Download or read book Craftfulness written by Rosemary Davidson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrating mindfulness, neuroscience, positive psychology, and creativity research, Craftfulness offers a thought-provoking and surprising reconsideration of craft, and how making things with our hands can connect us to our deepest selves and improve our well-being and overall happiness. We should get this out of the way: Craftfulness is not a crafting book. Rather, it is an investigation of the wisdom generations of men and women know to be true: making things is a vital means of self-expression, self-realization, and self-help that sparks the mind, touches the soul, and rejuvenates the spirit. Process, not product, is the soul of craft practice. Whether you knit, crochet, sculpt, weave, quilt, tat, draw, or bind books, working toward small, attainable goals gives us a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and control that is proven to positively impact our mental health and happiness. In Craftfulness, Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin offer a brilliantly reasoned argument in favor of craft and its positive impact on our mental well-being. Weaving personal experiences with the latest science on mindfulness, happiness, and creativity, they illuminate how craft practice reintroduces balance into our lives and habits by cultivating creativity, promoting focus, creating a safe environment for failure, and encouraging us to make peace with imperfection. Like Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft, Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, Craftfulness helps us to see our world in a new way, offering opportunities to disconnect and pay attention to ourselves.

Download or read book What You Wish For written by Katherine Center and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The story’s message, that people should choose joy even (and especially) in difficult and painful times, seems tailor-made for this moment. A timely, uplifting read about finding joy in the midst of tragedy, filled with quirky characters and comforting warmth."—Kirkus (starred review) From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Walk Away comes a stunning new novel full of heart and hope. Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and joy for living. But she wasn’t always that way. Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. But he wasn’t always that way. And Sam knows it. Because she knew him before—at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him—but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a new chance at living. But when Duncan, of all people, gets hired as the new principal there, it feels like the best thing that could possibly happen to the school—and the worst thing that could possibly happen to Sam. Until the opposite turns out to be true. The lovable Duncan she’d known is now a suit-and-tie wearing, rule-enforcing tough guy so hell-bent on protecting the school that he’s willing to destroy it. As the school community spirals into chaos, and danger from all corners looms large, Sam and Duncan must find their way to who they really are, what it means to be brave, and how to take a chance on love—which is the riskiest move of all. With Katherine Center’s sparkling dialogue, unforgettable characters, heart, hope, and humanity, What You Wish For is the author at her most compelling best.

Download or read book A Handful of Happiness written by Massimo Vacchetta and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You never know just what will change your life. Massimo Vacchetta, an Italian veterinarian, provides expert care for large animals—cows, horses, sheep. One day, a friend asks him to help care for something much smaller: an orphaned baby hedgehog. Only a few days old and so very alone, Massimo is struck by her helplessness and connects with her in a way he’s never connected with any other animal. He names her Ninna. Soon, another sick hedgehog lands in his lap. And then another. As Massimo finds these hedgehogs who need his help, he finds himself—and the true meaning of compassion. While his other prickly patients are healed and released, Massimo continues to dote on Ninna like a child, constantly fretting about her health and happiness, not ready to say goodbye. But the cage that once kept her safe soon becomes a prison, and as much as it breaks Massimo's heart to let her go, he knows she longs to be free. Through this life-affirming story of a man and his hedgehog, we learn that there’s no such thing as too small an act, if it’s done out of great compassion and love.

Download or read book Joyful written by Ingrid Fetell Lee and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Make small changes to your surroundings and create extraordinary happiness in your life with groundbreaking research from designer and TED star Ingrid Fetell Lee. Next Big Idea Club selection—chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant as one of the "two most groundbreaking new nonfiction reads of the season!" "This book has the power to change everything! Writing with depth, wit, and insight, Ingrid Fetell Lee shares all you need to know in order to create external environments that give rise to inner joy." —Susan Cain, author of Quiet and founder of Quiet Revolution Have you ever wondered why we stop to watch the orange glow that arrives before sunset, or why we flock to see cherry blossoms bloom in spring? Is there a reason that people—regardless of gender, age, culture, or ethnicity—are mesmerized by baby animals, and can't help but smile when they see a burst of confetti or a cluster of colorful balloons? We are often made to feel that the physical world has little or no impact on our inner joy. Increasingly, experts urge us to find balance and calm by looking inward—through mindfulness or meditation—and muting the outside world. But what if the natural vibrancy of our surroundings is actually our most renewable and easily accessible source of joy? In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive, while another fosters acceptance and delight—and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.

Download or read book Craft the Rainbow written by Brittany Watson Jepsen and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular craft designer and lifestyle blogger shares a rainbow of new project ideas—all using the creative power of paper. What began as a project collection and viral Instagram hashtag (#CrafttheRainbow) has become an inspiring book featuring all-new paper project ideas. Learn how to make playful party decorations, luscious flowers, amazing cards, and sophisticated wreaths, garlands, centerpieces, and more than you can imagine. Brittany Watson Jepsen is known for the unusually imaginative and amazingly beautiful designs she creates for her website and host of clients (including Anthropologie). In Craft the Rainbow, Jepsen walks readers through the easy basics of transforming simple paper—including tissue, crepe, cardstock, leaves of books, and vintage and recycled paper—into vibrant, fanciful, handmade projects suitable for every occasion.

