I’m sitting on a worn plastic garden chair beside my 2005 Volvo, reaching down to pick up a bolt I’ve just dropped on the floor. Dropping a bolt onto the garage floor doesn’t produce a ringing sound. It doesn’t bounce but lands with a dull, heavy thud — almost magnetically. As if the floor or the bolt itself holds a certain softness that absorbs the impact. What I’m doing is what Donna Haraway in her 1988 essay Situated Knowledges described as the old feminist self-help practice of repairing one’s own car.¹ Right now, it’s spring, and finally time to get rid of the fuel-consuming studded winter tyres. I carefully roll the bolt between my fingers, catching the scent of train brakes — that distinct smell of burnt steel. Running my fingertip over the treads, trying to confirm they weren’t damaged.

When I first started working on cars with my dad as a kid, I had no idea who Donna Haraway was. I came to discover her later in life, along with other thinkers and writers, in my search for languages to articulate meanings of practical knowledge and skill, and how it all connects — to society, culture, politics, and my own place as a maker. What fascinates me most about craft, and what continually draws me back to making, is the web of relationships and unseen connections that shape it. Aspects that cannot be grasped through sight alone. In the context of Make Me See, which focuses on the role of observation in craftspeople's practices, I’d like to challenge the significance of vision in craft, by revisiting some thinkers and ideas regarding the act of observation.

Observation can play different roles in craft making. On the one hand, there is the direct, bodily observation between maker, tool, and material — a form of perception shaped not just by sight. On the other hand, there is the observation of craft from an external perspective: the apprentice, the peer, the audience, the consumer. Even though I’m questioning the significance of observation in this essay, I want to start by mentioning some craft contexts where vision is central, or possibly subversive. Observing the making process is fundamental to learning and teaching craft. Watching an experienced maker is as crucial as hands-on practice. A vast visual culture also surrounds craft production, from process films and live demonstrations to YouTube communities dedicated to specific techniques. These not only preserve and share knowledge, but also foster craft-based communities and introduce spectators to practices they might never otherwise encounter. By lowering barriers to participation, such transparency makes craft more accessible and democratic.² Visual demonstrations also shape perceptions of handmade objects, possibly reinforcing their association with care and sustainability. But the aesthetics of craft marketing often blur distinctions between small-scale artisans and large companies using the handmade for boosting sales, making it difficult for consumers to make informed choices.³ This overlap can also present a romanticised or sanitised version of making, risking a slide into spectacle, where the image of craft becomes more important than the realities of labour and materials. To understand both the value and, often, the problems that come with production of objects and goods, transparency must go beyond aesthetics and reveal the economic, environmental, and ethical conditions in which objects are made.

Feminist theory and philosophy have provided many perspectives on what it means to be a body in the world; one that is inseparable from the mind, and something we can never truly disassociate from. If embodied knowledge requires a more embodied language, how do we develop that language? Could one approach be to question the dominant position of vision in culture and science, when describing making as encompassing relations, action, and knowledge?

In Donna Haraway’s previously mentioned essay, she challenges the idea of a detached, universal gaze as a means for describing reality. The “God-trick”, as she calls it, is central in Western science, and claims to represent an objective view of “truth”. Instead, she advocates for an embodied and accountable vision that recognises the observer’s positionality. An observer is never neutral, whether the observing eye belongs to a human, an animal, or an electronic device. Every act of observation carries its own history and particular perspective of perceiving the world. Haraway argues that observation is a reciprocal process: to observe something is to alter it, and in turn, to be altered by it, meaning the relationship between observer and observed is one of mutual transformation. This notion is foundational to Haraway’s broader theories on entangled relations between humans, nonhuman life forms, and technology.⁴

Haraway’s idea of mutual marking is especially relevant in craft and material-based research. Observing and handling material are not separate actions but variations of the same relational process. When I as a maker engage with materials, my handling marks the material, but the material also marks me. Both through physical traces, like muscle memory, oil stains, and rust under my nails from a day’s work in the garage. But also, through conceptual shifts and personal transformation. Interactions with tools and materials cultivate an embodied intuition — knowing the weight of a wrench before lifting it, sensing the right moment to apply force or let go. Time spent working on a car instils an awareness of interconnected systems: how a single loosened bolt can subtly affect alignment, how mechanical failure is rarely isolated but ripples through the entire structure. This awareness sharpens my understanding of maintenance as an ongoing, relational practice, whether it’s repairing an engine, mending a piece of clothing, or tending to ecosystems damaged by industrial excess.⁵

Making transforms the maker not just in skill but in perspective. As I learn to tune an engine or weave fabric, I find that the histories embedded in these practices begin to concern me, and that my making becomes part of them. The act of handling a material and learning the difference between brittle and malleable steel, how unwieldy flax through many steps of preparation can become soft linen, reconfigures our relationship to the material world. These transformations align with feminist materialist perspectives that view craft as an entangled process, rather than a one-directional act of control.⁶ The more I engage in making, the more I understand that the knowledge is not just in my hands but in the histories, resistances, and affordances of the materials.

