Merry Christmas to me…

In a desperate attempt to make something, anything, just to use my sewing machine or some other piece of equipment in my studio that has been staring me in the face daily for the last 2-3 weeks, I made myself a little early Christmas present.

The back story…

I’ve mentioned this project I’ve been working on before.  I’m going into my fifth year, and it has been a Herculean job to say the least.  It all started because,

1. My husband and I have way too much stuff and I was racking my brain as to what to buy him for his 60th birthday, which was almost 5 years ago.
2. My husband is a fantastic photographer.
3. We have been together more than 40 years.
4. We have traveled the world
5. We have more pictures/slides/digital images than God.
6. No one ever looks at them.
7. We have a life there, but no way to access it (especially the stuff from the 70’s, since they are all in slide form and we no longer own a projector… can you imagine?  Gather round kids, let’s look at slides from when your parents were in their 20’s.  I’ll bring the popcorn!)

So five years ago, I got this idea and have been doggedly working on it ever since.  At first I had larger goals of a decade at a time.  Then the kids came in the 90’s and I thought a couple of years at a time worked OK.  Then my husband switched to digital in 2000.  Now trying to finish a year at a time for a Christmas/Birthday present is a full time job.  But I will say that the best gift I could have sent my son for Christmas while he was stationed in Qatar last year, was a thumb drive, literally the size of my thumb, I think actually it was the size of a Lego brick, in fact it was a Lego brick now that I recall…

The thumb drive, or Lego brick as it were, had the entire family album from 1974 – 2005.  There was a lot of reminiscing and viewing and laughing and remembering going on.

So now I’ve spent the better part of December, in between doctor’s visits and tests with my husband, working on 2006.  This was the largest year yet in terms of images.  It was the last great family vacation we had together, and we spent 10 days in England, mostly around London.  The album for 2006, now complete, is 172 pages.  I print one hard copy for the shelf, and then save the file in about 15 different places in two different formats, including multiple cloud sources.  I wrap the hard copy up and tie a pretty bow.  Sorry Kevin, I know you will read this, it isn’t like you don’t know at this point what you are getting for Christmas.

Though this exercise is really tedious at times, and my back is killing me from sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day, and my eyes are crossing, and I feel real sympathy for anyone with a desk job who does this sort of thing for a living, it has been a glorious journey through our lives together, finding events and photos I’ve forgotten about, reliving proud moments in our lives.  I highly recommend this for anyone with drawers full of slides and photos, especially those still in the envelopes from the drug store photo place.  You don’t need much.  A basic scanner and a photo editing program like Photoshop Elements.  You can even pay someone to scan for you.  And then I arrange.  I insert a half dozen or so photos into a PowerPoint slide, resize and move around in a pleasing composition, put borders, text, clip art, and logos from places we have been.  And occasionally some interesting fact that I probably didn’t even know at the time we went but Goggle is a wonderful thing.

So, now that I’m finished, I desperately wanted to make something, anything that wouldn’t take six months like most of the things I do.  This little magazine clipping has been laying on my desk for a few weeks now, peeking out from my legal pad where I kept notes of what images I wanted for each page of a slide in the album.

I have a knitting bag.  It is a mess.  All of the needles I own and use regularly are all floating around in the bottom of the bag, in no particular order, though in my defense they are still in their original packaging.  I’ve been toting the knitting bag all over creation, at least a dozen doctor’s offices, two hospitals, basically anyplace where knitting is appropriate.  I have to sort through a dozen or so packages to find the needles I want whenever I have to switch needles or start a new project.

I saw this needle case in KnitPicks Catalog, and loved the idea.  It isn’t that I’m too cheap to buy that one, but I need a more custom one for what I use and knit with.  I didn’t want any writing on it, and besides, how hard could it be to make my own.  I sketched out  the dimensions, made up patterns with Red-Dot tracer, looked through my stash of fabrics for something pretty, weaverly looking, and lightweight, and found a couple zippers for the zippered pouch part.

I spent all last evening at the sewing machine.  It felt soooo good.  Which took my mind off getting sick.  Which I am.  I caught it from my daughter.  Probably just a cold, but not great timing.  I’ve already had to shelve a few holiday plans.  Hers has gone into Bronchitis and she has missed a lot of work.  I’m trying to keep mine in check.  But I digress.

The end result is this very cool bag, where all my needles are together, as a happy family.  And I’m appalled at how many duplication’s I have.  Mostly what happens is I break my beautiful KnitPicks needles, always while I’m on the road, and have to go buy some, usually Addi’s, and then call KnitPicks when I get home and get the broken ones replaced.  They are really good about that.  I love their needles, especially the tips, but they don’t travel well.  And this case may make it worse.  Who knows?

I needed a tie and thought about what was laying around in my studio.  I have a box of all things inkle woven, and dug through it and pulled out a lovely narrow shoelace that matched perfectly.  The shoe lace was done by my daughter, 10 years ago, on an inkle loom (she would have been 12).  She wrote an article for Weavezine magazine on how to make shoelaces two or three years later.  You can find it here.  Though the online magazine is no longer being published, bless Syne Mitchell for keeping the archives available.

And so I have a tie, made by my daughter many years ago, and I think that is the most perfect Christmas present.  My needles are all organized, the needle case is plopped into my knitting bag, and now I will go look for more trouble to get into…

For those that celebrate Christmas, I hope you get what you want, and that it includes lots of fibery things.  For those that don’t, treat yourself.  Make something wonderful or just something serviceable.  Same thing…

Stay tuned…