Crochet!

My New Hobby

Well, my goal for the weekend was to do something crafty, and to hang up all the picture frames and mirrors in our place.  I was going to try and be crafty by making a clock wall and hanging up all of the mismatched clocks that me and Cody have collected over the years and set them all to different time zones of places that mean something to us.

I'm not happy to say this, but I achieved NONE of these goals...there are no pictures hanging on the walls, no clocks, and no time zones...

BUT, I did attempt to do something crafty!  Last night, I decided I need a new hobby.  I want to learn how to do something productive, so I am taking up crochet.  I just feel like my generation of kids grew up not learning how to build things or make things like our parents did.

My mom can cross-stitch, sew, crochet, make jewelry...pretty much anything craft-related, she can do.  Cody's mom sews...Dana's mom taught her how to quilt.  Not to mention my dad.  He has always built us shelves, desks, chairs, book cases, dresser drawers...you name it.  Cody's dad builds things too.

I feel like I don't know how to do anything.  I mean, I can sew a little bit.  But that's about it.  Our society today, in my opinion, doesn't value the ability to do things yourself because things are just so readily available to us.  Why build something when you can go out and buy it?

But I want to posses a skill that I can pass along and teach to my children someday.

When I was little, my mom taught me how to make a basic crochet chain.  So I decided that it would be cool to try and teach myself how to make some things like blankets, or scarves.  I feel like those should be easy things to start out with since they are basically just squares.  And my mom told me she'd help me some this weekend when we go home for labor day.

I also want to learn how to build things with power tools.  For example, Cody brought thousands of DVD's to our marriage.  And we have no where to put them so they are just all in messy stacks around the TV downstairs.  I would love to just be able to sketch something up and build it exactly the way that I want it to set our TV on and also store all our DVD's.  In fact, I think that I am going to sketch something up and then when we go home see if either my dad or Cody's dad can help us with it.

I'm bringing all this up because yesterday, me and Cody went to IKEA for the first time with some friends from Sherman who just moved down to College Station.  IKEA is great, they have tons of neat stuff there.  But, in my opinion, it either looks really cheap, or more of a modern style than I want.  I like furniture that looks antique.  It just seems like older stuff was built better, and it lasts a lot longer than this new stuff that isn't even made out of real wood.  And now that I finally have a good job, and I'm married, I think I want to be accumulating things that are going to last for a while.

Any thoughts or opinions?