“Make” your way through lockdown with eBooks for crafters

If you’re staying at home during the Alert Level 4 lockdown and you’re a maker, crafter, or artist, you’ll probably be eyeing up your crafting stash and all those UFOs (unfinished objects, to the uninitiated). I’m certainly hoping that once the weirdness of settling into yet another “new normal” sorts itself out, I’ll have a bit of time to work on things that have sat around for - yeah, I’m going to admit it - years.

So I’ve been taking a look at what the library has in the way of crafting ebooks. At the time of writing, Overdrive (just one of our eBook platforms, supported by the Libby app) has 373 books listed under crafts, on a great variety of subjects including yarn crafts, DIY, sewing, mending, woodwork, and even some interesting outliers like creating cat habitats from cardboard boxes and making automata (so cool)!

Having browsed through a few, I would note a couple of things before you dive in. The first is that non-fiction eBooks are much better viewed on a tablet or desktop than on your phone - the number of images can make page formatting a bit hairy on a small device. Secondly, for the sake of your own crafty happiness, I’d suggest sticking to books on crafts that you know you have the materials for at home. With our non-essential shops being closed, diving into a new skillset could just leave you in an “Arrrgh! I wanna try X but I don’t have Y!” situation, and nobody needs that right now. Here's a dozen that caught my eye:

Lockdown crafting - a non-fiction reading guide

List created by alciata

Find the crafting inspiration you need to “make” your way through lockdown. Staying home during the Alert Level 4 lockdown? If you’re a maker, crafter, or artist, you’ll probably be eyeing up your crafting stash and all those UFOs (unfinished objects, to the uninitiated). Here’s a taste of the tempting ebooks to inspire you from Christchurch City Libraries’ Overdrive ebook collection.








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