behind the scenes

So in between posts on life, creativity, and the pursuit of happiness, I thought i'd post some of the back-stories to my creations.

story number one, in which sandra finds alternate uses for skulls

so, to make a simple story complicated ... My friend has a friend who has a little girl and is pregnant with a little boy, and she (my friend) wanted a baby shower gift for her friend's baby. Actually for the little girl. Because baby gifts are never really for the baby, who wouldn't know a Gucci baby rattle from a dandelion, but might prefer the dandelion due to its edibility. Baby gifts are for the parents. And the older siblings, often on the brink of a pyschological meltdown from the epiphany that some scrunched-up crybaby is about to monopolize the Adults' Attention, gets left in the dust while the new ball of babyness gets loads of diapers, toys, clothes, and burp rags. So a plot was devised to care for big sister and Mommy. I was to crochet a baby boy doll to give to the girl to help ease her into the idea of having a baby brother. I loved the idea and was up for the challenge.

I found a pattern for a boy doll, changed up just about everything except the head, and ended up with an anorexic big-headed boy in footie pajamas. It was very disheartening. I posted pix of my failed experiment and put it away for a few days. I knew that something needed to be done soon, but wasn't sure what to do about it, and didn't really like it anymore, now that it was all skinny and ugly.

Soon enough, my friend asked about the progress of the doll, and I had to admit that I was starting off my crochet business on the wrong foot, what with disappointing people and not following through on orders in a timely way. L I learned all about that from my weekly etsy emails. Anyhow, she said the anorexic boy was cute and I should just send him. That kicked me into gear, because there was no way I wanted that droopy doll with a dangly head haunting my sales history forever. (admittedly, an overkill on the alliteration) I knew I could do better than that, and if the new adopted mommy of this boy was going to say that I had made him, I wanted to at least not be ashamed of him.

But I really didn’t want to remake the head. So I tried untying it.

When that didn’t work I just cut it off and gave up on the whole neck idea.

After remaking the body I tried to re-attach the head but it was very disproportionate.

So I undid it, stitch by stitch, still hoping to take it down to a reasonable size and just make it smaller from there on out. But the sewn on wig cap ruined that idea.

All of which is to explain how I ended up creating the skull bowl.

Determined to show the doll how disgusted I was with him, I decided that his upside down empty head looked quite reminiscent of a bowl, and if coated in plastic, would actually serve quite well for cereal.

(i would insert a clip here of the scene about eyeball soup from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ... but i'm not quite sure that it's appropriate or funny, having never seen it myself ...)

Anyhow, eventually I redid another head, used other eyeballs, since the original child-proof eyeballs were irremovable, and attached it to the (neckless!) doll.

And in the end, I kinda like him. :)

Visions of bookshelves and baskets, meet Sandra.

A year and a half later and a half-size craft room acquired ... one which serves the purpose well but leaves much to be desired from my original dream ... (reposting this Jan. 3, 2013)

Sometimes I lay awake at night plotting to the minutest detail what my dream craft room will be like. It seriously gets me pretty worked up and I have to think about boring things (like cleaning up that craft room) to calm myself down and fall asleep.

Of utmost importance will be the shelves. A whole wall of shelves, like my favorite coffee shop in Seattle (Bauhaus) that is two stories high and has a bookcase running floor to ceiling along one side, a spiral staircase leading from the bar up to the loft, another entire wall of paneled windows overlooking the space needle set among the eclectic skyline and waterfront of downtown, dimly lit old school chandeliers, Harry Potter style, hanging sporadically from long rafters over rough-hewn wood tables where college students play chess like old men or homeless men read books like college students should, the remaining walls dark wood-paneled and graffiti-ed with the personality of an earthy, free-spirited, musty summer evening, and the ultimately-seattle aroma of freshly brewing coffee …

Wow. Homesick much?

Aiya.

Back in Oklahoma on a sleepless night …

Dang. If I could design the perfect art studio, it would be exactly that.

This wasn't where I was intending this to go at all.

