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A note on the issue: Get your hands dirty

For our DIY guide, we have broken down the methods that worked for us into easy-to-follow steps so that you can try it at home

he maker movement has been gaining ground steadily for some years
he maker movement has been gaining ground steadily for some years

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If there’s one thing you can be certain that the Lounge team has, it’s fairly eclectic, even zany, interests and pursuits. While some of our obsessions are fairly well documented every other week—like Bibek’s fascination with watches and music, Uday’s deep and enduring love for film, or Preeti’s craze for cats of all kinds–others’ pursuits make it to our pages less frequently, like Vangmayi’s enthusiasm for analogue photography, Nitin’s love for sneakers or Shrabonti’s nascent gardening skills. For many of us, our interests dovetail neatly into what we write about—as in the case of Avantika, Jahnabee and Pooja, who cover the arts, food and fashion, respectively. 

Also read: The DIY edit: Make yourself at home

Meanwhile, our regular contributor, Nandita Iyer, is a seasoned DIY-er who has even written a useful book on the subject. This week, each tells you about a project they have worked on recently, in the hope that it might inspire you to pick up hammer and nails or fabric and glue.

Over the last few years, while we were holed up at home, most of us have tried our hand at some long-planned home improvement project, whether it was making our own bookshelves or setting up a home studio. The maker movement has been gaining ground steadily for some years but the pandemic really pushed more people to try their hand at tinkering, crafting and creating. Often, though, it’s a process of trial and error to find the right guidance at home. There’s a certain joy to being able to set up or fix things yourself. 

What’s special about our DIY guide is that we have each actually experimented with various methods until we found one that worked for us—and have then broken it down into easy-to-follow steps so that you can try it at home. Whether you just want to find practical tips to turn your coffee grounds into a face scrub or be more ambitious and set up a recording studio to begin your career as a recording artist, you will find help in the pages ahead. 

My favourites include our guide to using your bathroom as a darkroom to develop photographs and the cheat sheet to get you started on world cinema. Neil Gaiman once advised: “When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art.” We may be far from making art but we are definitely trying and having fun in the process.

Write to the Lounge editor at shalini.umachandran@htlive.com

@shalinimb

Also read: It’s time to reclaim our homegrown ghosts

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