Download or read book A Year in Colour written by Amber Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colour yourself calm in an uncertain world. Start the new year as you mean to go on with A Year in Colour. Beautifully hand-drawn and small enough to take with you wherever you go, you'll find a new illustration for each week of the year complete with a page for your creative doodles and flashes of inspiration, one week at a time. Colouring has proven to be the perfect antidote to a busy life: it is sufficiently distracting that it allows you to simultaneously focus and switch off from the stresses of the day. And it's surprisingly satisfying too. So, whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter, Amber's intricate and sophisticated drawings are all inspired by the natural world and are perfect to colour in and admire, providing a soothing and mindful experience for those in need of a creative stress-buster whatever the time of year.

Download or read book Magna Carta written by Dan Jones and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dan Jones has an enviable gift for telling a dramatic story while at the same time inviting us to consider serious topics like liberty and the seeds of representative government." —Antonia Fraser From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets, a lively, action-packed history of how the Magna Carta came to be—by the author of Powers and Thrones. The Magna Carta is revered around the world as the founding document of Western liberty. Its principles—even its language—can be found in our Bill of Rights and in the Constitution. But what was this strange document and how did it gain such legendary status? Dan Jones takes us back to the turbulent year of 1215, when, beset by foreign crises and cornered by a growing domestic rebellion, King John reluctantly agreed to fix his seal to a document that would change the course of history. At the time of its creation the Magna Carta was just a peace treaty drafted by a group of rebel barons who were tired of the king's high taxes, arbitrary justice, and endless foreign wars. The fragile peace it established would last only two months, but its principles have reverberated over the centuries. Jones's riveting narrative follows the story of the Magna Carta's creation, its failure, and the war that subsequently engulfed England, and charts the high points in its unexpected afterlife. Reissued by King John's successors it protected the Church, banned unlawful imprisonment, and set limits to the exercise of royal power. It established the principle that taxation must be tied to representation and paved the way for the creation of Parliament. In 1776 American patriots, inspired by that long-ago defiance, dared to pick up arms against another English king and to demand even more far-reaching rights. We think of the Declaration of Independence as our founding document but those who drafted it had their eye on the Magna Carta.

Download or read book This Can Be Beautiful written by Tiffany Pratt and published by Appetite by Random House. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visual and creative feast for anyone who wants to imagine and build a more beautiful life. Stylist, designer, HGTV star and fairy godmother of glitter, Tiffany Pratt looks at the world as a blank canvas. With every choice she is presented or every decision she makes, she does it with one mantra in mind: that this--whatever "this" is--can be beautiful. Whether it's sprucing up some old wallpaper, rejuvenating your bedsheets, turning an accidental bleach stain into a multicolored sensation, or even hosting a party and re-thinking how you make lootbags, Tiffany's creative energy is fantastically contagious. In her much anticipated debut, Tiffany brings her vivacious attitude directly to readers, crafters, designers and DIY-ers. She'll guide you through over 45 creative and straightforward projects that will beautify your home, wardrobe, beauty routine, travel style and more. Whatever your taste, crafting skill, budget, or time, you'll find a project that inspires you to make Tiffany's visions your own. Break out the glitter, paintbrushes and colored duct tape! Let Tiffany empower you to create the styled life you want using what you already have. All it takes is a little effort, some love, and a bit of hot glue.

Download or read book The World in Colour written by Amber Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mindfulness and calm in an uncertain world. Make your own mindful journey as you travel the globe with Amber Anderson's beautifully hand-drawn World in Colour. Small enough to take with you wherever you go, you'll find a new illustration, each with an inspiring affirmation, for the World's most famous sights, from the Sydney Opera House to the Eiffel Tower, taking in the leaning tower of Pisa, the Empire State Building and other wonders on the way. Colouring is a proven antidote to the stresses of modern life: satisfying and creative at the same time. Let your imagination travel the World with Amber's intricate, unique drawings to create your own oasis of calm in your busy day.

Download or read book Reading Between the Lines written by Emma Bache and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handwriting is something of a dying art nowadays, as we tap messages to each other day after day. But handwriting analysis can divulge everything from a person's timidity to their ambition, from their desire to please to their need to control. In fact, so revealing is your writing that in Japan all CVs are still written by hand. Written by the UK's leading handwriting expert, Reading Between the Lines will show you how to judge someone's handwriting as a whole and how to examine it in detail. Because every aspect of penmanship - the height of an 'h', the curliness of a 'g', the pressure of the pen on the paper - is a collection of signals that we are giving out without meaning to. The way we write can tell the world a huge amount; sometimes more than the things we write about. Our handwriting exposes how we interact with the world and the people around us, and also how we cope with stress and express emotions. It can help us make choices for our future, showing us what our desires are, and even what jobs and partners may suit us best. Using real-life examples, including celebrity samples, you will be challenged to put your new-found knowledge to the test. By the end of the book you will have amassed a wealth of knowledge that will help you understand human nature - including your own - in all its colours.