Blaming it on the Sudafed. (taken purely for medicinal purposes. Although the inspirational writing side effects are nice …)

Ok, ok. Take 2:

A whole wall of shelves, some long, some cut up into cubes (yes, definitely lots of cubes!), some double-wide or tall … it doesn't have to be fancy. Actually, Timothy could build it for me from some re-purposed scraps of wood panels. (panels? 2x4's? boards? ...) I want more spaces than I could ever imagine needing, so that I can have a place for everything I have, and then more spaces for when I pick up the beyond-everything-i-need stuff. The problem with finite space is that I start multi-purposing and trying to coerce things that really don't go together, like useful scrapbooking scraps of paper and old birthday cards that I haven't reasoned away yet, into cohabitation and the results are just plain ugly. Soon enough my organize-able cubes turn into boxes of confused disaster with no governmental system telling things where to go and what to do. And then I turn into a disaster b/c I can't find anything and don't know where to put things b/c they just don't want to go with the birthday cards … yup. So the obvious solution is lots and lots more cubes and shelves. And baskets. Maybe I'll write a blog post about my affinity for baskets later. Or maybe Timothy should write that one. It might come out more interesting from his perspective … it would probably be titled something like "my wife's eerie and completely unreasonable obsession over wicker baskets especially if they have cute gingham lining or are "discounted" 50% off so as to still be more expensive than one should ever have to pay for a box." Anyhow, I shall have lots of baskets on my shelves and tidily tucked away in the cubes.

And then there will be project tables. There will be long expanses of Flat Space. And a big coffee table with cushions on the floor on which I shall sit Japanese style as I fiendishly piece together amigurumis in time to make it to the post office by 5:55.

And a wall of windows. Preferably. Or mirrors. Notsopreferably.

And on these tables will be some wire letter organizer things, with cute manila folders in them (only they won't be plain manila ~ I'll find some cute ones on etsy or cover some plain ones with wallpaper or magazine cut-outs). I don't know what those are for yet. But once again, if they did have a pre-determined purpose, then I would need twice as many so as to have enough for the emergency purposes.

The only problem with this whole dream world is that I don't belong there.

This picture gives a little insight into what my crafting environment most often looks like. Although I cleaned up for this picture, so you have to imagine lots more scraps and tape and pens and tea and Kleenex and cats (hence, the Kleenex) … I usually try not to take pictures when I'm in process, b/c it's such a cluttered messy mess that is very messy and I'm altogether in denial about it, preferring to think that the end justifies the means. (Thoughts/comments are welcome at this point. Just don't judge me.)

(it's a scrapbook I made for our one-year anniversary)

Here's a more genuine shot:

I wonder what would happen if my visionary self ever met my disheveled chaotic spontaneous self. I'm not sure that they know yet that the other exists.

No conclusion. But Sudafed is wearing off and I'm going to sleep.

Reasons I enjoy crocheting, and the like

The gentle, lulling, repetitive motion

One loop after another after another … flows into a gentle sinusoidal wave of comfort, erasing jumpy, haggard patterns of stress and anxiety

An imitation of the great act of creation, watching a hat, a doll, a blanket, a mobile slowly emerge from my hands at the impetus of my own will ~ understanding in some small measure the joy and pride of my God, as a mirror humbly beholding and reflecting His creative essence

Projects turn to prayer as a friend, a brother, a joy, a fear is shared with God, my Comforter

In turn calmly crocheting or passionately exploring new designs and dreams, as my mood and energy dictate

I used to struggle with myself over the irony of the apparent futility of creative endeavors. Before I discovered crochet, I used to enjoy making puzzles, and yet I couldn’t quite stand up to the annoying reasoning voices telling me that putting together a picture that has intentionally been cut apart is the epitome of vanity. So I became a closet puzzler, hiding in the recesses of my mind from myself as I enjoyed long periods of piecing together a puzzle, finding irrational pride in matching pieces of cardboard  together and watching dazzling images emerge, even as the voices were saying “you could have bought this picture whole to start with!” As I began to emerge into the mature adult I might become I ventured out into the world of cross stitch as a direct act of defiance to the voices that nagged at me. “Why would you spend twenty hours making something that serves no purpose? Who will ever appreciate this? You could be doing something else to make the world a better place right now. Or you could be sleeping. Who are you trying to impress anyway? Seriously? One stitch after another after another … ?” Sometimes it got to me. I don’t know how to answer any of those questions. There’s no point. But my mom does have one of my cross-stitched masterpieces framed on her wall. And I did find an indescribable peace of mind and heart every time I sat down to add another color, a new thread, an extra element to the picture. When I recently got married and started embellishing my dabbling interest in yarn, I would give voice to all these doubts and questions and often get myself worked into quite a frenzy, crocheting a hat while explaining that I really didn’t know why I enjoyed this (but I did, somehow, in those closets of my mind) because I knew it didn’t matter and I could just buy one and I know I’m not really accomplishing anything that counts for anything and I could be doing something better (or sleeping ~ that’s always an option!) and etc, somehow feeling obliged to side with “the voices” now that I had a sounding board (aka, my “hubband”) who might, just might, contradict me and release me from the bondage of perpetually making sense. Which he did, interrupting me, poking me, laughing at/with me at the absurdity of my sense of sense-making and encouraging me to just relax and enjoy the simple things in life. If you enjoy it, that’s good enough. … oh glorious freedom! J

