Crafting Through the Ages OR Why am I obsessed with decorative yarn balls?

This will never be one of those hip blogs with instagram photos of decorative yarn balls or a Tardis made from reclaimed barn wood. I mean, there might be the ocasional craft-based post, but I just can't be consistently crafty. My craftiness comes in fits and spurts. Like the very occasional costuming I do. Or that time I made a Star Wars collage table. But it never really sticks. I'll do one cool project, then sit on my ass congratulating myself about it for a few months. And for every project I do complete, I have  6 more "in the works" (read: only in my head) that I will probably never complete.

When did crafting become so cool anyway?

Some people may blame Pintrest or Etsy. I would love to. But actually I'm pretty sure crafting has been cool for a while. Maybe forever. It's totally possible that some cave woman used a bit of charcoal to decorate the reclaimed cave rock shelf that held her decorative balls of sinew. Actually, that probably never happened. But crafting isn't just some new fad. I'd bet that once people were able to buy their clothes or decorative yarn balls at the store, making things for necessity was replaced by making things for fun (and for bragging rights), aka "crafting".

Growing up my mom did lots of cool crafty things, and she still does. She made all our halloween costumes. Sewed baby quilts. Painted and stenciled walls and other things. The costumes were the coolest. As a kid I'd say my favorite was the princess dresses she made for my sister and I. She finished them at night and hung them in our room, so the next morning we went nuts over them as soon as we woke up. I wore that dress for two halloweens and a school play.

Or you can just buy your
decorative yarn balls
I wish I were as cool as my mom. My kids have store-bought costumes. I tried to make a skirt once for Kaylee but it turned out really crooked, you would have thought it was made by somebody with one arm and an inner-ear infection. I like to blame it on not having enough time at home without the kids around poking at the sewing machine or grabbing for the modge podge, but I know so many crafty moms who really do manage to make amazing things while juggling the demands of parenting, that I can't really use that excuse.

So maybe I should give up, or maybe one day I'll blossom into the crafty lady I wish I were. It could happen, right? Until then I like to balance my time on Pintrest and Etsy with time on Catalog Living or Regretsy. That way I can feel better about not being able to make decorative yarn balls by laughing at decorative yarn balls! It's a perfect match.

14 comments:

  1. You made me laugh. I always wanted to be an artist. I can craft but I can't draw worth anything... everything looks like stick people. I have decided to be just an admirer of the arts instead. It so far has worked :)

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    1. I don't know how good my drawing is, but I do love to doodle, it's so much less time consuming than real crafts. :)

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  2. Well at least you're occasionally crafty! :) I don't have a crafty bone in my body lol.

    Saw your comment on the AZ blog-- tweet your post with the #atozchallenge hashtag and tag @AprilA2Z to get more comments.

    And the best way to receive comment love is to give it-- join blog Blitz and IWSG !

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    1. thanks for the tip, I'd been using the hashtag but not the @AprilA2Z bit. :)

      You can find that crafty bone one day, I got a good dose of learning-late-in-life inspiration from http://www.kludgymom.com/live-to-be-100/ yesterday.

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  3. lol, I go through phases where I am addicted to Pinterest, pinning every cute and pretty thing that looks relatively easy. Then I even go so far as putting the supplies in my amazon cart and buying a bunch of stuff.

    Then it sits in a cabinet for MONTHS before I even think about it. I have modpodge, balloons, and cross-stitch floss for making pretty "easter eggs" (that didn't happen) and I have 5 pounds of soy flakes in my closet for making my own candles. I don't even remember when I bought those.

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    1. haha, that sounds just like me. I even went through a candle-making phase last year too, now I have a drawer full of wax and wicks that are gathering dust.

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  4. I have a problem with both Pinterest and Etsy. I may just have been overexposed to it when I've been reading other blogs, and I don't really see what's so fantastic about it when you can find photos of anything on Google. However, I love crafts, but don't have so much time with it, right now anyway. Later I hope to get back to making jewellery and sew some clothes.

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    1. I think of pintrest more as a "oh, I never thought to do that!" feed. I like Etsy mostly because it's so so so much cheaper to pay etsy stores to make ren fest garb for you than to buy it (and a lot easier than making it!). But I do wish I could never go there again in a way, because that would mean I finally figured out how to do it all myself. :)

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  5. lol a Tardis from Barnwood :D funny!
    Your star wars table is pretty cool tho

    auntyamo
    http://ficticiousamo.wordpress.com/

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  6. Oh, I can totally relate to this. I recently reorganized my craft supplies (a whole heckuva lot of card-making stuff and beads!) and kicked myself for stocking up so much stuff and not using it more often. I have not gone Pinterestcrazy yet because I don't need another obsession.

    And knitting--I thought I'd be a knitter so I compiled (mostly through paperbackswap.com) a huge ton of knitting books, needles, and yarn...and I've recently realized that I'm so NOT a knitter. The last thing I knitted was a scarf for my mom, and it was 6 inches wide on one end and 12 inches wide on the other!

    Stopping by from the A to Z: www.marie-everydaymiracle.blogspot.com

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    1. haha, oooh knitting! I'm glad I learned that I am not a knitter on my parent's dime back in high school. I couldn't make it past a tenth of a scarf.

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  7. I love crafting. In theory. In my mind, I'm also an exceptional seamstres, ie sewing does not make me cry, like it does in reality.

    I will now imagine myself making a barn wood Tardis, and claim that the only reason it is not happening is because I do not access to a supply of reclaimed barn wood.

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    1. sewing totally makes me cry too. I don't even know why I keep trying.

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