, North Carolina. For the past fourteen years, she’s written about craftivism, the place where craft and activism intersect, and she loves discovering the ways in which people use (and have used) the two together. Currently, her main craft project is You Are So Very Beautiful, in which people make affirmation signs then leave them out all over the world for others to find. Show Notes and Links My hat out of handspun yarn. Action + Craft newsletter You Are So Very Beautiful Betsy's book, Craftivism. The article Betsy spoke about writing: ‘This company saved my life.’ The Noble Woodsman finds a life with purpose. Find Betsy on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Check out this short video about You Are So Very Beautiful:

In this first episode of Compulsory in two years, we return to our roots with an honest conversation with quilter Cheryl Arkison about the power of habit in creative life, and about embracing the mess of, well, pretty much everything. Show Notes and Links Cheryl’s article about Morning Makes Sophie’s Universe blanket pattern Cutting up jeans Swatch loom Author Rachael Herron on Compulsory Learn more about Cheryl Arkison and her work at cherylarkison.com and connect with her on Instagram and Twitter.    

After two years on hiatus, Compulsory Podcast is coming back! Listen for a brief update about what's changed (and what's staying the same), and how you can help keep the show going long into the future. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you get the next episode as soon as it's out (here are the iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud links). To get unedited clips, episodes and commentary before each new show comes out, support the continuing production of Compulsory over on Patreon.

Lauren Venell is an artist and designer specializing in editorial props and product development. Her work has been published in titles by Chronicle Books, Klutz/Scholastic, Uppercase, Monsa Books and Quarry Books, among others, and featured in several media outlets including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Everyday with Rachel Ray and on Canal+ Television. She has launched several of her own successful toy lines including her current line, the Deep Creeps, which can be found in stores across the globe. In addition to her creative work, Lauren speaks at events about small business financial topics. She has aired two bookkeeping classes through Creative Live and contributes in-depth small business articles to several creative blogs, including design*sponge and Craftzine. From 2009-2011, she co-founded and programmed the Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs. Lauren lives in San Francisco with her husband, her daughter and an ornery parrotlet named Elvis. I spoke with Lauren at Craftcation Confer

Rachael Herron is the bestselling author of the novel Splinters of Light, the five-book Cypress Hollow romance series, and the memoir, A Life in Stitches. As we discuss in the podcast, I've read Rachael's blog for about a decade. So much is my admiration for her dedication to her writing, craft, job and family that I interviewed her for my book Make It Mighty Ugly. She walks her talk, man. She walks her talk. Special for all you listeners out there, Rachael is offering her Udemy course, How to Stop Stalling and Write Your Book, free till the end of March 2015. Relevant links: Rachael Herron's website and blog Rachael on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Ravelry Rachael's books on Amazon Photo album of Rachael's #sketchdaily project To get future episodes of Compulsory immediately when they drop, subscribe to Compulsory on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. And if you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating or a full review, so more people can find it.

Joel Watson is a cartoonist who writes and draws a webcomic called HijiNKS Ensue, which he describes as "a semi-autobiographical comic about a lifelong geek and aspiring artist who turns his back on an unfulfilling but financially stable career in order to pursue art full time and set a better example for his daughter." My conversation with Joel from Episode 6 went about fifteen minutes longer than what's included; this bonus episode is the remainder of our chat. We talked primarily about stay-at-home working parenting, and I enjoyed the conversation so much that I didn't want it to languish alone and un-listened-to on my harddrive forever. Relevant links: Joel Watson's website and webcomic Joel on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram Craftcation Conference, at the end of March 2015, where I'll moderate a panel on this exact topic with some very smart, very interesting women. To get future episodes immediately when they drop, subscribe to Compulsory on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. And if you enjoy the podcas

Joel Watson is a cartoonist who writes and draws a webcomic called HijiNKS Ensue, which he describes as "a semi-autobiographical comic about a lifelong geek and aspiring artist who turns his back on an unfulfilling but financially stable career in order to pursue art full time and set a better example for his daughter." I’ve read Joel’s comic for years, and I interviewed him for my book, Make It Mighty Ugly. It’s something he said during that interview that inspired me to reach out to him again, to talk specifically about his compulsion to make art and tell stories, and how he balances his need to do those things with the needs of the audience he relies on for his livelihood. Relevant links: Joel Watson's website and webcomic Joel on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram To get future episodes immediately when they drop, subscribe to Compulsory on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. And if you enjoy the podcast, please give it a rating or a full review, so more people can find it.