The
New Year’s retail promotions are full of suggestions.
· “New Year, New Projects”
· “Find your 2025 passion
project”
· “New year, new skill”
“I
wish!” I say to myself. I’d love a fresh start, but I have a plethora of
wonderful projects and ideas from previous years on my bucket list and some
that I would be happy to de-list. I’m a dreamer, not a realist; a starter, not
a finisher. And a part of me is happy with that, even though it’s an
undisciplined approach and my conscience occasionally bothers me.
It's interesting that online sellers seem to think that crafting is neat and tidy. Finish one project, move to the next, and by the end of the year, you’ve finished everything you started and are actually looking for something new to do. Does it work that way for anyone? A few of the quilting gurus give the impression that they make many quilts in a year, but I suspect that staff members provide support. Wouldn’t I love to assign problematic seams to my team! Unfortunately, I don’t have one. but if I did, I might chug right along, too. I have to rip and restitch my own seams and do my own finishing.
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| A dull winter's day along the Clearwater River |
And sometimes I wonder – don’t these crafters (quilters, crocheters, knitters, etc.) have anything else to do? Suggest a sew-along, and six people will show up tomorrow with the finished project. What about the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and walking the dog? What about eight hours of sleep? Forgive me, but even a husband detracts from project work with his suggestions of geocaching and requests for cookies and banana bread.
I had planned to do some simple, fun projects in the first weeks after Christmas, but the ones I chose were neither simple nor fun. Frankly, they don’t even qualify as unfinished because I couldn’t make a start, and the one I did start turned out to be difficult and sits as a “buffalo” on my sewing machine. I wonder if I’m losing my touch, my cognitive abilities, and/or my patience. Perhaps it’s all three. (I really think that I’m the way I’ve always been.) KW
2 comments:
I'm one of those strange creatures that only has one project going at a time. I just putter away at it and when I finish I might start another of the same type or move from quilting to say, knitting. Or cross stitch. Sometimes I spend a few weeks immersed in kitchen projects such as pasta, bread making or trying new recipes. I might jump around for months before getting back into my sewing room. Yes, that's true! What ever makes us happy is okay. And you spend a lot of time cooking and baking and makes treats for Mike. None it is wasted time. Even the buffaloes.
You might not be the strange creature. You might be the norm. I have no statistics on the subject. We aren't all the same.
I don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Occasionally I find a new recipe to try, but as far as gadgets and techniques, my mind doesn't run that way.
The other point is that I just don't work with precision. Projects don't turn out the way I imagine they should. In a way, I am a perfectionist. It's just that my ability doesn't come up to the standards I was taught.
And you say it so well, Chris. It's whatever makes us happy.
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