Blog Merry-Go-Round - What was your journey to your craft?

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.

Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left). If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...

This month's question:

What was your journey to your craft?

Short answer: the journey through life.

And doesn't that sound grand! .^.^.

The LP * answer is that, one of my earliest memories, and I think my very earliest happy memory, is of crafting. Many of my happy memories are.

When I was six or seven, I had come up with that that "technique" that would probably be called altered art or scrapbooking — or altered scrapbooking??? — nowadays. It all began with recycling (I'm a child of the seventies, I am!) trimming peels from my colour pencils, as well as the mine, whenever that broke off, and glueing them into flowers on drawing paper. Of course, I ended up destroying all of my pencils in order to get the materials for my art...

I have always remained convinced that this was a great idea. But sadly, no one else was... Still, I can remember the pride and relish in having created something without anyone telling me how to... and without anyone doing the same.

After that, I concentrated on school...

But later on, I had my mother show me how to knit, I also created the most peculiar attires for my Barbie doll (yes, you only needed one in those days, and you changed its clothes, not the whole doll, when you wanted a new style...), sewing them as best I could with more attention to texture than to style...

There were many more crafty adventures, including clay pot-making classes when I was about twelve (hopeless!), and I was eager to pick up all I could from craft and drawing classes (though I had no luck when it came to actual drawing, I'm afraid— hopeless too). A lot of pottering about and DIY, generally.

Then, about eight years ago, I got my dream Christmas present: a sewing machine! I took a series of classes at a neighbourhood Singer shop. Very well spent money, that. I then made myself several darling dresses. I never wear dresses, but these— well, a couple of them— I did wear, with pride.

And then— and then—

Until, one day, in Paris (I was living up there at the time), I was window-shopping with a cross-stitcher friend and we entered that shop. It was (still is, as far as I know) called Le Bonheur des Dames (from the name of a nineteenth-century departement store in the eponymous Zola novel, it means something like "Ladies' Joy"...). All about cross-stitching. Wonderful patterns, colours, textures (silk, linen... Ahhh!...). I bought half-a-dozen tiny Scottish heritage patterns... and I was a lost woman.

For a couple of years, I stitched away like crazy.

     Then, about three years ago, without noticing at first, I bought this cute beach-chair pattern, that included seed beads. I loved the combining of materials. I looked into beads. Then I discovered that you could actually buy pearls and... I never looked back!

I am still discovering, exploring, associating, imagining... everyday, and even sometimes creating!

*(for Long-Playing. Yes, I'm a dinosaur— I used to buy vinyl records though I'm no DJ)