Nope. I’m not, probably due to lack of practice, because I think it can be taught. But I really needed to do something to take my mind off things that are completely out of my control. So I went to the activity center and did an activity involving painting.
The activity center and fellow activists.
The activity was painting wine glasses while drinking wine. We shared the center with a passel of screeching preteens playing games and one young kid who kept barging into the grownup area. That was fine. I’m used to screeching after being here at the condo during summer vacation for a few days.
We were led by the extra perky Rosie, the activity leader, or one of them. She basically told us to Google designs then tell her what color paints we wanted. So, three other women, one guy and I painted. It was pleasant, though hard to get anything attractive done due to the quality of brushes and the type of paint. Most of the people covered their glasses with solid globs and dots, but I did plants. Of course.
A bunch of dots and lines make flowers.
The woman sitting next to me really wanted a starfish on her glass. Now, I thought it looked just fine as it was, but she wanted a starfish. Since I painted lines and dots that resembled flowers, she decided that I should paint the starfish. I did my best.
Oh well. She liked it. I did a sideways one on the other side. I realize some starfish have longer legs. This is my best first try, I guess.
The other side of my glass.
Maybe I’ll come back next week and the week after and have some for gifts! They’re dishwasher safe (once Rosie coats them with clear stuff). It was a nice break, anyway, since most of the day was complicated work stuff and larger concerns. Being around others and hearing their stories always puts things into perspective.
The UU Lent word for today is craft. Do you know me personally? Have you been to any of my houses? In that case, you know I’m pretty fond of crafting. It’s in my blood. I come from a long line of knitters, crocheters, embroiderers, needlepointers, and quilters. Oh, then there’s the great aunt who tatted for a living, because she was confined to her home (her fun mental illness was kleptomania). My mom and stepmom were both trained artists, too. This post has a lot more on this topic, with lots of photos.
Knitting was my favorite thing to do most of my life. It filled my little hands with motion, and my little hands love to be in motion. No wonder I type all the time, right? I also loved to teach people to knit, because I felt like I was giving people the tool they needed to end boredom forever! You can’t be bored if you have yarn and needles, well, at least in my opinion.
My currently almost-finished project.
I have to say that I knitted so many darned pairs of socks that I got bored with them. But, I could probably do it again, now.
I designed these.
Tainted Love
This was made in 2012. Still gets worn by the recipient!
Why did I stop knitting so much? Well, if you need to know, it’s not because of the Yarn Store Incident. That just got me to never want to knit in public again.
No, I realized that I valued my knitted products as precious representatives of many hours of my life and hated to lose them. I also got really sad when I spent hours knitting things, only to find them not appreciated.
Examples:
I loved this sweater.
Moths. My house in Round Rock had a moth infestation. Suddenly all those wool socks I’d knitted in complicated patterns with expensive yarn had moth holes. Let me tell you those are hard to fix. Worse, my rainbow sweater made of amazing Swedish yarn got yarn holes. THEN I found that my unused hanks of yarn were all holey. That just made me sick. I felt like I’d wasted a lot of time and money.
Shrinkage. I love my spouse. I don’t love that he repeatedly has washed woolen items in the washing machine and made them unusable. The one that killed me was a sweater in really precious yarn (organic, vegetable dyed, blah blah) that I hadn’t even worn yet. I sat it in the wrong spot, so he blames me. Then he machine washed my hand-woven placemats. My loom misses me.
The only time I wore it. It shrank real good.
Cleaning the Teen Pit. When the female teen who lived at our house for three years moved out, there was a huge amount of clean-up involved, since she only took a few things with her. When I found things I had worked really hard on for her all squished and stuffed under the bed, my heart broke again. Then I found more in my son’s room. They were both people who loved clutter, but wow.
The teen who received these wore them for years. I was really surprised.
And to be honest, most stuff I knitted wasn’t that good.
Luckily my needlepoints look fine. A dog did eat a pillow I spent $100 to have made. And it was a picture of a dog. I put it on a shelf.
This does not suck. My favorite needlepoint. The canvas was from Ireland.
But, I think crafts are good for you. You make a beautiful AND useful object when you’re crafting. And really, it’s more about process than product, at least for me. I do wish I’d finished more of my projects.
One of the placemats I wove. There were a bunch. It was fun.
Moving on. I WILL finish the thing I’m making for Kathleen.
Well, that doesn’t tell you much about what I did last night, does it? I’ll explain. Everyone who’s ever driven between Cameron and Temple will have noticed a couple of very cute shops in Rogers, Texas. One of them, the Vis-a-Vis Galleria drew me and my sister in a few weeks ago. I discovered that, not only do they have fun clothing and a really tasteful collection of consignment items, they do classes on decorating furniture.
I managed to rub all the transfer off and it stuck to the wood. Also pictured: wine.
So, I signed up for a class, just to have some fun on a random weekend. I’d hoped to get someone to go with me, but I was fine with going alone. Since I’ve been channeling my dad, I’ve gotten better about being friendly with everyone I run into. It turns out that everyone has an interesting story, somewhere in there!
The Hermits' Rest 