Posted by di521 on 2005-10-10 10:30:49
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any kind of stuffed felt things would be fun...i also googled xmas ornaments last year and there was a really cute one to make a snowman out of a lightbulb....basically make a little hat for the screw part and paint on eyes and buttons, have mittens, etc.
Posted by lizzymahoney on 2004-08-31 19:05:47
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As a little kid, my mother was the leader for my sister's Camp Fire Girl group. They did so many crafty things, in part because she didn't have anyone to tell her they didn't have to make all of the ideas Camp Fire Girls gave them. They had seasonal bazaars and learned embroidery and hiked nature trails. Lots of stuff like that.
My mother grew up in the Depression. Girls back then learned fine hand sewing, gardening, cooking, decorating, etc. Her mother and five sisters all did stuff like that. Her father had a workshop in the basement with neat old tools and things I played around with as a child.
I embroidered way before my first recollection of it, oddly. I can remember way back to something that happened when I was 18 months old, but can't remember learning to cook or to embroider. Let's say I had to be under five years old.
So with Camp Fire Girls, I played with paints and clay and beads and whittling and natural dyes, made collages and wreaths and Xmas ornaments. I read anything remotely crafty that came in the house, so even my brothers' Boy Scout books were fair game.
My father's mother was a cook who never measured anything. Not particularly crafty otherwise as i recall. But a few of her many kids had some talents in needlecraft and art. My Dad danced and told stories, but was otherwise not very creative.
My mother's sisters had a lot of influence on me, too. Some had very elegant homes and expensive tastes so I learned some high end domestic stuff from them, like old Lena who had her brass switchplates refinished every year. Her husband gardened with some unusual old world methods that still stick with me. Bertha was eccentric and well off. Also well-travelled. She was an excellent cook. She and I could analyze a dish of something we'd never tasted before and figure out proportions of spices and cooking methods. Anna was a nut-job who was a scrounger extraordinaire, but also a psychotic clean freak. We foraged for wild asparagus and mushrooms, made birch syrup and scrubbed the stove vents every day. Charlotte crochets and sews beautifully, and bakes terrible but pretty cakes. Rickey watched soap operas. Oh, and sewed like fifty versions of the same dress.
My mother's cousin Bobbi sewed semi-professionally. Back then, women really didn't work outside the home if they could help it, but her talents with a machine kept her busy helping neigbors for a little pin money. There are photos and memories of dresses she sewed for me. Smocking and pinafores and plackets, dotted swiss and batiste and velvet.
One of my first cousins on my mother's side is an artist. She was told in the mid sixties that she needed a practial degree, so she went for nursing which she still does. She is very like me in that she'll just decide to move that tree over here and make a topiary of it, and paint one wall eggplant just because. We both have done things that we have only heard the other talk about. It's interesting to see what we come up with, but that's not why we do it. Actually, once I was commenting on the way cool lamp she made out of a gilded stack of books tied with ribbon. Her mom looked at me and said I was the one who told her about it. We both just brim with ideas, way more than we can execute. She doesn't paint much anymore, but I have a few canvases she did in her teens, one of peonies, one of lilacs, and one of an historic building in her old town, and I wish I knew where her very primitive southwestern seraped boy with donkey that hung in my grandparents house is now. I'm sure she had to be like ten when she painted that one. Admittedly, I don't want any of my paintings from when I was ten, either.
My sister has picked up creative efforts only as a mature adult. PTA and Amway crap. Someone needed to do posters or decorate the hall, so she got some advice over the phone and just did it. And has continued to do it for years. Her cooking sucks, although she gets major points for trying. She just forgets to do things like cook the rice before adding to that recipe, or that 5lbs of flour is not the same as five cups.
Not only did the family members teach me and teach others, but people I've taught have taught others as well. You learn certain types of things and then extrapolate to another medium. I was a good cook. I taught myself to homebrew. I taught others who weren't good cooks to home brew.
My nieces and nephews are not very crafty. Not yet, anyway. THey like my crafty things, but are not motivated to do for themselves yet. Huh, save one. She's 8 and her mother buys those crappy craft kits where they follow the box directions and make the suncatcher or potholder. She can't translate that to random raw materials yet.
My second oldest niece is married. Her MIL is kinda tacky nouveau riche. She has this butt ugly Santa hooked rug hanging that she f*d up and needed some rescuing. The niece said she'd get her mother to give it to her aunt (me) to fix it because I can fix anything. Damn, the repairs are elevating this piece of crap to a new level. But I've pawned it off on my mom now. I have the concept, the pieces cut, the trim, the method to hang it, etc, and she's my slave labor.
I tried to get a creative circle journal going between my sister, niece and me, but the other two couldn't manage to put f'ing stickers in it and send it on. Kind of wasted my time in collaging pages for them and writing bits of poetry for it. I even enclosed stickers and pens and ribbons and tape, but nada.
My sister's history of shared crafting with me has been frightening. If I were normal I would disown her. She gave me a pinafore for her daughter that had to be embroidered in three hours before the wedding we all attended. She wanted satin stitch. My ass. She invited me for the Christmas holidays and I wound up wrapping all the gifts, cooking all the food, including staying up until 4 am boning chicken and mincing carrots for a terrine she didn't know how to make but thought would look cool.
Her daughter's DIY wedding turned out to be a get auntie to do-it-herself wedding.
But I will say she does fine self taught calligraphy.
