Hobbies to Last a Lifetime

I've started making a whole plethora of crafts since I was three years old and I am absolutely serious when I write that. I used to do very simple origami, as well as those stars and geometrical shapes made of paper strips.

I really enjoyed cutting and pasting things at that age and I still do it from time to time, I even used it for a French presentation in Grade 11.


The cut-out is covered by a transparency and there are ribbons on both ends so the folder can be tied to prevent documents from falling out :]

For as far back as I can remember, I've been beading all my life.


I also started working with different kinds of clay and progressed from play dough (purchased and homemade), plasticine, polymer clay and ceramics. When I was fifteen and becoming vegetarian/vegan, I made marzipan creatures and flowers to decorate a cake I had made. I've also been stringing a whole smörgåsbord of different kinds of beads and knotting strings and gimp for friendship bracelets or Chinese knotting.


Around age 7, I started sewing somewhat more seriously. I bought a kit at the book fair in the library and started to learn quilting. I'm really not a very patient person, so they turned out rather ugly and useless. When I was 12, Mr. Sasaki made us sew some kind of Aboriginal design pieces. I don't have a sewing machine, but I've tried many times and I still can't seem get to get my grandmother's sewing machine to work properly. Recently, I've to hand sew almost everything: lace wrist warmers, lace gloves, skirts, hats, a dinosaur hoodie, and a reconstructed halter top and messenger bag. I also embellish my clothes with pieces of felt if I feel that they're too plain and sometimes I make little stuffed animals out of felt to make pins. There was also the duct tape era, where I used a regular sheet of paper and duct tape to make wallets and pencil cases. This lead to crafts from office supplies, which I make when it got really boring (almost all the time) when I was at work.


The paper clips still work, but they've just been transformed into little hearts <3

When the super long and thin straw fad came around, I also made bouquets of roses and jars upon jars of straws. I give them away or use them as bookends, but they're not very effective since they're not heavy enough.



I also made things from regular drinking straws, such as bracelets and animals, as well as my signature shrimp:

These straws were from Starbucks :3

The straws were from Ikea and I wanted to try fork bending. I didn't get a chance to upload how it looks from the front, but that's the basic idea.

Speaking of making things from everyday items, there was a time where I was begging people to eat the Starburst candies I had bought, but they were obligated to give the all wrappers to me in good condition. They had to be of a specific colour, so I could only buy selected flavours. I had a few blue and green ones or some other similar colours from when I hadn't decided what I wanted to make with them - I wanted to make a pheonix.



My dad came home with a weaving loom one day when I was about five, so I worked with that, but didn't like it very much.

To answer Seema's question: All of my dolls are crocheted. I think I started to learn to knit and crochet when I was maybe six years old with my grandmother, who is an expert at it. She was one of those old ladies who would make doilies out of cotton thinner than fingerling yarn. She made a cover for my piano with frills to hang from the top of it. Can you imagine how intricate and how long it must have taken her to make such a large cover of a beautiful design?? When we sold it, we gave it to the new owners, because we wouldn't have any use for it anymore. I hope they put it to good use. She also makes those little coaster-like things to put under flower vases.


At the time, I wasn't really good at either methods, because my attempted projects all had huge holes in it. I had had an on and off relationship with yarn. I took a break and when I came back to it, I insisted on knitting, borrowed and purchased a lot of books, searched up a lot of sites and bought more supplies and equipment than what was necessary. Eventually I moved on to crochet to design and create the dolls, which are known as Amigurumi, that you see on this blog. The most annoying thing about this activity is the way I manage to lose all my crochet hooks or knitting needles rather quickly, especially the most essential ones. *sigh*
I'll probably be alternating between the methods depending on my mood, like everything else I do. :3

My grandmother's eyes are failing her as she is aging, so she has passed down the yarn that she had in her house, just as she did with the Chinese knotting satin strings, and she is going to try her best to bring the rest of her stash from Taiwan. See? My yarn stash keeps growing, but I'm not alone. This happens to the best of us.


Please do not be alarmed. I still have cartons upon cartons of more unorganized of works in progress (works that have been abandoned and will probably be frogged sooner or later), more skeins of all colours, thicknesses, and fibres and qualities. I also plan to make a trip to Wal-Mart on Monday to check out whether they have new colours and varieties of yarn. I have a list of colours that I need to purchase:

• Different shades of orange, other than the neon one around the bottom right corner
  
• I'm in desperate need of more cyan and vibrant yellow
  
• Jumbo sizes of black and white or yellow
• Safety eyes if I can find them
• Whatever else catches my eye ;)
  

The focus of this post revolves around knitting and crochet because that's what I'm mostly working on at the moment. There was a point where I'd make a whole bunch of things out of pipe cleaners, felt, pom poms, glitter and sequins, but that was a long time ago and I don't have any completed pieces to display. Now, I use the felt to decorate the dolls and the pipe cleaners to put inside the arms and legs so that they can hold poses, like The Philosophical Frog. I have to remember to pick up white felt when I'm shopping for yarn, too.

So, how many years have I been knitting? I don't even know. Could you say something like twelve years on and off? I don't know.

I hope you enjoyed this post, because it seriously took me all day to write, maybe seven hours give or take.