Sam Lease

After spending the first stretch of my career as a glorified project manager, complete with the stress and long hours, a couple years I switched to a much more fulfilling job in instructional design. I love how it allows me to combine my technical knowledge with design work, and working from home in my art space definitely makes even hard days easier. My focus recently has been studying gamification, which is applying game based mechanics in a non-game context. Making learning fun as well as effective is a passion of mine!

I’ve been a maker as long as I remember. When I was young, I learned how to knit at a sleepover, clumsily working the needles while sitting cross legged opposite my best friend who was trying her hardest to talk me through it. In the two decades since, I’ve made it my mission to always say yes to trying a new craft so I can add a new skill to my apocalypse tool belt. I can now work fiber from spinning to wearable, and I joke the next step is to raise my own sheep.

Recently, my focus has been on functional/wearable items and reducing my waste. As I write this, I’m taking a break from piecing together a floor cushion from quilting cotton scraps (quilting being one of the newer skills I’ve collected). I have jars full of yarn and fiber scraps I plan to card and spin into new yarn later in the year. I have a pair of beaten up handknit wool socks that are begging for a mended heel.

When I’m not making something, you can find me in my garden, swaying in my hammock and reading a book.

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

I have always loved mixtapes. When I was younger I would stay up into the wee hours of the morning trying to get the playlist just right, whether I was trying to communicate feelings to a crush or cheer a friend up. In adulthood, this has translated to constant creation of new spotify playlists. I have playlists for when I write based on the feeling of a character. When I craft, I pick something based on my mood. A rainy day might call for some jazz or classical, if I’m mad I’ll find something nostalgic that I can sing along to, for general purpose I’ll lean to some sort of folk subgenre because I can get in a flow state. It is all based on feeling!

Tell us about your playlist:

The past 3 years, as I approached 30, I feel like a lot of things finally clicked into place for me. These songs all played some part in that journey.