This is what happens when I feel crafty …

Last year, I woke up one morning, feeling strange. Not my normal quasi-anal, semi obsessive-compulsive, anxiety consumed self.

At first I thought I was dying. But then I figured that was impossible because I wasn’t worried about dying and it was this very absence of worry that concerned me. I worry about anything and everything, even if I have to make stuff up. It’s the only way I know to exist.

So then I thought that maybe, during the night, I had come down with a case of dementia. Because if I was dying and not concerned, I had obviously lost my mind.

I hopped on my computer and googled all of my symptoms and much to my astonishment, I discovered that what I had been feeling all morning was not, in fact, imminent death but rather … imminent craftiness.

This was big for me, because it’s not often I feel crafty, let alone wake up that way. I don’t consider myself a very crafty person. I’ve always thought of crafty people as “go with the flow” people, very laid back, easy going, with great hair. You know, exactly the type of person I would have been had I been born a completely different person. With great hair.

Not that I’m high strung or anything … hang on a sec while I fix my keyboard so that it’s completely parallel with my monitor, would you?

OK, I’m back.

Wait.

Would you mind adjusting your keyboard? You’re not totally parallel with your monitor and I can’t see you straight on. It’s making my eye twitch.

Whew. Thank you.

As I was saying, it’s not that I’m high strung, it’s just that I don’t often feel carefree and crafty so when the mood hits me, I make the most of it.

Why doesn’t that happen with housework?

So later that day, I ran out of my house and drove all over town, collecting my supplies and getting more and more excited with each passing moment, completely engrossed in all sorts of creative possibilities.

And then I ran back home and ignored my family for three days while I sat at my kitchen table in my jammies and made these:

Each one was different and yet, somehow similar … each one carried a little bit of me. Just like my kids. Except they didn’t scream YOU ARE SUCH A BRAT at each other. And they didn’t call me mean. And didn’t tell me that I suck the fun out of everything.

They just sat there, blissfully quiet, looking pretty.

I think the hardest part for me was tying the ribbon into a bow. It took me several attempts to get a decent looking bow and at one point, I cried.

I may have been too emotionally involved.

I sold quite a few of these at a vendor fair I participated in last year, when I still had my custom digital design business. I needed something that was readily available to be purchased on the spot and these sold like hotcakes.

I hate that saying … sold like hotcakes. It makes no sense. Who buys hotcakes in bulk at warp speed? Is that a southern thing? Western thing? Another planet thing? What?

Now if you say “these sold like double fudge brownies dipped in Nutella” it would make much more sense.

Am I right?

This was one of my favorites. I included it in the vendor fair but the more I looked at it, the more I knew I couldn’t part with it. So when a little old lady full of wrinkles shuffled up to me with her walker and asked if she could buy it, I told her it was already sold and I hid it in my purse.

I’m going to Hell for that one.

Looking back on it, I wish that I had spray painted the metal tops to match the ornaments. Why is my hindsight 20/20 and my foresight 1,245,899 / 3,472?

One of these days, I swear to GOD, I’m going to learn how to take a decent picture so that my subjects don’t look as if they’re missing their bottoms.

I’d like to look as if I’m missing my bottom.

Who do I speak to about that?

After my vendor fair, I ran out and bought enough supplies to make at least 100 more of these babies.

I haven’t woken up crafty since.

And there all my supplies sit, in the corner of my office, right alongside the best of intentions.

Unused and unloved and smothering in dust.

Kind of like the monstrosity of a treadmill that now lives in our basement. It showed up in our living room one day because Nate doesn’t wake up crafty.

He wakes up bored.

Those damn best of intentions. They get you every time.