My crafting history

I swear I've been crafting and doing artistic things since the day I was born. My mom used to knit, crochet, latch hook, make jewelery, paint pottery, needlepoint, cross stitch, decoupage, paper tole, and do just about every craft under the sun (other than needle felting, as she discovered today while yarn shopping at Joann's) until she had kids, that is. Then the little two-seater car was replaced by a minivan and her needle crafting and painting was replaced by diaper changes and frequent, repeated trips to the hospital (my oldest brother had leukemia until he was 9 or 10).

She's lived vicariously through my crafting for as long as I can remember. I think I was 8 when I was enrolled in 5 different crafting classes over the course of the summer at our local community center, doing everything from decoupage to painting a light up ceramic Christmas tree (a miniature of one she made when she was in her 20s). I adored the woman who taught the classes because she is one of the reasons why I still love crafting today. It's her fault.

I've always dabbled, and am therefore halfway decent at about half a million things. In middle school, I took up drawing, and did nothing BUT draw (and, ya know, ballet and tap and such) for about 6 months before I discovered the joys of writing. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many half empty sketch books and journals I've started and discarded because I became interested in something else. I then took up painting, went back to writing, did a little sewing, cross stitch, latch hook, and went back to writing.

When high school hit, I was in a writing phase, which I kept on until 10th grade when a horrible bitch of a teacher ruined my love of the English language. I ended up failing her class because she was so horrible(and, just bad teacher in general). Fortunately, in 11th grade, I had a wonderful English teacher who renewed my love of the language, and then in 12th, I had two teachers who were so encouraging and wonderful that my writing has thrived ever since. But, I digress. I didn't do a lot of crafting for the first two years of high school because I was living with my father, which is not and inspirational place for a young girl to be.

In 11th grade, I began photography classes, which is something I'd been excited about since my oldest brother took them when HE was in high school (10 years before). I loved my teacher, and found myself again inspired to craft by the artist in residence from the College for Creative Studies who I was fortunate enough to have in my school twice a week. An award winning competition piece that he helped me realize, is essentially paper tole!

My crafting gene was reactivated and I began to cross stitch again. This is also around the time that I learned to crochet. I only learned single crochet at first, which made my work slow-going and odd looking. Until I met a boy named Alyn. He could crochet and knit and fed me from his stash, let me borrow crochet hooks, and taught me the joys of double crochet. On and off, I would pick up a piece, put it down, pick it up, and put it down. I finally finished something when I went off to college 1 year ago (I took 2 years off after high school), which is a scarf in my school colors.

(In between all of this, I obsessively sewed for a very long time, and still pick it up from time to time.)

I love crochet, but nothing is as beautiful as knitting. I knew my mom knew how, but she hadn't knitted in so long, she could hardly remember, so I searched online and came across http://www.knittinghelp.com/. I learned how to cast on, knit, and purl, and found a free pattern for a weird monster stuffed animal at Joann's (aka Project 0), which I have yet to finish.

Since then, I've learned papertole and started a needlepoint project (also unfinished), but most recently I've gone back to knitting. I've collected all of the free patterns from Meijer, Joann's, and Michael's, as well as borrowed a book from the library and found MANY patterns online. I have a knitting book that I absolutely love, and would probably learn something from if I would actually READ it (I love reading and have SO many other things to read!), but you don't get mediocre at things by reading about them and practicing them!

Curious about all of my crafting experience? Here's the short version (in no particular order):

• Knitting
• Crochet
• Sewing
  
• Paper tole
• Decoupage
• Painting
• Photography
• Cross stitch
• Needlepoint
• Painting pottery
• Pottery making
• Drawing
• Writing (I consider it a craft)
• Scrapbooking
  
• Random paper-crafts
  
• And home decorating

I also collect bottle caps, wind-up toys, knives, books, banks, and dry-erase boards.

Mom is an elementary school librarian (feeding my book collection quite nicely with scholastic warehouse clearance sales) who is obsessed with facebook.