YOU MIGHT BE A DIE HARD CRAFTER IF...

Handy Hubby had the week off work last week and it was kind of a long week to be sure, this is how it began...I'd been sitting on the sofa all of 49 minutes when I noticed the restless twitch begin. I turned to see if Handy Hubby had noticed. Oh yeah, he noticed, big time. I returned his cheeky little boy gin with an equally cheeky little girl one with the same air of challenge. I can do this. I can do this. I. CAN. DO. THIS! rolled through my mind as I sat there ever so serenely. I fooled no one, not him and not myself.

I casually got up to his questioning where ya goin' look and said I was just going to get a magazine. One whole entire minute later, much to my horror, I realized that I had packed a magazine I had already read...from cover to cover. Nooooo! This cannot be happening my thoughts shouted. So I sat and thumbed through the pages looking at pictures I had already seen while feigning interest.This is supposed to be relaxing I kept reminding myself. It is only for a few days, which, by the way, felt like a few years stretching out before me. Why on earth did I let him goad me into the bet? Rewinding the conversation in my mind I pictured myself standing in my studio contemplating what to bring with me to the farm to keep myself entertained. He poked his head in the door telling me to take a break and just leave it. I looked at him like he had two heads.

That is when he challenged me...to go a few whole days at the farm without ANY crafting supplies or projects. Just so you know, this no crafting thing was added to the list of the fact that the farm gets zero TV reception, no cell phone signal, no cable/satellite, no Internet, a radio that gets a scratchy country station, and no people in sight. This was his version of Survivor and for some stupid reason I decided to rise to the challenge...no crafting for a few days, easy peasy!Jerking back to the present I checked the clock, yep, I'd sure enough been sitting on the sofa a whole 49 minutes...absorbed in silence...looking out the window...when my leg began to bounce...my body started to fidget...and I thought I felt something akin to a full blown panic attack set in. I plastered a placid look on my face as he passed me, tool kit in hand, to fix the plumbing under the bathroom sink and that is when I cheated. Yes, people, I admit it...I CHEATED!

While I was twitching my mind was busy doing a mental inventory of ALL the contents of the house. Scissor? Check! Glue or tape? Nope, dried out, nuts! Maybe I could invent a paste from flour and water? Paper? Lined note pad, old phone book, yellowed newspaper lining hall shelf (might be a good find!), wax paper, freezer wrap, paper towels, toilet paper! Check, check, and check, well, maybe not the toilet paper. Coffee filters! Check! Oh, there might be food coloring, there is coffee and tea...dye! Check!Think, think, think...B.I.N.G.O! THE BUTTON BOX!!! I did not think anyone had removed the button box! Happy happy joy joy! Happy happy joy! Do you even know what a score a button box is? It not only has buttons but needles, threads, little patches of denim, thimbles, and trinkets of all sorts. And, I knew where some fabric was, nana nana boo boo!

With great stealth I slipped past the bathroom while his head was under the sink. My heart was thudding in my chest at getting caught. Holding my breath I stepped into Granny's old room and there it was, just as it had always been, the black tin with colorful flowers on top, resting on the back right corner of the chest of drawers. Gingerly lifting it from its resting place I cradled it like some priceless treasure while tip toeing over to the big bouncy iron bed.Scooting to the middle I opened the tin. As I quietly sifted through the contents, I discovered there was almost everything a crafter would need alongside the imagination to create something. I put everything back and slipped into the laundry/mudroom quickly fingering through the "rag bag" as Granny called it and hit pay dirt - old pieces of linen from a worn out table cloth, barely there soft scraps of bleached thin t-shirts, faded prints from sheeting, scraps of overall denim, oh the possibilities! But wait...there was that bet thing.

I heard the metallic clink of tool hitting tool as they were being placed back in the tool box. Scooting through the kitchen to avoid being detected I whoosed back into my spot on the sofa just in the nick of time. As he passes he asks me if I have figured out what I was going to do yet while giving me a look as if he suspects I have been up to something but he can't quite figure it out. I ask him if I can borrow his little work computer from his truck. He wants to know why. I simply said I felt a blog post coming on.Two hours and seven minutes later I have not actually cheated, unless thinking about it and sort of planning for it counts, a blog post is born and saved to WordPad, it is almost time for a big night out on the town, a trip the local Daisy Queen, serving the community since 1966, for a fish basket, with only 59 hours and 53 more minutes to go...until I am back in the studio!

You might be a die hard crafter if you can't go more than 49 minutes without withdrawal symptoms showing up...jonesing for glue gumming up your fingers, the sound of scissors snipping, or doing a mental supply inventory that might even include the unlikely supply of toilet paper!

Blessings,

Miss Sandy

P.S. Funny note to tack on to the end of the story...We were supposed to stay for a few days at the farm...resting and relaxing, at Handy Hubby's suggestion, right? By 10:00 AM on day two of said resting and relaxing trip...HE had had enough of doing without all his modern amenities and was rushing me to pack and head home! Probably saved me from really cheating but lets just keep that between us, shall we? So, technically, I won the bet!