My Handmade Journey

Hillary Mayıs 29, 2022

I'm amazed by all the talent coming out of the woodwork out there. Especially this time of year. I used to make a lot of things too. I was once an excellent seamstress. But last summer I had to have my DIL show me how to thread a sewing machine!

Pretty lame. But it's just that there have been other avenues to travel in my life, and it's been about since 1985 since I trekked the knitting, quilting, and crocheting road.

After 1985, I did a little bit of country living. The kind where you deliver your own water, and haul away your own trash, and do a lot of talking to yourself. There was no Internet. Not even a telephone. The mail was a drive to the post office, and the "convenience" store was eight miles away.

You might think that there would be lots of creative time to fill the hours. But "making do" took all my time.

Fast forward to back to the city, part time work, and the university. Still raising a family, my extra time was now spent making grades. I made a whole bunch of them. But arts and crafts fell by the wayside.

This is not a sorry story. My creative life took another turn down the lush lanes of the life of the mind. I crafted papers instead of paper crafts. I learned how to gather ideas instead of stitches. And did cut and paste on a word processor instead of with scissors and glue.

After graduation, I went down the road of making my own living. And tried really hard to make time itself for things. I did a pretty good job. But I don't have anything particularly decorative to show you.

And I began to travel the world. I walked from Doolin, Ireland to the Cliffs of Moher just because it was fun. And I made ten miles that day. I climbed the pyramids of Tikal in the darkness, and made the solstice sunrise. I climbed Brunelleschi's Dome.

In the late nineties I produced a cluster of backyard family weddings. Four to be exact. I only mention it because it felt like creative work at the time. By 2003 I had gone into the antiques business. And when you go into antiques, it's more about searching for things instead of making them.

I managed to find a little time to get into collage and card making for awhile. So much fun! But the last year or two in retail has distracted me from that.

I have dabbled in painting, writing, and photography. I've had a wonderful time of it doing a blog. But when I look over the cleverness found in Etsyland, I get a wee bit of nostalgia for the old days. I think again of threading needles, of learning the uses of a glue gun. . . .

I can feel the wanderlust creeping up, and a journey down a new road. The only thing I have made in recent time is this bed. And I'm ready for a little adventure. . . .