On crochet and my "make-and-do" phase.

I was just hanging around in my room earlier, just reading a good book. It was a good read, but I found my mind wandering. ADHD moment, ahaha. So I put the book down and went to the room across the hall and opened one of the drawers where I knew I would find some of my old junk. Looking at my old stuff is one of my favorite boredom-busting activities.

At the bottom, I found a plastic bag, its material translucent enough for me to see a lot of colorful stuff inside. When I opened it, I had discovered where all my missing yarn and hooks had gone. There were the black, purple and red balls of yarn that I had used to bind old notebooks. There was an old hook from a craft set my mom gave me to create a shag pillow. And a huge spool of white crochet yarn. Connected to the white yarn was an old abandoned project of mine, a small crochet bag modeled after those Sak bags.

I miss doing any kind of arts and crafts. I remember that most of the books I checked out of the grade school library (if not Bobbsey Twins or Nancy Drew) were "make-and-do" books. I made toy houses out of my dad's balikbayan boxes and dragged them to every room in the house. I dismantled my doll houses and improvised new ones out of them. I once made a "car" out of shoe boxes for one of my stuffed teddy bears, and I even sewed him shirts and even a jumper from scraps of fabric I found lying around the house. When Iam started toting around a pouch bag as a purse back in 5th or 6th grade, I spent one weekend making drawstring bags out of old pillowcases. Haha, Rosa wanted one as well, so I made her a similar bag out of yellow silk that I was saving for a future project. I once "stole" a huge piece of black cloth from my mom's fabric collection and transformed it into a T-dress for a project.

When I had typhoid fever during one summer, my aunt taught me the art of crochet to keep me from getting bored. Those basic stitches helped me get ahead in Home Economics class in 6th and 7th grade when we had to do crochet projects. I got envious glares from my classmates as they watched me do consecutive chains quicker than they could knot. In 7th grade, we were required to glue stitches we had learned to our notebooks for our teacher to check each time. I remember one particular classmate who once "borrowed" my notebook to check if I had copied the instructions right. When I had opened my notebook, I had realized that she had torn off at least a couple of my work and passed it as her own. Instead of getting mad or retaliating or whatever, I ended up just shrugging it off. If she doesn't know how to do those simple stitches herself, she's going to have a tough time when we started doing the huge motif projects. And she did, hyukhyuk.

I took out that spool of white yarn and the crochet hook and tried to see what I remember. As I created chains and doubles and triples, I realized how I missed doing crochet projects, and how therapeutic it was. I missed the delight in learning a new decorative stitch (haha, even the most simple ones, like the cluster and the popcorn). I loved the idea of creating my own patterns before.

I want to to do arts and crafts again. Too many techie people today. (Ha? Ano raw?) Maybe I can start crocheting again. I already have a little project (or two) in mind. All I have to do next is look for some good quality yarn in a nice shade of blue and a size 3 hook.