Friends

There aren't many things better than crafting with friends.  Through friends we get encouragement, celebration and good honest criticism.  Friends introduce us to others they think we might have something in common with.  My friend, Merideth, has been one of my very dearest for the last fifteen or so years and this week she introduced me to Tasha Tudor.  While she never had the opportunity to meet Tasha Tudor herself, she knows her well through her collection of vintage and current books and wonderfully slow documentaries.  I have to admit, Tasha Tudor has never been much more than a name on two of my favorite childhood books, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.  Anything other mention of her was, to me, a corporate logo on many cards, books, and so on.

It would be putting it mildly to say Merideth was surprised that Tasha was not on my list of inspiring women, because when I finally "met" Tasha I felt a recognition of spirit and productivity that was hard to put into words.  Tasha Tudor lived by her own rules, created her own reality, enjoyed herself thoroughly and gave no apologies for choosing to live according to her muse.  I must admit, I became totally fascinated by her and I have spent the last several days reading everything I could about her.  She was not perfect, but my oh my, I would love to have her quiet, yet absolute, certainty that life is ours to create, coupled with the resolution to create it.  She is an example worthy of imitation.

Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters

I decided to start with embroidery.  Why??  Well, it is portable, inexpensive and breathtaking to look at when a project is complete.  I was introduced to embroidery as a little girl.  My mother gave me a Snoopy embroidery kit when a was around nine or ten years old.  Embroidering that little Snoopy, with his long stocking cap hanging down over the side of his classic dog house, kept me entertained for hours.  I was surprised that it was fairly easy after my mom showed me the first few skills.  The funny thing is that I never saw my mom embroider.  And, although she didn't carry a hoop around, stitching the hours away, she was good at it.  Actually, my mom was good at everything. 

When I was small and we moved into my first real house, my dad built her a studio in the basement.  She spent hours, burning wood, and creating gifts for family and friends.  The smell of scorched wood brings me back to that room.  She had a wooden box that she kept her oil paints and linseed oil and precious paint brushes in, that I gazed at like they were jewels.  My Nana Mary had an oil painting, that my mother did in high school, hanging in her dining room that I marveled at.  If my mom could do that she really could do anything.  That old paint box was in my possession for a number of years and it now lives with my daughter, Mary, in Toronto.  I saw it the other day while organizing Mary's studio, and it made me so happy to see it still in use.  Creativity nurtured and practiced over three generations.

My mother is one of my greatest inspirations.  She has gifted me with more things than I can list and supported me through every phase of my life.  She is an example of the highest form of unconditional love and acceptance and demonstrates generosity of spirit in every act.  She also is one fine artist, worthy of imitation.

Will Forces

 It's the first real day of our winter break, which of all the breaks in our school year I find the most necessary.  In case you didn't know, I am a teacher.   The busy fall term leads to Christmas vacation, which is wonderful and wonderfully busy.  Coming back after the New Year is full of recovering from too much eating, drinking and merry making.  Kids often get sick as they try to make it to ski club and finally when we are all at our Northeast palest, winter break arrives.  Winter break takes what feels like this pile of embroidery floss and gives me time to take a refreshing cold breath and sit down to unravel the knots.

 I began the day locating all my embroidery and cross stitch materials and then carrying them to the dining room (again).  I laughed out loud as I found many "organized" projects already in plastic bags - by this I mean materials purchased, floss cut and threaded through labeled cards, fabric carefully taped around the edges and in some cases on hoops.  The reason I laughed is that while I did all this prep work, somehow I never actually put the needle through the fabric in most of these projects!

Why???  I think it has to do with what can be called "will forces."  This term is used in the phrase "the will to work."  What prevents me from taking the step from the set-up to the execution??  Well, I pondered this as I wound those pesky skeins of embroidery floss onto little cardboard pieces, so I could actually see what colors I have.  As I did this, my Little Miss Maia was glued to my side as usual.  She had a million questions for me along the way about what each piece was, what the tools were, when was lunch going to be ready, and could she try.  It was then that it dawned on me!!  I tend to have this expectation and anxiety that as soon as I get started on any project, I will get interrupted.  So.... it is better to not start rather than suffer the interruptions!! Hmmmm... sound familiar??