Download or read book Rhetoric and Contingency written by DS Mayfield and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human life is susceptible of changing suddenly, of shifting inadvertently, of appearing differently, of varying unpredictably, of being altered deliberately, of advancing fortuitously, of commencing or ending accidentally, of a certain malleability. In theory, any human being is potentially capacitated to conceive of—and convey—the chance, view, or fact that matters may be otherwise, or not at all; with respect to other lifeforms, this might be said animal’s distinctive characteristic. This state of play is both an everyday phenomenon, and an indispensable prerequisite for exceptional innovations in culture and science: contingency is the condition of possibility for any of the arts—be they dominantly concerned with thinking, crafting, or enacting. While their scope and method may differ, the (f)act of reckoning with—and taking advantage of—contingency renders rhetoricians and philosophers associates after all. In this regard, Aristotle and Blumenberg will be exemplary, hence provide the framework. Between these diachronic bridgeheads, close readings applying the nexus of rhetoric and contingency to a selection of (Early) Modern texts and authors are intercalated—among them La Celestina, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Wilde, Fontane.

Download or read book Growing Up Modern written by Bruce Fuller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-11-26 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern state – First and Third Worlds alike – pushes tirelessly to expand mass education and to deepen the schools’ effect upon children. First published in 1991, Growing-Up Modern explores why, how, and with what actual effects state actors so vehemently pursue this dual political agenda. Bruce Fuller first delves into the motivations held by politicians, education bureaucrats and civic elites as they earnestly seek to spread schooling to younger children, older adults and previously disenfranchised groups. Fuller argues that the school provides an institutional stage on which political actors signal their ideals and the coming of greater modernity; broadening membership in the polity, promising mass opportunity in the wage sector, intensifying modern (bureaucratic) forms of school management, and deepening a presumed commitment to the child’s individual development. Fuller advances a theory of the ‘fragile state’ where Western political expectations and organisations are placed within pluralistic Third World settings, using southern Africa as an example of the dilemmas faced by the central state.

Download or read book Songs from books The years between and parodies written by Rudyard Kipling and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Needlework Affect and Social Transformation written by Katja May and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Needlework, Affect and Social Transformation offers an original framework for moving beyond binary discourses that class practices of needlework as either feminist or reactionary. Using transnational, contemporary case studies – such as the Social Justice Sewing Academy, fictionalised Bangladeshi garment workers as well as the famous Pussyhat Project – Katja May suggests a new approach to the interpretation of textile crafts as an affective social practice, and draws on under-represented issues of race. May connects her study to broader material and social conditions of inequality, allowing for a nuanced and sensitive understanding of the role of needlework in feminist political activism. This broader look at how textile crafts function in the realms of politics and activism conceptualizes quilting, dressmaking, embroidery and knitting as routine activities invested with emotions and entangled with material and social conditions as well as political potential.

Download or read book Creative Tourism written by Nancy duxbury and published by CABI. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a synthesis of current research and international best practice in the emerging field of creative tourism. Including knowledge, insights, and reflections from both practitioners and researchers, it covers types of creative tourist, trends, designing and implementing creative tourism products, embedding activities in a community and place, and addressing sustainability challenges. Applying lessons learned from the CREATOUR project and other initiatives, the editors present key information in an actionable manner best suited to people working on the ground. A vital resource for tourism agencies, practitioners, planners and policymakers interested in developing creative tourism programmes and activities, this book will also be of interest to cultural and creative tourism researchers, students, and teachers of tourism and culture-based development.

Download or read book The Seven Seas Edition of the Works of Rudyard Kipling Many inventions written by Rudyard Kipling and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Surface and Apparition written by Yeseung Lee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surface is one of the most intensely debated topics in recent arts, humanities and social science scholarship. The changing technologies which manufacture the actual and virtual surfaces of today are radically altering our perception of thresholds and borders. In contrast to the responses to preceding industrial revolutions, contemporary concerns with surface seem preoccupied with its function of mediation or passage, rather than with that of separation or boundary. In Surface and Apparition, each chapter explores a different meaning and function of the material and immaterial qualities of 'surface'. Case studies include various surfaces from computer screens, 'artisanal' engines and glass architecture to gauzy veils, the planetary surface of supply chain capitalism, and spatial embodiment in street markets. International scholars of design, architecture, film, media, fine art, fashion, textiles, silversmithing, woodworking and archival practices account for how the material and the immaterial draw attention to each other in both their everyday and artistic practice. Each chapter addresses particular systems (from the human body to manually operated tools and machines); materials (for instance cloth, wood and light); modes of attention, movement and engagement. 'Surface' therefore functions in this book as a multidisciplinary method for attending to critical issues concerning human creative and technological endeavours.