After Midnight

It's been a long time since I've stayed up this late willingly. What, you may ask, has me awake at such an odd hour? A surge of craftiness.

Ever since my SIL proposed the hand-made Christmas, I've been almost fiendishly seeking out ideas for things to make. I'm one of those folks that can come up with a million and one great ideas, but never is capable of following through. This year will be different. I'm financially obligated now.

Over the past week or so I've been craft store hunting, thrift store scrounging, and otherwise plotting the creation of goodies for all the good boys and girls on my list. And it's only the beginning of March! See, plenty of time to screw up a few times and still come up with something before the big day.


I'd love to show you some of the stuff I've been working on, but the production has been ridiculously slow for a variety of reasons.

1. My house is rather small and quite overpopulated at the moment. Take 1000 square feet, divide it by three adults, two kids, two dogs, two cats, an aquarium, and all of the stuff that comes along with them, and you've got a disastrously small amount of elbow room.
2. I haven't touched my sewing machine in about 3 years. Everything I ever thought I knew about sewing is filed somewhere deep back behind the place that helps me remember where the munchkin left his favorite spaceship, which cushion the remote is under, back even behind the little wifely GPS that allows me to always know where hubby left his wallet, his keys, and his glasses. We're just getting reacquainted, and the going is slow.
3. Real life seems to get in the way of the things we really WANT to be doing.
4. If I showed you pictures, then Christmas wouldn't be much of a surprise, would it?
5. Besides the crafty Christmas projects, I've also got a major lawn/garden upheaval going on. Plants can't be tucked back in the closet the way that fabric can.
6. I don't have a dedicated room where I can leave my crafty mess laid out and just shut the door. No. Every time I want to work on something I must pull out the necessary supplies, set up the necessary equipment in a way that will not disturb the traffic flow, interfere with the playspace of small children, or appear interesting to two curious cats. Then, after being interrupted for the 100th time in an hour, must pack it all neatly back away. The set up/clean up takes longer than the actual crafting time.
Let's just leave it with this: There is fabric involved. There are beads involved, and there, of course will be yarn involved. What else? Well, that is still to be determined.

And if anyone wants to know what I need and want more than anything else for Christmast this year-- 1000 more square feet!