I’m getting close to finishing the market bag that I’ve been crocheting. I am on the last ball of yarn. I’ll do a few more rows then crochet a border across the top and make handles and I can move on to something else. I was chatting with one of my long time besties while I was out at The Farm. She was kind enough to give me a pleater for smocking when I was in Colorado last summer. She wondered if I’d done anything on it yet and of course…that’s all it took to light the fire.
There just aren’t enough hours in the day. When I had my little needlework shop in my 40’s, I taught classes on all kinds of things. When Daughter #2 was little, I smocked sweet little collars that you could button over top of a dress. That way, when the dress was too little, you could keep the collar a while longer before it too was too small to wear.
I purchased four tubs of fabric last summer at a friends garage sale. I used to make smocked Christmas ornaments and I’m thinking I might be able to salvage some fabrics in there that I can use. That aligns with this year’s words… “Use it Up!” Another thing. I want to do all the things and time is passing by far too quickly.
You can’t throw a stick out Grandma’s road without hitting relatives. One of my mom’s cousins lives about a mile or so from The Farm and I was talking to her daughter-in-law on Saturday night. I knew she lost her husband last fall, but I didn’t realize she’d had a stroke in November. People I know and love are getting debilitating and life threatening diseases and conditions. The fact that we’re running out of productivity time is not lost on me. I want to do ALL of the things!
That’s one reason I stay so busy. It keeps my brain active and holds the winter blues at bay. It allows me to create things that hopefully my family will treasure in years to come as coming from an ancestor. And it just plain brings me great joy to create something from nothing with my own two hands.
I’m trying to prioritize. I’m a Gemini. I bounce from thing to thing so fast it will make your head spin. I can be into something 110% on Monday and by Thursday it’s on to something else. After having the needlework shop, I was SO burned out on all things needle that it took YEARS to pick any handwork up again. Everything fell by the wayside after Mr. Virgo died…till I was finally able to concentrate enough to do anything.
Since I’ve discovered the joy of needle crafts again, I WANT TO DO ALL THE THINGS!
This is where I need to utilize self discipline and remember… “Use it Up!” Because it would be SO easy to let that Gemini brain go overboard and get ALL the tools and gadgets that go with it. I’ve been watching videos on other needle disciplines and I think I’m ready to change things up just a little. It might just be time to pull out that pleater and see what I can get into. I’ll have more great grand babies one of these days and I can always make sweet things and set them aside for future gifts. It’s sort of like when we were young and kept a hope chest for the things we would need as a new wife.
My daughter has the hope chest (sometimes called a cedar chest) that her dad gave me for my 18th birthday. I put linens and pieces of silver and crystal in it. Crocheted doilies, embroidered pillow cases, quilts…all went in the hope chest. Did any of you have one? What did you keep in yours? Do you still have it?
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”There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.“
1 Corinthians 12:4-6 NIV
#Crafts, #Needlework, #Smocking