After finding peace at a Christmas decorations workshop, I’ll never underestimate the power of crafting again

A year ago, my friend Judith and I were guests at Denman College, the HQ of the Women’s Institute in Oxfordshire. Thanks to our middle-aged female-friendly podcast Older and Wider (men most welcome), we’d been invited on a freebie three-day residential Christmas decoration beading course. In hindsight, I don’t think I have ever been happier.  

Denman College is a large grade II-listed Georgian house surrounded by a small campus of modern residential blocks providing 1980s-style accommodation to its mostly “ladies of a certain age” guests. The individual bedroom suites offered a single bed, poor wifi signal and no telly. My heart initially sank – what the hell was I doing there? Yet within 24 hours, I could happily have stayed for a fortnight – who needs a telly when you have beading, stained-glass-making and fancy chocolate workshops on offer?

Twelve months on, Denman, which had been struggling financially for some years, has come to the end of the road. Inevitably due to the coronavirus, a huge variety of courses moved online earlier this year and presumably this is where they will stay. 

By all accounts, the pandemic provided the final knockout blow, as it has for so many other businesses of all persuasions, shapes and sizes. This is terribly sad news. Denman, judging by some of the conversations I had at the college, has been a refuge and a respite for thousands of women over the years, a base to meet up with old mates, an escape from relationships gone bad, and a place of safety for women to visit on their own.  

For women like me, who happily attended an all-girls’ grammar back in the 1970s, the college provided a hilarious and weirdly familiar vibe: it felt like school, but with added wine and only the lessons you fancied.

I have no doubt the WI will survive this tragedy – its members are made of steely stuff, and most of us have learnt over the past year to “join in” online. But not everyone is computer-savvy. When we visited Denman last year, there were women in their eighties and nineties, some registered blind, who had signed up for three days of festive choral singing – and for some of them, it wasn’t just about the singing, it was about the company, too. It was about being in a dining hall with other people, eating together three times a day at shared tables.  

As all of us know from bitter lockdown experience, activities online are not the same as attending a similar event in the flesh, be that stand-up, theatre or some kind of class.  

At the moment, I attend a weekly art tutorial hosted by the Norfolk School of Painting. It costs £2.50 a session, which is a bargain, and it’s great, but I long to be in a communal painting studio again.

Nothing beats actually being in a room full of like-minded people beavering over a shared project. “Contentment” is a word I don’t use lightly, and it might sound ridiculous, but the immense calm I felt while making my beaded Christmas decorations at Denman is the closest I have ever come to finding a faith. And in that moment, I vowed never to underestimate the power of crafting ever again.

Crafting is underrated, usually by people who have never attempted to knit, crotchet or sew – that is by people who have no idea how hard some of this stuff can be to master. Personally I’m not surprised that women were trained to decode messages at Bletchley. After all, if you can decipher a fair-isle knitting pattern, cracking a Nazi code must have been a walk in the park.

Great art is feted, as it should be, all around the world, but great crafting is at best ignored and at worst derided. Yet the skills required to make things well are beyond most of us cack-handed mortals and can take years to learn.

During this pandemic we have all had to find our own coping strategies, some people take their frustrations out on static exercise bikes or pound the parks and pavements, gaining satisfaction from taking control over their weight and fitness levels.  

No one sneers at them for taking care of their physical and mental health, but for some reason – possibly snobbery – a huge amount of scorn has always been poured on those sitting at home creating decorative items out of felt, wool and scraps, with hobby-makers often dismissed as “the stuffed-owl brigade and batty old knitting nanas”. But the tide is turning. Suddenly the crocheted blanket is cool and homemade quilts are worth quids.

For millions of people across the world, crafting has provided a lifeline during a time of global trauma, and this Christmas could be the time to re-evaluate that pair of handmade socks, gloves or hat.  

Now do excuse me – I have a Christmas reindeer that requires felting. I may be some time.