Craftiness

I never considered myself to be a creative person. I always wished I were but never really thought I was good enough. Nonetheless, I constantly felt the pull of the artistic world and minored in Art when I was in college. Most of what I did then was two-dimensional digital art. I tried my hand in calligraphy and design as well.

After college I took several three-dimensional graphics courses. I took a clay course and another college-level design course. I never has the guts to take a drawing class, so the last time I did that, I was around ten years old. Having taken so many courses, I still had never tried anything that would be considered crafty since elementary school.

My last year in New York, I took a current affairs class at the New School. The class was huge and the teacher lectured all but the last ten minutes. It wasn’t the kind of course that required note-taking, mostly active listening. In my second session, I noticed a woman knitting during the class. It seemed to me that knitting was a perfect way to multi-task in this case.

I went out and bought some yarn and picked up basic techniques here and there. Since then I have knit a lot of scarves and I am now working on a baby blanket. Ten months ago, my friend Cyndi and I decided we wanted to try making jewelry. We went to a bead store, bought a whole bunch of beads, took a free class and got started on our earrings. She did a lot more and I still have catching up to do but it didn’t take us too long to get the hang of it.

Last week, I decided to try another crafty project. When the baby comes, I want to scrapbook the first year of the baby’s life. My dad has albums from our birth that has cards, baby teeth, our umbilical cords, locks of hair, etc. I always thought those albums were fantastic and I want to make one, too. I didn’t want the baby to be my very first scrapbook ever so we went to the scrapbooking store, which is a place you can leave entire paychecks without blinking an eye, and bought a whole bunch of stuff for me to scrapbook our cross-country trip. I printed around 100 photos and made an outline.



What I should have known is that the cross country trip is a huge project and it will take forever for me to finish it. I have been working on it actively since Thursday (hence the lack of updates) and I am on page 41 of 58. When I reach 58, I still have to go back and add all the text. I am not exactly sure what I was thinking.

At this point I will be all scrapbooked-out by the time the baby comes.