Found my sewing machine again

Since we moved, I’ve been sort of avoiding my sewing machine. It’s always a massive pain to move around my crafting stuff, and it always results in me sort of avoiding some craft or another until I finally get around to putting things together.  But I finally did get to the sewing machine things and had previously unearthed the cutting mat (which has mysteriously and sadly become warped) for my papercut project.

On Monday I took the day off and decided to work on a new sewing project. It’s one I’ve been considering for a while due to all the hand sewing and crocheting I’ve done in the past year, and the handwork I expect to do this year.  Over time I’ve gathered a collection of portable tools that currently reside in a motley collection of bags. Mostly, the bags are the result of the free samples that Clinique periodically gives out. This is not exactly ideal.

Plus, I’ve run out of room for all my hooks in the crochet hook roll I made myself. So the material there on the left is for making a new set of portable tool-holders and handwork helpers. I’ve been putting in an hour or so of work on it every night. Yes, it’s taking that much time! I’m planning 3 zippered bags, 2 pincushions, 2 crochet hook rolls and 2 more keepers of another sort, plus a long-awaited mat for my sewing machine and something for car crafting. I’m making up all the patterns – essentially refining the jury-rigged versions I have now.

Hey, it’s a lot of stuff, but if you’re going to do it, might as well go big, right? Plus, this way it will all match!

Tool talk always reminds me of chimpanzees. Back in some anthropology course I took sometime we talked about chimpanzees putting twigs into anthills, waiting for the ants to climb on, and then eating the ants off the twig. This was, apparently, very interesting because it’s a rare example of tool use by an animal. The use of tools seems to relate to learned behavior and intelligence, and humans are nearly unique in their adoption of tools.

In that case, with the immense quantity and variety of tools required to craft, that means crafters are be a pretty darn smart group of folks, right?

Why is it that I always end up choosing green and purple when free to choose any colors? In no other area of my life (clothing, crochet, etc.) do I choose green and purple. Yet it’s always my choice in sewing. Let’s review: many, many quilt designs, my sewing machine cover, and my crochet accessories holders, and stuff from pre-blog days: a pieced quilt top I made but never actually attached to a blanket, a chair cover, some pillows … all green and purple.

Ah well, I’m nattering on now. Should work on a hat or something …