Unfortunately due to the absolute necessity of having to run 100,000 errands on Thursday, my day off, no sewing was accomplished. Does that make me sad? Do I feel as though I missed out on something fun, exciting? No to both questions. It gave me a huge feeling of relief. I was glad I didn't have to wrestle with the sewing machine, dig through my rubbermaid bucket where I think I stored the instructions on how to thread the sewing machine. I had forfeited this round to the sewing machine, and I was happy. That was until I read carrieoke's knitting blog.... Not only has she felt the fear and done it anyway, she finished a denim throw in just a couple of days! I bow to her courage. Now she's got me wanting to make some tote bags, the tutorial can be found at super eggplant. It's in the sidebar along with instructions for making pillowcases. It's pathetic that I need to be inspired by someone else's success to get motivated to do something. It's due to the fact that I don't enjoy sewing. I avoided it most of my life. My aunt begged me, seriously begged me, when I was younger to let her teach me to sew. It was her passion. She made the most amazing clothes. It also helped that she taught Clothing Textile Services at the local community college. But nope, I was going to be a Cosmo Girl. Buy my haute couture off the rack, I didn't need to know how to sew. Now it's one of my biggest regrets. I have to fumble my way through the process and it's all due to my lack of foresight. I know we shouldn't have regrets, live your life, move on, but for the last couple of years I've been really regretting not learning the basics of sewing from someone who has a passion for it like none I've ever seen. Her mother taught me to crochet when I was kid, for some reason while I didn't see sewing as creative(I know, what kind of dork was I?) but crocheting to me seemed a lot more creative than sewing. More fun. I guess it's that it's done in hand while my aunt wanted to teach me to sew by machine. I love cross stitch. It's art to me. I can't draw a flippin' stick figure, but with cross stitch I can create beautiful pieces of art for my walls. Sure someone else designs the piece, but the stitching is mine. Back in the 80s I became obsessed with school girl samplers. I couldn't believe those young girls created such beautiful pieces of needlework. I still never ceased to be amazed when looking at samplers created by 5, 6, 7 yr old girls. I just love handwork. It's not frantic or fast, it has it's own rythmn.

Not Resolutions, More Like Guidelines Really

This is not a list of New Year's Resolutions, they are more like my guide for the New Year in crafty endeavors.

1)Finish Fairy Grandmother sometime before the end of the year. I'd love to have her done in time for my grandmother's birthday in April but I'm not counting on it or working toward that. It has been FG's death wish for the last five years as that as been the target date every year since I started this. So it is very very very realistic that she will be finished this year but not realistic to plan on a March finish(have to allocate time for framing)

2)Finish Mermaid of the Pearls for my niece. She saw this back in 2001 and has claimed it as hers. She deserves it and my brother has told me that if I give it to her he will guard it with his very life as my SIL is known for giving anything her sisters like to the sister that wants it. Not going to happen. But I adore my niece and I want her to have this.

3) Learn how to f&^%ing purl! I will own this stitch before the end of the year, I will be able to make socks! I see it, I see it, therefore it will happen. Isn't that the basis behind Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination t?

4) Finish DS#2's Dragon Isle. It's so close to being finished, I cannot let the sun go down on another year and not have it hanging on his wall.

Remembering these are just guidelines:

I'm hoping to get back on track with all things creative. Starting a job has really stifled my creativity this year. I can no longer blame that for not working on projects. Yes, I know, these creative pursuits are for our pleasure and shouldn't bring us stress, but I tend to get overly stressed when I have no time for the things I love to do.

Chaos in the home doesn't help. I don't want to become one of these nagging "every thing has it's place" kind of people but it would be nice to have a general idea of where certain things regular places are just occaisionally. I know this will be a slow process. I mean seriously, not only do I have to organize the cross stitch stash, I plan to start collecting wool for sock knitting, if I buy the wool that means I'm seeing myself knitting socks-back to the whole Creative Visualization theory again-I'm also obsessed with having everything I need for a project way before I ever plan to start it(that explains the humongous rubbermaid tote storing prekitted cross stitch projects-it also in my mind makes feel as though the project is "free" warped, yes, twisted, yes, but it get me through) so I need to set up a place to store those supplies. I want to attempt to knit Sophie Bag and Black Sheep Bags-Booga Bag for special friends and family members as gifts throughout the year or to have for Christmas presents. Why? Purely self indulgent. I love knitting these bags. They are cool, don't take a lot of effort and I enjoy making them. I like not having to think too hard sometimes. I am going to figure out those purse handles too. I stopped by the Garden of Beadin' the other day while running errands and explained to them what I wanted to do, they suggested soldering wire for the handles.

Guess that's enough guidelines for the day. There are more, tons more, things I want to accomplish this year, things I dream about making, skills I hope to conquer over the next year.

Weekend Home Projects

This weekend DH is creating new dining chairs for the kitchen. We acquired some chairs for free. They in no way match our dining table. So we are attempting to be hipster doofuses by painting the chairs different colors. I found some great fabric on clearance at JoAnn's, bought 4 yds, and then we matched the fabric to 6 shades of paint at Home Depot, but the paint was out of our price range there, so we took those paint chips to the store who shall not be named, and managed to come very close to the colors we wanted. We bought 6 qts for about $5.50 a qt. That was within the budget for this project. I will have pics later. While at the store who shall not be named I picked up some size 15 knitting needles and two balls of Bernat White Eyelash. This will be the year long project(maybe not that long). What in the world could I possibly be creating with white eyelash that will take a year? Well how about this-Ljc's Projects: Craftiness: Knit Christmas Tree Garland. Saw this and had to do it. Almost everything on our tree is homemade. For years, uh almost 20, we have used some cheapie plastic white pearl garland, I'm so over it, I saw the knitted eyelash garland and thought, now there's something I can make for the tree, will keep me busy when I want to be a slug but don't want to really work on something that requires thought, and I will have something actually useful when it's done, it won't cost an arm and a leg. I have no clue how long I will make it, how long it will take, I just bought needles to keep with it at all times, it'll have it own little tote bag, I plan to just use whatever fun fur or eyelash I find at the time, not going to be fiber specific and there you have it.

I picked up Cozy Crochet: 26 Fun Projects From Fashion To Home Decor at Barnes & Noble this weekend. Pretty basic stuff, but I love the crochet mouse toy in there. I liked some other things too but the mouse toy hooked me. I put the book down three different times and then finally went back and bought it. I also browsed Celebrity Scarves but it seemed way too basic for even a novice knitter like myself. The photographs were nice, the fibers used in some scarves was interesting, Darryl Hannah lost one of her knitting needles and used a Sharpie to finish her scarf-it's apparently the same size as an 11 knitting needle. The book might have been worth the $24.95 if the articles on the celebrity knitters had been more than a paragraph or two. It's definitely a coffee table book, and for that money I can buy almost three skeins of Noro for a booga bag. I'm also annoyed that it lumps Vanna White and Rosie Perez in with the knitters in the product description on Amazon. Their scarves are crocheted not knitted. How could someone miss something that obvious? Am I being picky? I don't think so. It is inspiring in that most of the knitters in the book used hard to find or no longer available fibers for their scarves so that inspires a bit of creativity.

Well I'm off to find catnip so I can crochet up a batch of mousey cat toys.