Welcome to Nice Tattoo's Craft-a-palozza!!

I blame Walgreen's for this one. They have this bin of dollar socks now, and I can't seem to walk past them without picking one up. I have a fondness for the sock creatures, because they have no rules. Or, rather, their rules are bendable, and so I never know what they're going to look like until I'm done. As I was hunting for buttons for his eyes, my roommate said, "He needs hair. He's ugly."

Well, I thought that was pretty judgemental, but I humored her. Instead of yarn, I shredded a left over sock part and sewed it on. He's sort of a tiki-esque monster, don't you think?

The unexpected is always welcome when I'm working. My very first memory of being with my Mother, is of being in the cart, in line to get fabric cut. She made everything, curtains, clothes. She even made some of our underwear in the '70's. Raise your hand if you remember Stretch-and-Sew. She taught me a love of fabric, and passed on her weakness for buying a piece "because it's so pretty."

What she couldn't teach me was a love of patterns. She tried. She tried to get me to measure, to pin. When I inherited my first sewing machine, a White in a big cabinet that had a need pedal rather than a foot pedal, she bought cut-outs for me to make as gifts. Alice in Wonderland, I still remember. The pattern was right there, I just had to guide my needle around the curvy parts. And clip the corners, and stuff to just the right hardness....

They were all good lessons, and so were the ones that followed, like, ironing all the pattern pieces out so it was easier to pin. And pinning. Yuck, pinning.

Now, my poor Mother is a big fan of my sewing, but like my writing, she doesn't really want to know where I came up with things. I do use patterns, to a point, but I'll never been one to lay everthing out on the table and pin, and cut, and unpin, and clip, and.... No, I like my stuff much simpler than that. So the monsters. They all start out the same way, but then, somewhere along the line, they surprise me.