I realize now that a lot of those downward spiraling thoughts of “this isn’t worth anything, don’t waste your time, what’s the point?what’s thepoint?what’sthepoint??” was symptomatic of a ferocious hunger to be seen, noticed, appreciated … and of a depression that was eating away at the joy of simply living. Since finding my husband I have discovered a precious ability to enjoy life, now that this anxiety to count for something or matter to someone was set right. With a companion to love, one in whose love (because it is growing with the Love of God) I could rest securely and confidently, I was able to face life in a fresh way and not be caught up in a whirlwind of anxiety-driven “dosomethingamazingnowandeverymomentoryou’reworthless”-ness.

I wish I had been able to reach this point earlier, but in my journey, I needed Timothy to set me free to be me and be happy with me. If I have a daughter, though, I hope she can learn to appreciate herself and enjoy discovering life and her own talents in a peaceful way, instead of feeling compelled to throw herself to the wind, hoping someone will catch her when she falls.

And I’ve digressed sufficiently from yarn to esoteric musings on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so I shall call a halt to this blog post. Blogging. That is definitely an onomatopoeia.

p.s. for clarification sake, I didn’t actually hear voices. And I hope I haven’t offended anybody who does, b/c I can imagine that must be an incredibly frustrating experience, not to be belittled. Seriously.   

fanatical, fantastical, financial figures

$11/ hour. That’s how much I make teaching 8^th grade math in Oklahoma.

I’m so glad I didn’t calculate that until now, but now that I have enlightened myself on the futility of money-making in this particular line of stress-intensive (insert-descriptions-here) work, it does make facing the final 9 weeks a bit of a daunting and discouraging task. How can America at large expect teachers to produce an intelligent-and-competitive-in-a-global-economy generation of young people when They (the Great and Unknown entity of They-ness) pay teachers $11/hour?? Oy. But that’s another story for another book. (coming soon to your local trash can)

So in a moment of transcendent inspiration, following months of considering this idea of taking the crafty crafting world by storm, I decided that I could earn myself $11 an hour crocheting and skip the stress of daily teaching drama (left purposely ambiguous in this rendition of the story).

Since $11 is my “real” money after all the taxes and insurance and retirement and feed-the-hungry-millionaires percentages are cut out, I did the math (trust me ~ I’m a math teacher) and figured that if I made $140 dollars worth of products, five days a week every week, I could make up for all taxes, insurance, cost of materials, etc. and still come out ahead of my teaching salary. If I throw 5 hours of math tutoring a week into that, I’m down to about $100/day. That’s 3 hats. One bird mobile. Or 2.43 frog-and-turtle duos. (I just made that up. … but it sounds cute. I think I’ll try it.) Of course I still need to build in time for Research and Development (aka, designing the frog-and-turtle duo, since it inevitably won’t be quite right the first time), blogging, posting to etsy, facebook, twitter, etc.

Number theories make me giddy. Within minutes of this fanatical and fantastical epiphany I was sky-high in my dreams of living the high life in the delicate balance between creativity and insanity. Talking it over with my ever-faithful-and-pragmatic business partner, my husband, brought me quickly back down to earth. It’s too dangerous to take this leap of faith when we’re $100,000 in debt from college loans and trying to start a family in the reasonably near future. Etc. He was very loving and gentle in his reasonings. I was equally thankless and harrumphed in my murmurings against his reasonable reasonings.  But of course it was what I would have told myself if I didn’t have him there to tell me.

But still… $11/hour??? I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow… I think that’s what this all comes down to … (apologies all around if any of my students ever end up reading this ~ I heart u all!)

So I’m signing off a bit discouraged … I have so many dreams of projects I want to do and so many leads to follow through on (see future posts) and not nearly enough time. I’m afraid that these dreams will shrivel up and die and my potential customers will forget about me if I don’t follow through soon. And strong. And my present career path is draining me of everything. That’s seriously another book though.

Closing quote from my dearest “hubband:” Honey, I think you’re wonderful.

Me: well, I know that, but I just want to be more wonderful.

Vote of confidence: 1

Vote of discouraged-i-just-want-to-hide-in-a-hole-and-not-go-to-school-tomorrow: 1

Score tied. Overtime play-by-play to be continued.

in the meantime, here's a picture of a knit headband i made today :)