A Counterspell to Helplessness

November 25, 2025

This box is full of magic. Thread and zippers and pins and patches. It’s a machine that fights waste and want. It extends life. It’s an incantation against overconsumption, an enchantment against emptiness.

My family had a sewing box nearly identical to this one when I was young, and though it mostly sat idle and dusty, it planted an idea. The idea that things are made of parts and that parts can be replaced, repaired, refreshed. That colour can be added to even the dullest fabrics, and that life is better with a button bin.

This isn’t my family sewing box, but a lookalike my sister found for me in a thrift store. Even better, it was a little bit broken – in need of repair to bring it back to life. Like getting the rust off an old blade, or fitting a tool with a new handle. Repair inception. Perfect.

The kit had some sundries still inside, and a small piece of turned wood I found in the top box could be combined with a washer to make a handle. The pretty little brass screws I had leftover from an automata project filled in perfectly for missing hardware. A couple more tweaks, and later the same day as little sis dropped it off, it was back in action.

“We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.” ~James Baldwin

This box is a reminder to me of many things – to stay scrappy, to hold what’s broken gently, to be slow to give up, and to “stretch out and mend the part of the world that is within our reach”. (Clarissa Estés)

It’s quite a lot of ideas for one box to hold, but like boxes that hold other dreamers and do-ers, it’s bigger on the inside.

Have a good week folks 🧵