 Little Miss was relentless in her desire to do this work, so I set her up on one of the twelve (yes twelve) embroidery hoops I discovered in my gathering.  She drew a picture on a piece of paper, I helped her transfer it to a piece of muslin and after a little demonstration, she was off to the races.  Children are all will forces, focused on what they want and eager to be at meaningful work and play.  She chatted about school, what she was going to do with her little embroidered picture and when was dinner going to be ready....

I continued to pick my way through the skeins of floss, carefully winding threads, that in some cases were from my teens.  She triumphantly announced that she was done, eager to take it off the hoop and get to hemming the edges so her precious project could grace the bed of her tiny baby doll.  Her sense of accomplishment was so radiant that I couldn't help but applaud.


There is a lot to gain from watching a child at work.  While they can be distracted, if they are eager to accomplish something, there is no deterring them from their goal.  They have the will to work and it is admirable. Try interrupting them and you face a battle that is difficult to fight.  I am again humbled by the lessons children teach us and I used my observations to turn the tables on her later in the afternoon.  She tried her hardest to interrupt my goal of sorting and winding the floss, but I would not be deterred!


I was quietly thrilled to finally, after fifteen years, have that box of jewel toned embroidery floss ready for my work.

Envy

I read somewhere that you should pay attention to when you feel the green monster, called Envy, rise within you.  Envy helps us identify what it is that we want.  Paying attention to what we want is a national pastime, causing many a person to feel dissatisfied with what is in front of them.  I like to think of envy as far more useful, maybe setting us off in a direction that we might not ever consider.

Today I went to Toronto to visit my eldest daughter, Miss Mary.  She studies drawing and painting and is one of the greatest inspirations in my life.  She inherited my lackluster interest in "good housekeeping" and when I arrived today my son, Charlie, was drying his hands after washing her dishes that had been sitting for "awhile."  Nevertheless her freedom and passion for life supersedes and eclipses most anything that might offend the housekeeping police.

When Miss M was a baby, all I wanted to do was to take care of her.  To clothe her in dresses sewn by me and  sweaters knit by me.  I wanted to make her toys and baby food.  I wanted to make her books and paint the pictures to hang on her wall.  She was the greatest project I had ever created and the sun rose and set on her.  I really was not obsessed, I swear, although it may have seemed like that to the casual onlooker.  Anyways... all of these things that I wanted to do for Miss M required research and sourcing out of materials.  I remember wandering through Jo-Ann, worrying that the sewing and knitting arts surely must be fading away in the age of cheap imports.  Little did I know of the "crafting" phenomena that would result in these last twenty-years.

As we cleaned up Miss M's studio in her new apartment, affectionately known as the "Enchanted Rabbit Hole," I reflected back on years of making sure there was enough paper, paint, brushes, pencils, crayons, and yes....glue, for her creative appetite.  I felt a pang of envy washing over me.  As an art student, it is her job to work creatively, and I was envious.  My days are filled with many commitments and blessings, leaving little room for working creatively with paper, paints, brushes, pencils, and so on.  Working on Mary's studio was a reminder of what I want and reinforcement of why I am setting this hobby project as a priority.  I need to create, it helps me breathe, and when I don't create time to create, I can get very cranky.  Here's to Envy.

Inventory

Today I began the process of taking inventory of all my craft supplies and projects.  As I surveyed my studio, which is a very small extra bedroom in my house, I tried hard to keep breathing.  The efforts of Chinese New Year housecleaning were apparent.  Boxes were stacked in corners of the room, each containing the attempts to organize my raw materials.  While looking at the fabric box stack, I began to feel a knot in my back start to crank tight.  I turned away and surveyed the raw wool bags and boxes, evidence of my fascination with turning stuff that looks like cotton candy into beautifully posed animal and people.

I continued to move my head, lighting first on paintbrushes then the doll house I began for my oldest daughter fifteen years ago.  I finally focused on my desk.  It is a hand-me-down desk from my father-in-law.  It is solid maple with seven drawers. I began to fill those drawers eight years ago, while making costumes for a play that my class was performing.  I have never emptied those drawers.  Hmmmm..... it was time.  I began to unload them into a cardboard box and bring the contents to the dining room table.  After a half hour of transporting, I began to sort.

I threw away alot of old dried out paint, snipped threads, worn out paintbrushes, and bits of paper from old projects.  It felt great and as I puttered through the stuff, memories of intentions that were years old came into view, triggered by a collection of wooden finger puppet bases that I planned on making into a nativity set that my older two children could actually pick up and play with.  My older children are eighteen and twenty years old now.  Oh well, maybe someday they will have children that will play with that nativity set.

