And the avoidance of writing…

I’ve been experimenting with crafts lately. It’s hard, sometimes, with my MS brain, to summon words to my service. Yeah, yeah, I know. An excuse. All right, I’m tired of dusting the undersides of shelves while I pretend to be writing and so I’m wandering into fabric arts. Did knitting. Tried crocheting a bit (still unexplored territory). Now I’m into needle felting – a process where you take fluffy unspun wool and tremendously sharp needles and stab one with the other until things become shaped. Fun. Cathartic. A bit bloody. As all good crafts should be.

But then there’s wet felting. And, thanks to the miracle that is YouTube, I can pick sweet little projects to experiment with it. So today I thought I’d try felting a rock or two.

Yeah, it sounds odd. I mentioned it to my sister while pinging with her on Gmail. There was a rather significant silence. “To what end?”  she finally asked.

I didn’t have a good answer for her. I mean, you end up with a rock covered with felted wool. Big whoop. But as I was doing it, I started laughing. That alone was the reason. I mean, who in tarnation needs a felt-covered rock???  Strangely, it felt fun to do. It looks not bad. It is curious.

Of course, it is using up some of the vile coloured wool I bought in a kit. And I suppose they could be secret weapons – threaten to throw them at someone and once they stopped giggling, you could knock ’em right out.

It’s slippage, I know. I’ve been off on disability for a couple of years now and sent in countless unappreciated stories to various places, walked a lot, read a ton of books, exercised though it isn’t apparent, etc., etc. I am gradually losing my mind. Crafts are taking the empty spaces over.

I’ve told my chum that if I bring home plastic canvas to embroider he is to take me to a hospital post-haste. In the meantime, I can’t help thinking about what else I can felt. Glasses? Sticks? The TV remote? My dog? It’s too much fun to stop now. I know – I’ll head to the dollar store and buy some of those horrid polyresin statuettes and felt them. Could be cool. Or hideous. If all else fails, I can always sell them on Etsy…or is that Regretsy?

Sigh. I guess I’d better get back to my NYCMidnight Short Story entry…