Three cookbooks, a pair of roller skates, and a box of colored pencils: These are some of the items I’ve accumulated since the COVID-19 lockdowns started in March. Like people holed up in their homes around the world, I thought a pandemic would be a great opportunity to start a new hobby. My sudden lack of commute and social life left me with a lot of free time, and I was desperate for new distractions. I pictured myself at the end of quarantine (which surely wouldn’t last more than a couple of months) with an apartment filled with crafts and baked goods.
Reality didn’t quite align with my expectations. Nearly eight months later, I still spend most of my time at home, and my early-quarantine impulse buys have been packed away. I had found an excuse to abandon each one: I didn’t have the right ingredients to make a new recipe, the park where I skated got too crowded, I forgot to buy a sharpener for my colored pencils. These may seem like minor setbacks, but in a world where the smallest tasks now seemed daunting, they were enough to keep me in my comfort zone.
That’s why I was so excited when The Crafter’s Box, a service that combines artist-led workshops with curated kits, offered to send me a kit to test. With step-by-step video instructions and generous supply boxes, each project offered through their subscription and marketplace is designed to give crafters everything they need to create a piece from start to finish. In…
