The book Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design was created as an accompaniment to a documentary that shared its Handmade Nation title. The paper volume profiles the crafters that were featured in the movie, illustrated liberally with photos of their work.

Handmade Nation chronicles a diversity in crafts that exists far outside the stereotypes of the suburban mom or scarf knitting grandma. In its pages you can see everything from clothespin dolls to sock octopi to latchhooked nudes. There’s a significant punk and counter-culture influence here, and yet it’s based in the traditional roots of the crafts almost all of us grew up with: embroidery, sewing, and crochet.

If you’d like to explore this fascinating handmade nation, you can win a copy signed by Faythe Levine at CHA as the first of Scrapbook Update’s birthday giveaways!

All you have to do to be the lucky winner is leave a comment on this entry before Midnight U.S. eastern time next Sunday night, September 13th. Make sure you include your email address in the line for it on the comment form (for your own protection, don’t put it in the body of the comment, where it will be visible to the public – just in the email line in the form where only I can see it). You will need it to verify your identity if you are the winner. One entry per person and this giveaway is limited to US and Canadian mailing addresses due to postage expense.