From as long as I can remember, I’ve been a maker. I can remember my mom taking brown paper grocery sacks and cutting them open for artist canvases. I painted on them. I drew on them. I cut them up and made paper dolls and puppets. My imagination was a big as Texas and my mom encouraged me to follow my dreams.

Art class was my favorite. Whether I was making something with popsicle sticks or gluing tissue paper to make a “stained glass window”…I was in my happy place. When I was in high school, Mom sent me to art lessons with an artist in my hometown. I still remember her studio located in her home. It had three walls of floor to ceiling windows. The light was perfect and it overlooked a beautiful flower garden I was in hog heaven.

Over the years, I’ve picked up painting with pastels and acrylics. I’ve taught myself to knit and crochet and quilt. I’ve learned to smock dresses, sew clothes, and to turn silverware and antique maps into art jewelry. I can’t NOT be doing something with my hands. Writing is as much an art as any of the above and I pull my heart soul into all of it.

I haven’t crocheted for years and suddenly picked it up before Christmas to make scrubbies as stocking stuffers. I’ve made a tote and half of another one. And now I’m working on this mesh market bag. The pattern said it can be done in three hours. Ha! I’ve worked about ten hours on it already and I’m just a fraction into it. I forgot how fun crocheting is. I can’t do it like knitting. I can knit while watching TV…I don’t have to look at it. That’s not the case with crochet. I have to keep my eyes on it. I suppose that’s not so bad, but it’s probably why I’m so slow at it. I stop and look at the TV and any time I’m not looking at the needle, I’m not working it.

It was such a beautiful day yesterday. The sun was shining all day and it put a song in my heart. Mr. FixIt filled all the bird feeders for me and within moments my birdies came back full force. We have to find joy anywhere we can get it these days, whether its with a needle and yarn or a pair of cardinals and a chickadee or putting faces with names on a class page. It’s all good stuff.

❄️

”This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.“

Psalm 118:24 ESV