Do you ever do this? You're working along and making great progress. You realize you are getting tired and maybe hungry, but you tell yourself something like, "I'll just sew one more seam", or "I'll just knit one more row", or "I'll just put in one more nail with this hammer, while I'm balancing on the top of this rickety ladder"? And sure enough, you mess up somehow. You end up having to rip open a seam, pick up a ton of dropped stitches, or, worse, nurse your finger that you just hit with your hammer.

I've done all of these things and more. So, I'm making a resolution to take more breaks. Even though I might be in the middle of something fun and not want to stop, making sure I take a rest means I save myself from a lot of future headaches (and maybe finger ache).

Just so you know that I know (whew!), I know I'm not doing anything new. There are tons of interesting blogs out there by awesome people doing and making amazing things. If I get an idea from them, I will link when appropriate.

Also, the idea of people turning against mass production is as old as mass production itself. The Arts and Crafts movement is one of the best examples of that. The Arts and Crafts movement was spearheaded by William Morris, whose patterns I love, in the 1800s.  I try to find some inspiration from their principles:

"Arts and Crafts objects were simple in form, without superfluous or excessive decoration, and how they were constructed was often still visible. They tended to emphasize the qualities of the materials used ("truth to material")." (Wikipedia)

The idea of letting the material tell you what it wants to be works well for knitting, sewing, woodworking, etc. Instead of going out and buying more fabric and skeins, it is a good idea to see what you already have and what would be the perfect thing to make out of it. This is especially a good idea for any sewers and knittings with a bit of a hoarding problem (*sheepishly looks at closet filled with my stash...*).