Life in the Craft Lane

                                     Abalone shell I got in Tamsui, Taiwan.                                                                                 Wouldn't it look even prettier if I glued buttons on it? 

Show of hands. How many of you have a “craft room” in your house? You know, a cozy retreat chock-full of colorful ribbon and fabric swatches, charcoal sticks and super glue. A veritable Santa’s workshop, in which you spend golden hours creating gorgeous gifts for friends and family.

Got one of those?

 

OK. Hands down.

 

Well, if you are in possession of such an oasis, or even if you just spend blissful evenings in your family room, watching Jeopardy! while crocheting gorgeous afghans, I commend you for reading this blog. It proves you are open-minded enough to enjoy the scribblings of someone completely different from yourself. Oh, we might both love bacon cheeseburgers, or standup comedy, or sunrise at the beach, and I do also watch Jeopardy! (though only to shout the answers at the TV.) Yet the essential connection between us, will never be there. I will never adequately appreciate what you découpage.

 

I lay the blame for this major flaw in my character squarely where it belongs: on my mother. Joanie should have been my creative role model, teaching little me to embroider ashtrays (or whatever it is that people embroider). But Mom was both untalented and impatient in the arts and crafts dept. What’s worse, she thought she was terrific at it, all evidence to the contrary, and spent her life flitting from one messy, unfinished project to the next. My sisters and I would look at the dining room table, laden with Mom’s latest attempt at mod podge-ing, or gluing random buttons to picture frames (we’d pray those were NOT presents for us), and sigh. We’d be eating dinner sprawled on the floor, again.

 

I am a big improvement over Mom in one way. I don’t even pretend to have any ability along those lines. My respect for true artists (especially my incredible watercolorist sister C, and my friend Marda, Queen of Crafts) is immense; indeed, I admire these gifted folks far too much to make a ham-handed attempt to replicate what they do so effortlessly and so well. I hope they appreciate my restraint. I can write, and I can cook, and that’s plenty for me. Stay in your own lane, is my motto!

 

But once in awhile, I spy a clever little objet d’art in a shop (as I recently did in Hawaii), check the eye-popping price tag, and begin to daydream. What if I made a cute little ring holder from a painted seashell myself? Surely I could succeed this once, and save myself the $58 (plus tax)! It might even be fun!

 

But then I wake up, to an image of me, surrounded by dried-up paintbrushes and broken clam shells. In terms of the value of my time, I’ve just spent 100 hours @ $30/hour, with zilch to show for it but cramped fingers and misery. 

 

So, the next time I am tempted to try making anything that isn’t either readable or edible, please remind me:

 

Stay in your own lane, Seyfried.

Image by Annabel Jacobs on Unsplash