This isn’t a new thought or anything, I think about my cycle a lot. My craft cycle that is. I talked to Sue today and she mentioned I’d been knitting a lot, and I have. See I go through these cycles, I think I have all my life. Maybe my mom will remember my first one, I bet it had to do with scissors and crayons, am I right. I’m just going to hit the last six years or so.

1). Beading. My first real obsession with beading came on a family trip to the redwoods, we stopped at this place that was so huge and wonderful to my like 12 year old self: The Garden of Beadin. I still have some of my beads from here because I bought them under a kinda spell, they are fun and funky, birds and things, with no real purpose for the kind of jewelry I make. I got into it big time a few years ago and Bj made me this wonderful wooden box for my birthday, he also sorted all my beads into these glass specimen containers, so so cool. I love turning them in my fingers and seeing the glass of the beads catch the light.

2). The Fine Arts. As in my degree. Painting, printmaking, oil and acrylic paintings, instillation work, photography. I loved being an art major. I loved all of these things, my upper level printing and painting classes were my life. Late nights at the studio, gallons of diet coke, crazy ideas and wonderful results.

3). Scrapbooking. I first started scrapbooking "for real" the summer before my senior year. I wanted to get it all down, I realized how fast school was going by, with crew and everything. I couldn’t even define all the years, they were running together. I got a simple Kolo set up, and started that way.

4). Quilting. Collecting paper and collecting fabric, they go hand in hand for me. I love vintage finds, and new crazy colors, stacking them up together, cutting up and sewing it. The actual quilting part, well..

5). Scrapbooking. So then I got into scrapbooking, like really into it. I worked for a scrapbooking company and if there was a slightly damaged piece of paper or extra of something they would give it to the people who worked there, including me. At first I didn’t discriminate and took anything it was all so cool to me. Then I had a major purge, found my style and stocked up on stuff, lots of stuff.

6). Knitting. I had learned knitting pretty young. With big needles and acrylic yarn. I picked it up from time to time, knitting washcloths and stuff. A new shop opened up in town and I got to see all the cool stuff, Nora, real wool, yum, yum. Then I moved onto scarfs, hats, socks, mittens, now the sweater. It’s so relaxing and portable, and I feel I can still be social with other people because usually I can talk while I’m working on projects.

7). Spinning. The new one. This is really fun and I did buy my wheel. I got it with the money my grandmother and grandfather left me, something really cool to remember forever. I hope to get into this more.

I think that pretty much covers everything that I still have contact with, you know I left out fleeting things like candle making and collage (which was huge for me in high school, I have a huge large paper collection, it’s under my bed). I miss all the things I am doing them when ever I’m not doing them. I wish I could do them all at once. I think Bj thinks I’m a little crazy, the way I jump from one thing to another. Totally stock up for something, get all into it, and then go, hey I want to do this. I have these dreams for a huge studio. Because I think if I had to pick one thing I super ultra miss, it’s painting and printmaking. The things I can not do here. The pulling up of a print after it goes through the press, ahhh I’m drooling over here. So what is the point of all this? Well that I haven’t forgotten about the other things. And I’m probably going to get kicked off stuffdock (a compilation of scrapbooking blogs), not that I know how they chose me to be on there in the first place, because I haven’t scrapbooked in so long. So maybe some day I’ll find out how to do them all at the same time and come up with this awesome joint project. We’ll see…