Some Rambling on Crafts

I make things for the people in my life.  Most of them are crochet items.  My mom taught me how to crochet when I was 8.  She taught me many things when I was young, how to sew, clean our wool from our sheep and rabbits and spin it into yarn (yes, I grew up in Wyoming and we had lots of animals), how to weave rugs on a loom, and needlework.  My mother is the best, she can create anything.  Crocheting stuck with me the most.  It is handy to take anywhere with me.  It also doesn’t make me feel guilty (as in the time wasted) when I spend time watching TV or movies since I am also making something.

I recently picked out some yarn for a knitting pattern I wanted to try out for a baby blanket for my expecting SIL.  For the most part making baby items doesn’t bother me, unless I am making something out of materials or a pattern that I had purchased with my own children in mind.  Those items are hard to make.  Sometimes I wondered why I tortured myself, making the items I had in mind for my own children that I never got to have.  I have come to the conclusion it was sort of a cleansing/healing process I had to go through.  Why keep bags of yarn never made into anything?  I guess those bags of materials and dreams that were lurking in my craft room had to go.  They were just lurking in there with no use.

Back to the yarn I purchased for SIL’s baby to come.  M’s family was up here visiting the other weekend, and all the girls went to the craft store.  I was looking at some craft items when M’s mom said they needed to go look at baby fabric for a car seat cover she was making for SIL’s new baby.  We all walk over to the fabric department and as we approach the baby fabric section I start to feel the anxiety rising in my chest so I slow my steps.  The rest of the group runs over to their favorite baby fabric and starts exclaiming over the items they like most.  I don’t stop.  I keep walking and find myself in the yarn department.  I can breathe again now that I am in the yarn area.  For some reason I found this area to be safe, even with the pastel baby colored yarn.  This gets me wondering.  How come I could, two weeks earlier, go into a store, pick out yarn for a baby blanket, purchase it, with not a hint of anxiety or bad emotions when I could just now not stand to be anywhere near the baby fabric?  I pushed this thought to the back of my head and start looking at the different yarns this store had to distract me.  After what I figure had been a good amount of time I wander back to the rest of the group and see that MIL and SIL are still debating over fabric, so I wander to a different area of the store until they finish.  After that the rest of the shopping trip was pretty uneventful.

Later in the week I fished out that thought of why the fabric section bothered me so bad from the back of my mind.  I don’t think it bothers me when I go and buy stuff to make for other people.  It’s what I have done for years.  I don’t mind making baby items for people in my life (now, in the past yes).  Mostly now it might just bring some wistful feelings, but that is about it.  I think the fabric section bothered me because it was multiple members of M’s family planning and helping to pick something out for the new baby.  M’s mother is a very talented seamstress (people pay for her sewing abilities) and I always had a vision of the things that she would make for our children and the things we would plan together.  I’m still not sure how to put in words what I was feeling…maybe left out or excluded in a way, resentful and jealous, sad and lonely?  Why do so many emotions crowd in at the same time?  One emotion at a time is easy to deal with, but thow the big ball of them at me at once and it makes it impossible to walk into those rows of bolts that contain the happy baby fabric.