Musing on Craft Projects - Someone on the message board I belong to made a joke about "going back to her knitting". It made me grin because the last couple of days I have been working on reducing my personal property for this move coming up and as I used to knit, her comment reminded me of my ordeal. I used to knit, but as of yesterday all I have left is an enormous collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, etc. All of the misc. yarn was thrown out, except for one ball for the kitten who is in heaven.
My button making stuff went into a box, I might make more Clay buttons someday, my stamps I have been collecting because someday I want to learn how to use them in scrapbooking went into a box. (Psst....let's not forget I just discovered digital scrapbooking) 22 bottles of acrylic paint I bought at Michaels on sale cuz I liked the colors and they still are, after all, never opened...went into a box. Glue gun, jar of buttons, etc. all went in a box. This is all important stuff.

Then I pull out the boxes labeled "counted cross stitch". My sister was the cross stitcher in the family, she could produce fully completed works of art, framed and ready to hang on the wall in a weeks time. I guess it was a competition, or something, because I kept buying kits and "trying" to get something finished. I have never hung a piece of work on the wall, nor completed anything useful other than a couple of bookmarks. I have every color of thread imaginable, all sorted and saved in little plastic baggies on a ring. So, I decide to go through all the bags of stuff. See, my MO was to buy a kit or pattern & yarn and keep the project in the original bag from the store. I have bags that are crumbling from age. There are several bags from a wonderful little cross stitching store I found in NJ when I lived there. Bags and bags of unfinished potential "art"....and I mean REALLY unfinished, like I did 25 cross stitches and put it back in the "bag".

What to do with all this?? Why do I keep it? I can't throw it out, I just can't. So, I grab one clean box and start to go through the various layers. Hmmm, my grandson's first bedroom decoration was Winnie the Pooh and I actually did one whole corner of this one. He's now six and into Dinosaurs and skateboards. Out with Winnie. Kept all the needles, hoops (yes, a lot of the bags had a hoop, when I was done I kept 10 different sizes and shapes of hoops and one set of stretcher bars) unopened cross stitch material, pattern books. And, I think about 15 unfinished kits and/or projects ended up in my clean, fresh, box. There were several (very small) finished "works of art" which also ended up in the keeper box.

I came upon my mom's counted cross stitch materials. Why this debris ended up in my car instead of the garage sale is a complete mystery to me. Kept the great magnifying glass, tossed all the old yarns, etc. The only project I kept was this enormous bell pull she had completed but never hung on the bars. I never will finish it either, it is olive and gold...and yes, it was probably stitched in the 70's!! But she worked at it for a long, long, long time. She hardly ever finished any of her cross stitching projects, either. It's a good thing I have a son, I would hate for this neurosis to affect a third generation.

All done, marked the box "Counted Cross Stitch" and put it back in the closet. Hey, I went from three boxes to one. It's progress....of a sort.

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Clay Aiken
Digital Scrapbook
Counted Cross Stitch