As you may already have guessed I like to make things. I enjoy crocheting and sewing, but I've also dabbled in scrap booking and drawing. I just don't always make enough time to create. I am alarmed to think that there was a period of years where I didn't make anything that I can recall.
I began to crochet when I was five years old. My grandmother gave me one of the fattest light blue crochet hooks you'll ever see and a skein of yarn. She showed me how to make a basic chain, and I made chain after chain after chain for quite some time. I don't remember when exactly she taught me more basic stitches, but I remember by the age of ten I made a little boxy sweater for one of my cabbage patch dolls. It was made from red acrylic yarn. When I was around 18 I began making afghans. And then I stopped crocheting for over eight years. Then last year I started making preemie baby beanies for church, and that got me going again.
My great-grandmother showed me how to sew on her machine when I was about eight or ten years old. She gave me the quilt squares that I sewed with all those years ago but I haven't managed yet to do much with them other than make a mess. (One of the items on my every-growing 'to do' list is to take apart the blocks I've made and to reuse the squares in a wonderful way. But, I haven't figured out how that project should come together yet.) From that time when I was young and just learning, up until I was twenty-four when I became a mother, I didn't sew. Then, when I was staying at home with The Little Guy, I used some of those blocks from my sewing-with-Granny days and made a humble attempt at my first quilt. It came out ok. My son used it for years and we still have it tucked away in a closet. I made other baby quilts and blankets, but shortly after that I stopped sewing for several years.
Somewhere between these years, when my son was very young, is when I tried scrap booking. That probably lasted two years, if that.
In the past year I have consistently sewn and crocheted more than I ever have in my entire life. It has been so rewarding and fulfilling that I honestly can't imagine why I ever stopped. Perhaps just permitting life to get in the way is all that stopped me. Or maybe I snuffed out the creative spirit while I was having an identity crisis.
I have vowed to myself that I won't let the creative void surface again. Being crafty is such a huge part of me. My mind is constantly imagining what I can try next, or what new skills I can develop. I'm not quite sure where my creative journey will take me in the future, but I look forward to seeing where I end up.
