I’m back from a two week part work trip, part holiday. Highlight: talking to Carrie Fischer (I kid you not!). Lowlight: bad food. In between: lots of hanging out with fabulous, interesting people and simply getting out of the house for a while. Oh, and doing my first cross stitch as a gift but forgetting to take a photo of it.
As always, I went into reassessing my habits mode as soon as I got home. I began a to-do list and next thing I was writing down every activity I engage in and picking out the things I’d rather do more or less of.
I came to the conclusion that I have a troubled relationship with craft these days. I enjoy it and it has great benefits, but it can be bad for my health, takes up more room than I have, and sometimes distracts me from more important things. Mostly because I have an obsessive temperament. And I am, as the blog title says, a creative fidget who flits from one craft to another.
The biggest issue I can see is that I spend an awful lot of ‘craft’ time on the internet reading blogs, blogging and looking at Pinterest, all sitting down. I need to get up and move.
I’m far more likely to do a craft if I can do it sitting in front of the tv of an evening, however. The rest of the time I craft on weekends, in the workroom or lounge, finishing a project in a weekend or two, and that does involve moving around. Lately I’ve set up in the lounge more often than the workroom – the sewing and Bond fads I had earlier this year required lots of space and the big dining table.
Like so many times before, I’m wondering if the workroom is the problem. I’ve managed to get everything to fit better, but it means movement is restricted. I suspect that’s why I still have the same piece on the table loom that I started over a year ago, and haven’t touched the knitting machine in ages. Still, the last six months were pretty hectic, work-wise, and that meant a sore back.
The trouble is, to get more space in the workroom I’d have to remove something, or several somethings. Perhaps abandon a craft.
So instead of trying to rearrange the workroom yet again, I’m considering the crafts I do. They seem to fit into three categories for me: odd projects that I do once that occasionally have leftover materials, fad crafts that seize my attention for a short while and I buy lots of stuff for, and commitment crafts that I do long-term that I bought expensive equipment for that takes up space.
Do I need to use up and/or cull the leftovers and fad craft materials? Maybe I’d have more room for equipment then. Though that sort of thing leads to obsessively trying to Use Stash Up rather than doing projects I want to do.
There’s furniture in here that doesn’t have anything to do with craft, too. The day bed, for example, which I do use and the cat loves. Or the drawing board, which I don’t use very often. Maybe I should make a list of furniture and rate it by how often it is used and get rid of the least used pieces.
Maybe I just need a bigger workroom. Maybe I’ve wasted half a morning writing a blog post about how I should spend less time writing and reading about craft.
No, no! This was NOT time wasted on a blog. You may feel like you didn’t get much resolved by it, but it got me to thinking about my own ‘craft space’. I’m thinking about that piece of plywood we once had that fit over the ends of the ‘cargo’ bed. Where is that? When hubby had his sign business he used the plywood over the bed as a work space. I could use this area for laying out patterns or leaving my table loom set up. Girl you just made may brain gears turn. Thanks!
Aww, thanks! Actually, I used to use the bed as a table for cutting out patterns – but using one of those fold up cutting bases with lines on them, made of card so you can pin into them.