Wednesday, August 10, 2016

The Craft

Sometime in the Aughts, my mother dragged me and my sister-in-law to the home of a church member for a scrapbooking demonstration and sales pitch; this church friend worked for Creative Memories (RIP and then welcome back), which at the time was probably the biggest name in the scrapbooking game. 

Truly, it doesn't take much to get me on board with stuff like this; I'm a sucker for arts and crafts, because I want so much to be artsy and crafty, which I am mostly not, in spite of the eight trillion dollars my parents paid for me to take art classes at this awesome little place not too far from our house when I was growing up. So of course I was all, "Scrapbooking is fun!" And Mom apparently agreed, because she then spent a further eight trillion dollars on CM products. 

Flash forward however many years. I still have not become artsy or craftsy, even though I have all those adult coloring books and I attempt to crochet things and I worked (literally) three shifts at Joann Fabric before unceremoniously quitting because I had too much time to think about all the other things I wasn't accomplishing with my life while simultaneously accomplishing nothing with my life. And yet! I do make regular attempts to do scrapbooking-related things, whether that's actually making scrapbook pages or, as has been the case this summer, making cards. 

Crafting makes me feel more useful, somehow, because I'm doing things with my hands rather than sitting around staring at a computer screen. Even though I often make things that look less than ideal, it's still nice to create anything at all. I've even gotten into crochet, which my grandmother tried twice to teach me when I was growing up but never stuck. Even though my niece is, so far, the only person who has received anything I've made, she seems to be behind me one hundred percent, and that gives me all the motivation I need to continue.

Plus it's nice to channel my creativity elsewhere when I'm overwhelmed (or underwhelmed, as the case may be) by the writing process, or else awaiting responses from publishers. That way, I have something to occupy me that is non-detrimental and keeps my brain in that creative place. What could be better?

-Cate-

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