‘Making Matters celebrates the joy of the handmade in all of its wonderful variety. In a fast paced world, it is a timely and beautiful exploration of making traditions. I loved it!’
Kate Strasdin, author of The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

As children, we made things: snowmen, paper boats, eccentrically costumed plays. That making fired our minds and imaginations – it altered our small worlds and shaped who we became. But as adults, it is hard to find to find the space for creativity and to remember its power.

Exploring craft traditions and forms of making from across centuries and cultures, Clare Hunter encourages to engage with the world afresh. To use our hands again, to see beauty in unexpected places, to play and protest and embrace imaginative possibilities. From paper crafts to wonders made from light and snow, she searches for creative delight – making lanterns, puppets and pinhole cameras.

Inspiring and fascinating, Making Matters celebrates individual and collective creativity. It blends history, culture and politics with rich storytelling, wonderful characters and tales of remarkable objects. Read this, and then make something.

PRAISE FOR THREADS OF LIFE:
“An astonishing feat . . . Her highly impressive debut is a richly textured and moving record of a history that has largely being lost” Sunday Times

“Enthralling…beautiful… An inspiring and moving sideways look at history” Sunday Express

“A beautifully considered book . . . Clare Hunter has managed to mix the personal with the political with moving results” Tracy Chevalier

‘Miraculous’ Isabella Tree
‘Exquisite’ FT

From the No.1 bestselling author of The Shepherd’s Life, an unforgettable story of friendship, redemption and a life-changing voyage of discovery on a remote Norwegian island

How far do you have to go to find yourself?

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.

This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold.

Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.

*Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Award*

Needle felting is an increasingly popular craft because it can be used to create almost anything! This book has everything you need to know to make your very own three-dimensional needle felted sculptures. After learning about the different types of wools, materials and tools needed, discover how to ‘jab’ fibres into basic shapes and build your own armatures from wire. Whilst they make wonderful display pieces, some projects can become wearable as brooches – all of which is explored in the book.

Featuring 10 step-by-step projects to get you started, ranging from toadstools and teacups to puffins and mice, learn how to create your very own sculptures. Wool Sculpting is enriching and aspirational as well as being eminently practical. Get your needle out and start sculpting your own miniature works of art!

For most of human history, we were rural folk.

Our daily lives were bound up with working the land, living within the rhythm of the seasons. We poured our energies into growing food, tending to animals and watching the weather. Family, friends and neighbours were often one and the same. Life revolved around the village and its key spaces and places – the church, the green, the school and the marketplace.

And yet rural life is oddly invisible our historical records. The daily routine of the peasant, the farmer or the craftsperson could never compete with the glamour of city life, war and royal drama. Lives went unrecorded, stories untold.

There is, though, one way in which we can learn about our rural past. The things we have left behind provide a connection that no document can match; physical artefacts are touchstones that breathe life into its history. From farming tools to children’s toys, domestic objects and strange curios, the everyday items of the past reveal fascinating insights into an often-forgotten way of life. Birth, death, celebration, work, crime, play, medicine, beliefs, diet and our relationship with nature can all be read from these remnants of our past.

From ancient artefacts to modern-day memorabilia, this startling book weaves a rich tapestry from the fragments of our rural past.

Get your hooks ready for a crochet book which brings the warmth of summer all year round. Patterns, charts and stunning photography are intertwined to create an inspiring atmosphere where the land, sea, textures and colours of the Greek islands work in harmony with the materials and techniques.

Through step-by-step instructions discover 20 beautiful projects which show you how you can make stylish items which are 100% plant-based and eco-friendly.

Mindful and relaxing, enjoy crocheting with raffia to create lovely gifts for friends and family or fashionable summer-inspired pieces to keep for yourself. Radiant Raffia is the essential modern guide to this must-have accessory.

Throughout the history of civilisation, traditional crafts have been passed down from hand to skilled hand. Blacksmithing, brewing, beekeeping, baking, milling, spinning, knitting and weaving: these skills held societies together, and so too shaped their folklore and mythology.

Exploring the folklore connected with these rural crafts, Telling the Bees examines the customs, superstitions and stories woven into some of the world’s oldest trades. From the spinning of the Fates to the blacksmith’s relationship with the devil, and the symbolism of John Barleycorn to a ritual to create bees from the corpse of a cow – these are the traditions upon which our modern world was built.