Maybe I Should Just Get a Job

 

I have a hard time limiting myself to fewer than three craft projects at a time. Currently I am in the middle of a crochet project, experimenting with decorative enameling (which really means putting nail polish on blown eggs) and making paper flowers. Just behind the door, hidden in boxes I put away before Christmas, are some unfinished art quilts. Waiting in the garage are some outdoor art projects waiting for summer. I just can't get enough of this stuff.

Although I enjoy crochet the least, that is the one project that I can carry around with me and do as sort of background noise to television or car trips. The crafts that I enjoy the most require racing around the house looking for spare parts or patterns. Quiet crafts that I can do in the middle of the night when Jerry is sleeping are a necessity.

Sometimes when I want something really nice, really bad, I consider buying it. For instance, we need a new comforter for the bed. If I could buy exactly the one I wanted, I might consider it, but then I would be passing up a perfectly good quilting opportunity. Also, if I made a quilt now, I could enter it in the fair this summer.

I have strictly limited the types of new supplies I can buy until I use up the old ones. No new paint (unless I need a color that I don't have) no new fabric (unless it is for a specific project that I am about to begin and finish immediately) and no new yarn of any color for any reason. Also, no beads, sequins, feathers, paper, or clay pots.

In the last few years, products have been coming in ever more seductive packaging. Lovely shaped plastic bottles in deep, vibrant colors must be good for something beside making a new continent in the Pacific. Even plain bottles have bright colored tops that just beg to be put on display. So far I haven't come up with any ideas for them that would look like anything beside a overflowing recycle bin, so I have a place in the garage set aside to keep all of them until I can figure out which ones might be cut into bird feeders or strung together as wind charms.

But before I can start those projects I have to finish my crochet, a spring bouquet of paper flowers, and an enameled egg tree. And a quilt for the bed. It's going to be a busy winter.

Nancy Sherer

 

 


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