Recently, I saw a commercial on TV where a mom and a kid were “baking” together for Christmas. Traditional Christmas music in the background, mother-daughter bonding, really playing at your heartstrings. What were they baking, you ask? They were removing pre-molded cookie dough rounds from the packaging and placing them on a baking sheet. As anyone who was born before 1980 knows, making cookies from scratch takes a half an hour, tops. I worry, is this kid going to grow up thinking this is what it means to bake?

The world is a fast place, filled with stuff and shortcuts. So I guess it makes sense that Christmas would reflect that. The trouble is, we’re all a little broke from living this way, and the planet is groaning from last year’s stocking stuffers. And we’re teaching our children that shortcuts are as good as the real thing. And that having cookies is the same as making them.  So what if this year, instead of spending time at the mall buying family and friends stuff they may not even like, I stay home and bake cookies with them instead?

And so it was that I embarked on my Slow Christmas journey. I am chronicling the annual rituals honestly, from Black Friday to the after Christmas sales. I’ll be taking a closer look at our motives, and the motives of the companies who are selling us stuff, and asking if there might be a better way to keep Christmas. The Christmas season means something different to each of us, but what it shouldn’t mean is endless errands and a second mortgage. We need to slow down Christmas, and start enjoying it.

I hope you’ll join me, dear Slow Planeteers, in pledging to give an experience, a donation, or something homemade for Christmas this year. Keep Christmas Slow.

Allow me to introduce myself.    Trained as a textile artist and fashion designer, professionally I am known as an executive in the world of retail.   Retail is not particularly known for its dedication to Slow, but rather is a world which thrives on and requires speed to market.  In my field it is all about knowing your customers and responding – quickly – to their needs.  To counterbalance  this addiction to speed, I have retained my connection to my training as an artist and have become a knitter – a serial knitter, in fact – throughout the past decade.

Thought by some to be the domain of grannies, knitting allows me to start something from the ground up, focus on the practice and the journey .   It is amazing to start with balls of yarn and Slowly, Slowly, Slowly create something entirely different.  You can carry that creation with you to multiple experiences, keeping the slow rhythm of knitting a constant during meetings, long plane rides, boring waits.  Dr. Perri Klass, in her book Two Sweaters For My Father: Writing About Knitting knitted her way through medical school, much to the chagrin of her mostly male classmates.  She claimed it kept her alert throughout lectures, a not-to-be-scoffed at accomplishment for sleep deprived residents.  It also kept her balanced and focused on the lectures.

With knitting, if you make a mistake, unlike in the rest of life, you get to rip it out and have a makeover.  The steady movement of your hands and need for counting stitches and rows provides a soothing counterbalance to chaos around and seems to allow true clarity of thinking.  Instead of the mind wandering, the mind seems to focus while knitting.  Some think we are not listening when we knit;  I have been reprimanded for knitting while attending strategic planning conferences.  Silly non-knitters.  If they only knew.
This is my introductory post on the concept and practice of Slow Design.  The posts will focus on artists who, whether they have named it as such, engage in Slow Design.  Those who work in the media formerly known as craft exemplify Slow Design, with their dedication to the connection between the mind and the hand.  Stitchers, ceramicists, glassblowers, furniture makers all practice the Art of Slow.  As I learn from them, I shall pass it along.