The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 12: Reaching Outward and Upward

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

The Bitches on Stitches celebrate the completion of service projects and mull over the role of craft in forging relationships -- including between people often marginalized or forgotten. We also discover what the students are making for holiday gifts, and how they think knitting and crocheting will continue to be a part of their lives. It's an energetic conclusion to a semester of growth, conversation, and integration.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 11: Ability, Genius, and Quality Work

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

In their final podcast, the Arachnias muse on the conditions under which quality work can be done. Is it a matter of inherent talent or developed skill? Ella describes the genius factor; Kate reflects on the role played by equality of access and opportunity; and Natasha discusses how experience combined with reflection leads to learning.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 10: Moving Forward into a Brighter Future

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

The Dust Storms whirl in for their last podcast.  From the notion of metamorphosis (the transformation of the craftsperson through interaction with material) to anthropomorphosis (ascribing human qualities to crafted objects as a way of valuing them); from the intersection of technology with handwork, to the processes that influence whether workers care about quality; and from the conception of the class as an experiment to feedback about how to make it better, Anna, Lynn, Ariel, and Adrea give their final word on the course.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 9: Crafting-In -- Out in Public

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

Cogs in the Wheel delivers their final podcast of the semester! Eric, Kirsten, Shannon, and Sara discuss the Craft-In for Conway Cradle Care, an event the class held on the UCA campus to raise awareness about teen pregnancy. Individual contributions, reactions, audience, and ideas to improve the event are raised in a lively discussion of this audacious experiment.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 8: Rage Against The Machine

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

Kim, Becca, Christabel and Kat discuss the challenge posed to handcrafting by machines.  Technology threatens the self-conception of the laborer and the relationship between work and product.  One response is solidarity -- of which our efforts for Conway Cradle Care could be seen as an example.  In their second podcast in the series, the Bitches on Stitches connect awareness and activism with a machine-filled twenty-first century lifestyle.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 7: The Arachnias' Workshop

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

Natasha and Kate explore our relationship to objects both as workers in structured settings of production, and as consumers. Our things have religious, political, and emotional meanings. How do we deal with them when we are placed in predetermined positions to things by our jobs and by our overwhelmingly economic society? The Arachnias suggest that we prioritize based on the creation of meaning and the spreading of sovereignty widely throughout our communities, and that we be careful of layering unrealistic personal goals onto our work for others.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 6: Knitorious!

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

The Dust Storms -- Anna, Ariel, Lynn and Adrea -- close out our discussion of the views of handcrafting that come down to us through objects and stories from the past.  Then they point us toward the future by asking how handmade objects change the world of commerce and charity.  Our Conway Cradle Care service learning project is underway but still in the planning stages; how do these crafters, both experienced and novice, envision contributing to the health of our community through their participation?

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 3: Crafting for a Cause

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

The Arachnias (Ella, Natasha and Kate) meditate on the connections between craft, education and community in this podcast (delayed due to technical reasons, hence presented out of order).  Engage with theory, practice, and outreach as the Arachnias discover children knitting, discuss whether adding handcrafts to elementary classrooms would be discouraging or beneficial to students and their instructors, and share the first-person experiences of knitters and those who receive the benefit of their energies..

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 5: Messages in the Stitches

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

Cogs in the Wheel (Shannon, Eric, Sara, and Kirsten) explore self-expression through craft. From using inviting, domestic-associated fiber crafts to express political or cultural dissent, to the ambiguous messages delivered by "yarn-bombing," to the personal meaning of the projects we're currently working on, to the crafts on display at Conway's recent ArtsFest, the group wonders whether craftwork always communicates clearly what we tried to embed in those physical objects.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 4: Ladies, Teachers, Students, Makers

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

Bitches on Stitches (Becca, Kat, Kim, and Christabel) reveal the connections between crafting, education, and gender. Does making stuff make you smarter? What pressures do women feel to conform to the culture's ideals for their demeanor and work? They end with a look at the class's service project for the Orphan Foundation of America's Red Scarf Project, and answer questions about how the project connects to the course topic and to their own lives.

Download the podcast here. To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 2: Finding Meaning

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

The Dust Storms -- Ariel, Adrea, Lynn, and Anna -- lead us on a whirlwind (see what I did there?) trip through the various meanings that get attached to handmade items, the materials used to make them, the people that undertake the craft, and the process they undergo.  Is ripping out your work liberating or crazy?  How did Native Americans and English colonists differ in their perception of cloth and its making?  Get caught up and blown away by this week's podcast!

Download the podcast here.  To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.

The Craft Wisely Podcast, Episode 1: Caught in the Machine

Each week, a group of students from the Craft Wisely course will invite listeners into the discussions taking place in our classroom. The conversation starts with ideas derived from our texts and our practice, and ranges into the podcasters' interpretations and experience.

In this first episode, the intrepid students of Group C is for Cogs in the Wheel talk about their sense that the specialization and compartmentalization of labor contrasts with the holistic ideals of craft.  Tradition, prehistory, and industry constitute factors in our feelings about work and our attitudes toward craft activities.

Download the podcast here.  To subscribe to the podcast, add the Craft Wisely podcast feed to iTunes or your favorite podcast reader.