hi there and thanks for visiting my creativity blog. i have loved making things since i can recall. i come by it honestly as i was raised by an artist and fashion designer. the apple didn't fall far from tree.
my first memories are of coloring and drawing on a special board, so i could sit of the floor. i think my mom still has that board.
certain crafts were just so addictive that i couldn't stop. rug-hooking was my first major obsession. needlepoint was also very big. my stepmother introduced me to macrame. i knotted a hanger for every plant and just kept going. a lady on the boat next to my dad's taught me how to make flowers out of those little teeny beads. we made daisies, croci, daffodils, you name it.
at school, i developed a real thing for clay. my mother has my kindergarten version of a creche with mary and joseph standing by. every halloween, i entered the county-wide poster contest. i remember garnering a few trophies for those. every year, my mother designed a new halloween costume. some she made on the black singer sewing machine on the desk in the living room. others were sewn by "the ladies" in her work room. i could go on and on about all of the things we created.
it seems to me there was a lull during college on the crafts front while i fell in love with photography. after college, i dove head first into stamping and card making. i would sit in my tiny apartment in NYC stamping and embossing card after card in my toaster oven. now, that modest stamp collection is exponentially larger.
more recently, i have taken to knitting. it began with the funky scarves made of gimmicky novelty yarn. i knit miles of these bizarre, caterpillery scarves. i made so many that my mother finally had to issue a cease and desist order. please! could i think of something different to make her for Christmas? my largest knitting project to date was affectionately dubbed the car cover by an amazed onlooker. it's a giant, chocolate brown, baby alpaca blankie. the pattern is roughly a waffle pattern, but not the complicated kind. i worked on it at meetings, and would just keep bringing it along in bigger and bigger bags. i finally stopped myself, even though there were several more skeins of yarn. when it became necessary to evacuate my home during a fire scare, you better believe that baby was the second thing packed. okay, maybe the third. 1. dog. 2. cat. 3. blankie.
these days i am extraordinarily fortunate to have a studio dedicated to creativity and loaded with every manner of supply - bead, paint, stamp, glitter, punch, scissors, sewing machine - you can imagine. it is a place of refuge, a place of creativity and a place of joy.
what is your creative story? what do you create that brings you joy? are you creating joy for others?
