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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Please excuse my busy hands

Christmas is for lovers.

Family
?

Three dollar wine from Whole Foods?

Friends - I'll tell you what Christmas is for.

Crafts.

My apartment is deceptively crafty, in the sense that every time I've gone through a brief phase of fancying myself as a painter/knitter/collage artist- some new piece of crap I threw together gets stuck on my wall and lives there forever.

Sue me. The dollar section at Target is full of paper goods that ignite a young(ish) girl's imagination, and Joanne's and Michael's stay in a constant state of 60% off! What am I supposed to do, ignore that?

This Christmas I have picked back up a skill that was taught to me last year: knitting. I don't know why my knitting dropped off in the summer time. Perhaps my hands freaked out handling all that bulky yarn in 90 degree heat.


I also picked up a little "do it yourself" stocking kit for around 2 bucks and it has resulted in felted magic. Okay, yes, all I had to do was join the pieces together and sew on the little snowflakes, but I added a little special touch on the back- no pattern required, thank you very much!


Complete with balls.

Secret hearts are a perfect touch. Even if they did take me over an hour to make.


And finally, I have learned - via the interwebs and youtubes -  how to crochet. Before she slid into dementia and eventually Alzheimer's, my grandmother was quite gifted at crocheting. Every Christmas she made delicate little snowflakes for her church and her friends and family.

One night after rehearsal I sat down in front of the computer and youtubed "crochet snowflake". And five hours later - I had made my first snowflake! Granted, it doesn't even compare to my Mimi's, and granted, there is not a snowflake on god's earth that looks like mine, but I was still proud of my over sized, red floppy flake.


 
Snowflake ornaments drying
I then tried it again and attempted to keep them ornament size. After I made each one, I soaked it in a mixture of glue, water and, of course, glitter, and left them out to dry, and holy glass balls! It worked! I have now developed a very minor skill (to be improved upon). Only through the magic of Christmas could this have been achieved, folks. What new skill(s) did you pick up this holiday season?







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