Indigenous cultures have long celebrated the agency of materials, engaging with the material world as active, sentient beings with their own intrinsic qualities. Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer describes in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, how humans and all beings are part of an interdependent system of relationships.⁷ Harvesting raw material emphasises taking only what is needed, giving back in return, and showing gratitude. A common thread in Kimmerer’s work is the concept of gifts, rather than commodities. Or as Sámi juoigi⁸ Nils-Aslak Valkeapää beautifully describes it in his 1984 essay A Way to Calm Reindeer: ‘There’s fluidity between all parts.’⁹ These perspectives provide an important counterpoint to the Western scientific view of matter as passive and inert.

Starting from the premise that entangled relationships between humans, tools, and materials are central to craft making, I ask: How much of the actual process and meaning of craft remains visible to an outside observer?

Anna Świrszczyńska’s (also known as Anna Swir) 1972 poem What is a Pineal Gland reflects on the internal labour of her body — its lungs moving, its viscera digesting — functions she acknowledges yet remain estranged from. In Swir’s poetry, the body is both a subject of perception and an object observed with detachment.¹⁰ ‘Really, what do I have in common with my body?’ she asks.

Just as Swir’s poem highlights an estrangement from her body’s inner workings, so too are we distanced from the origins and processes of the objects we use daily. What do I have in common with my mobile phone, a device I carry with me constantly but cannot even open to repair? Or with clothes that seem to materialise out of nowhere at the postal collection point? In mass production, entire histories of labour and material extraction disappear.

Swir’s poem reminds us that even our own bodies are not fully accessible to us, if by accessibility we mean visibility. But should sight be the measure of access? We may not witness the inner workings of our lungs, yet we are wholly entangled with them, reliant on their unseen labour. If we think of accessibility not as an act of looking but as a form of participation, then our relationship to the body's inner processes is not one of estrangement but of connection.

Perhaps I have more in common with my smartphone and my fast-fashion clothes than I think. Not through observation, but through the material entanglements that link me to their histories, their makers, their afterlives. Through the transactions and decisions involved in purchasing them, through participating in a society celebrating owning such items and allowing for their manufacture. To acknowledge these entanglements is to resist the illusion that what is unseen is separate from us.

I do have something in common with my Volvo. It’s nearly 20 years old and approaching 400,000 kilometres, so things tend to break down regularly. My dad and I frequently repair it together. It’s thanks to his mechanical expertise that I’m able to keep such an old car running. Last spring, it was the outer tie rod on the left front wheel that had snapped. Through years of observation and my own attempts, I’ve learned that it’s not enough to just tap lightly — sometimes you need to strike the nut hard with a sledgehammer if it won’t budge. Replacing a tie rod also affects the wheel alignment, so it’s crucial to carefully count each turn when unscrewing the nut to ensure, without visual guidance, that the new tie rod is reattached in the exact same position.

The hours spent in the workshop have strengthened my self-confidence when it comes to practical skills. I’ve even picked up my dad’s grumpy demeanour, but also the joy that comes when something finally works after a long day of heavy, dirty labour. The gestures become internalised. When a wheel won’t come off the hub during a tyre change, I kick it with my inner heel, like passing a soccer ball.

To reattach the dropped bolt onto the new tyre, I pick up a torque wrench. When the proper tension of the bolt is reached, the tool clicks. It is a simple form of tool/human communication that reminds me of another angle in Haraway’s theory of mutual markings, namely that: when I use a tool, the tool also uses me. For example, a loom is not just a device for weaving; it structures the weaver’s bodily movements, dictates a rhythm, and over time, the loom conditions the weaver, shaping their understanding of space, pattern, and time. The loom participates in the making, setting constraints and opening possibilities.

My toolbox holds garage tools of varying quality. Some are so durable they’ve been passed down through generations, while others wear out at regular intervals. Most of them are never where I need them to be. But the toolbox is also filled with the experiences that have guided me in my practical work, the moments when a mentor has led through demonstration, wise words, or by conveying a sense of how to recognise when something is just right. It also holds the thinkers and ideas I’ve been drawn to, the ones I return to in my making, including those that have helped shape this essay, directly or indirectly.

What we see, or fail to see, determines how we relate to our surroundings. Our primary reliance on vision is deeply rooted and sustained by a society oversaturated with visual culture — often at the expense of our other senses. The phrase ‘seeing is believing’ affirms this bias. In craft, not all knowledge is visual. The hands do not always need to see to know. The non-participating observer may offer compelling descriptions of craft making from a viewer’s perspective, but risks overlooking what is most essential to the maker. Craft is more than a practice of making, it is a way of thinking, sensing, and relating to the world. If we take seriously its lessons of attentiveness, reciprocity, and care, we might be open to reimagining not just how we create objects, but how we shape our futures with greater empathy and resilience. To describe the process of making might then require us to rethink how language operates, not as a tool of distance or categorisation, but as an extension of our hands and senses. Perhaps the writing craftsperson is uniquely positioned to explore and develop such a language, through her understanding of craft’s potential — both as a visually compelling process, and a site for resistance and connection. I wonder, what possible languages emerge when we observe craft with our eyes closed?