Creative Projects
Something in me has been wanting to take a break from academic work and just spend some time making. That can’t happen quite yet (ummmm, not till the semester’s over) and I’m trying to concentrate on my thesis and papers… but I am also cross-stitching and I finished a wonky crochet blanket for Miri’s dolls. I want to spend some leisurely time building my skills because I’m not super good at needlework but I would like to be. And the thing is, I was always so impatient to finish something that I didn’t want to take the time to work on skills before (I learned to knit, crochet, cross-stitch and sew when I was pretty young - 8, 9, 10 years old - and although I worked on bazillions of projects they probably all were puckered, misshapen, gapping, etc because I didn’t take time to go back and fix mistakes). But now I am a mama and the patience it requires to rip out a row of crochet or stitches is like nothing compared to the patience it takes to raise a kiddo. And I am a scholar and writer now, and see much more the value in skilled craftsmanship, a job well done, an argument well-constructed, a thought logically pursued to its completion.
I want to be the kind of mama who makes things for the kid(s), and I want to be good at repurposing old things, and I want to honor the legacy of my foremothers, and all that. But I also just want to make beautiful things and have the satisfaction of knowing I did it. I want something to busy my hands while I visit with my mom and sister. I want my daughter to see that making things by hand is a part of life, that things aren’t all mass-produced, and that it takes a bit of care and effort to produce truly wonderful, unique, long-lasting things.
Thank god for the internet and the crafty community it’s nurtured, because without it I might have disowned this very important part of myself forever because it was too “dorky” and not “artistic” enough, and cut off an avenue of creativity that’s been important to me since I was small.