Crafting, several ways

Yesterday I stopped at Staples for their $5 big plastic bin sale, and they were all sold out! I’m sure the clerk and store manager thought I was completely insane from my reaction. What can I say? — I was quite distressed. The manager said the bins “just flew” out of the store. I wished I’d anticipated that when we first saw the bins. I drove to Hercules for my Yin Yoga class and got there early, then noticed the Home Depot in the same plaza as the studio. Lo and behold, they had 56-quart bins (Staples’s were 64) for $4.97 apiece. I bought half a dozen.

At home, I began sorting my many wools to put into bins. I have a huge number of rolled wool strips for rug-making. I took them all out and put them in piles by color. I’ll admit that this was incredibly, self-indulgently, inner-child-ishly fun. Why? I could pretend I was making wedding cakes. Isn’t that pink roll just amazingly like an icing rose?

The wool strips and yardages, all together, ended up filling four of my six big bins. I put sheer fabrics and lightweight big pieces of fabric into the other two, and so concluded my evening’s organization. I need to go buy more of these bins — and perhaps some in other sizes too — to contain my other fabrics and supplies. The plan is to cut swatches from each fabric (which, naturally, I forgot to do while filling these bins, so I’ll have to take everything back out again later) and stick them onto cards with the care instructions, and then hole-punch these cards and string them on big rings. Then I can store all the bins in the basement, keeping the card rings out for reference. I wish the bins didn’t have to go into the cold, slightly creepy basement, but there’s just no room for them up here. Even just the six bins, stacked, take up a huge amount of space, and I’m going to need to add so many more.

Craft organizing is really fascinating and satisfying, though. It’s a relief to start putting my fabrics into categorized sealed bins, after keeping them for so long in unlidded, unlabeled cardboard boxes and bags, and stashed in dresser drawers in the guest room.

Today I went to visit Jinny, so I got to see her craft space for the first time. She has a giant conference table in the dining area and most of her supplies tucked away neatly in cool cubbylike shelving that sits close at hand to the table. She also has an enviable library of crafting books, which she keeps both for instruction (patterns) and inspiration (Japanese and French books and magazines). We had ramen, brainstormed our shared booth at the upcoming Craft Happy fair (I venture to say it will be grand), and went shopping at Kinokuniya and at a bead store.

At the latter shop I made my largest purchase of new beads — mostly Japanese seed beads, with some others thrown in for interest — since the beading birthday party I had in sixth grade! I tend to be very conservative about buying crafting supplies new, because that goes against my determination to use recycled, vintage, and secondhand materials as much as possible. But I don’t have the connections or the time to source unused secondhand jewelry findings, and I haven’t been able to find many vintage beads either (I suppose I could take vintage jewelry apart or post wanted ads on craigslist). I hope today’s purchase will keep me going for a while with my (very modest) bead needs!

As for where beads fit into my current Etsy inventory, they don’t really, but I’m hoping they will play a much larger role in my Craft Happy creations. As of now, for the event, I plan to focus less on my larger bags and more on smaller items, which will include some designs that have not yet appeared in my shop. But I have a lot of prototyping and testing and refining to do before then, and as I keep whining this week, I’m already behind on everything. So wish me luck! Tomorrow I may get a (finally!) full work day and can (I hope) speed through many of the items on my action lists. Then I can get to the fun business of trying out new designs for the March show.