The Grand -- If you cut me, I would shine. - the conversation i was having in my head

How does your craft graveyard grow?

Friday was one of those rare, lovely days where I had no work/editing obligations. I woke up with a creative bug and realized I finally had time to quilt. I have been working on a quilt for our bed since before we were married (although I am in no particular hurry since Jason's mom made us a georgeous one for our wedding). I had stashed the project away for so long that I first had to spend a good chunk of time ironing and figuring out where I was. In any case, I made a good deal of progress. I'm all done with the squares and now just need to sew them into rows and add a border to finish the quilt top (I say "just," but I probably have ten or so hours of work left).

Continuing the creative theme of the day, my friend Beth came over in the afternoon to teach me to knit. A fascinating process knitting is. You start with string and you twist it in particular, sometimes frustrating ways, and then it becomes something warm. Weird. I'm starting with a scarf and hoping to move on from there to mittens and then, if all goes well, a sweater for Jason (since we have had no luck finding one in our recent shopping ventures and since how cool would it be to say "My wife knitted me this sweater"?).

Those of you who know me well know that this flurry of creative activity is cyclical and that soon I will no doubt become consumed with work and/or overwhelmed with the repetition (knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one) and sheer magnitude of the projects (repeat until it's a long scarf) and abandon these partially finished projects to the craft graveyard growing in my basement. I am tempted to be embarassed of such predictability and perhaps seemingly irresponsible behavior. However, I have had a change of thinking about this recently.

I realized that these projects are supposed to be fun and/or relaxing. If they're not, they're not worth doing. And feeling guilty because I should be being creative is probably the worst way to make it fun. When I first learned to quilt, we took a trip up to Erin's parents' farm (her mom owned a quilt shop) for a long weekend. The rule was we quit (for the day) when it wasn't fun anymore. Brilliant.

Certainly there is something to be said for finishing a project. And I love that feeling too. I'm not saying that I want to have only unfinished projects; I'm just saying that perhaps unfinished projects aren't quite the enemy they are sometimes made out to be. Embrace the project graveyard!

(In this spirit, instead of giving up on my daily photo project [not to be confused with DPP], I've decided to continue with the a series--photos are numbered 1-26 and, so far, a1-a3; when I miss a day or two in the a series, I'll begin the b series...as long as it's fun.)

Posted by Renae at December 4, 2006 12:22 PM