Crafty!

As far back as I can remember I have loved making stuff. I was a footwear designer at an early age, manufacturing a ballet-style shoe from a single sheet of paper and about half a roll of Scotch tape.

Another step in my fashion design career was creating clothes for my Barbie dolls. The ribbed portion of a sport sock makes a lovely tube dress with holes cut in the sides for the arms. My mom was less than enchanted with the idea, primarily because they were her socks. Further exploits for the benefit of Barbie eventually became what my parents referred to as "the Pueblo Community", stacked cardboard boxes on their sides, each box a room that had been treated to my early stabs at interior design.

I stayed for days at a time with my maternal grandparents growing up, and my grandmother taught me to bake, sew, crochet and gave me many opportunities to make something out of something else. My cousin Josquin and I once created an entire "Macaroni Ranch" from uncooked noodles of all varieties. Last summer we brought the ranch down out of storage and after about 20 years, it still looked pretty good!

I always enjoyed clay, I remember sculpting a bust of my father that was about 3 inches tall and yellow. I painstakingly made his beard with the help of a thumb-tack.

During elementary school, the walls of my bedroom were papered with drawings of everything from the Portland, Oregon skyline done in Mr. Sketch to abstract portraits of imaginary characters - heads in triangle shape.

While in high school at a boarding school, my amateur sewing skills came in handy when girls wanted to make shorts from their jeans. Cut-offs were outlawed for their raggedy hems, but I was able to hem them easily.

A few years later I took up embroidery and my canvas of choice was denim. I covered the entire right leg of a pair of hand-me-downs with yarn and floss flowers and vines. A few friends would bring me a pair of jeans and some floss and I would return the jeans to them with the design of their choice (usually more flowers and vines).

I took up painting with acrylics about ten years ago and will complete a painting (usually an abstract of swirls and lines) every couple of years.

About two years ago I remembered that I had learned a method of finger-crochet sometime during my Pathfinder career, and started making scarves just in time for winter and Christmas that year. I then realized that several scarves side by side is a blanket and have since been crafting blankets with my hands.

I also dove headfirst into the scrapbooking rage and have been scrapbooking for about 5 years now.

When my ADD kicks in, I switch projects, which generally results in 4 or 5 ongoing projects around the house at once. At the moment I have 3 different scrapbooks started, a blanket in the works and a pair of shorts that I'm getting ready to embroider.