When the job of emptying and sorting was done, I had a desk with neatly organized drawers and a surface that held one of my most favorite appliances - my extremely wonderful Bernina sewing machine, that if there was a fire in my house, I do have a plan on how to save, after the kids and the dog, of course.  Now, I have to decide what projects to begin to work on.

Here is my first draft of the possibilities:
-that nativity set, carving stamps, wee felt and flower fairy folk, needle felting a cast of animals for my youngest daughter, wet felting those mittens for my oldest daughter, painting that unfinished furniture for the doll house, finish the large doll house, knit the shawl for me, knit the little opera jacket for my youngest, make soap, make lotion, finish the various embroidery  projects started, string the pearls brought home from China into necklaces, bobbin lace (hmmm... what is that you ask??  Later, later....), two quilts envisioned, soft dolls, hand painted games on canvas, wig and dress those darned bald and naked porcelain doll house dolls, use up all that broken pottery for stepping stone mosaics, knit those "toe-up" socks, paint the plaster fireplace for the aforementioned doll house, transform those beautiful hand marbled papers into books and cards and lastly take that twenty or so yards of wool roving and transform it into angels to grace every season.

Where to begin - it makes my head spin!!!  Oh, and by the way.... I found 27 bottles of glue and glue sticks in that stash......

Hoarding

Ok, I admit it.  I am a hoarder.  It is a deep seated behavior that has spawned many an amusingly tragic reality show and while I do not come near to some people, I do hoard.  I think it is spawned by a worry that if I don't get something when I see "it", "it" may not be there when I really might use "it" - this is my "just in case" scenario.  Or.... I won't have the money to buy "it" when I really want "it."  This is then compounded with a tendency to worry that if I use "it" up, then "it" won't be there when I want "it" again!! Hence the growing stash in my studio.

I know I am not alone with these dark shadows in my psyche - once when I was helping my youngest sister organize her children's school supplies I found over twenty-five bottles of glue!  When I confronted her on this, her response was, "I just always want to know I have glue if we need it!"  Duh....

I really don't think it is just me (and my sister).  How many of us have a secret stash of yarn, or fabric, or what not that we keep for a rainy day?? Or buy supplies for a project that we really have no time to do, just because it has the potential to become a symbol of the life we wish to live... "if I just had that beautiful thing in my life..... I would be living that fairytale life...."

The work that looms before me this weekend is kind of exciting.  I plan to take an inventory of all the unfinished projects and the many supplies in my studio and put together kits with those supplies for projects for the coming months.  I can't wait to see what comes together!

Point of Departure

I feel great and I certainly don't need therapy, right now anyways... But I do have a plethora of projects and materials bought when those blue moods passed through me.  I have a little doll house, created during a particularly down period that I call my "Cheaper than Therapy Doll House."  One difficult afternoon, when my very intense, youngest daughter was still a toddler, I was finding it difficult to do much more than feed and hold her. I put her down for a nap and was ready for a good cry.  Well, the tears didn't flow, because I was frankly too aware that I had waited for years for this child and I was not going to regret or feel overwhelmed by caring for her.

But, boy I did feel blue, so I decided I needed to find something to do with myself that would help me feel better.  I somehow knew that if I got my hands busy it would distract me from my blues. I couldn't leave the house, so while she napped, I flipped open my computer and began to cruise Ebay.  Ebay you ask, dear reader?  Well, being home, full time, with three children, made me very fluent in finding what I wanted, for the price I wanted.  I searched for "doll house" and Bingo!  A kit from the 1970's in its original box for $17.50.  Just what I wanted.  I went to sleep that night smiling, with visions of hours spent in relaxed crafting.

So how does this relate to my current journey?  Since I began that little doll house, over six years ago, I have accumulated many happy hours crafting and evidence that this type of work with your hands can bring you out of the doldrums.  I also accumulated many piles of material for many types of handwork - fabric, wood, yarn, thread, electrical supplies, wool roving, paint, papers, and piles and piles of books describing every possible hand craft.  All of this, I am ready to release to the world - a symbol that you can hold onto feelings and things or you can pass through them and send them on their way.

My goal is to spend the next year using up and completing the many things I have started or collected over the years.  I hope you enjoy my journey.