Play
I finished my convertible toy this week and she is adorable! I am very proud of her.
When I make, there is a lot of variation in completion. Some things get made. Some things get made several times over in different iterations. And some things get started, or even more than half way completed, and then sit. And sit.
Some are still sitting. Some got thrown away. (How expensive was the yarn…)
It’s not about time, and it’s not about skill.
I have a cable knit blanket that was so complicated that I couldn’t do anything simultaneously while I made it. No audiobooks or TV. Just me and the cable pattern and bamboo needles so the stitches didn’t fall off. And when the hard part was over, all there was (is) left was (is) the border. It has been almost a decade since I worked on that border.
But I have completed huge projects. Hours of labor and hundreds of dollars of yarn. Complicated designs I had to make up on my own.
I don’t know what it is that makes me finish and what makes me abandon a project. But I will tell you that it used to make me FEEL a certain way to look at all of my unfinished projects, like I wasn’t serious. Like I “never” followed through.
And then I really looked at all of the things I have completed. I have dozens of little pieces as well as multiple blankets at home and that doesn’t include any of the gifts I have made. Or the trinkets I made so I could practice a technique and then give them away. Or the things that I made to use every day like my craft basket or my cat’s “grab and go” basket so I can throw her favorite things in and hit the road. But why does the finishing have to mean so much?
The longer I have my eating under control the more I like myself, the more generous I can be with myself, the more I can listen to myself. The less I need to judge. After all, what is there to judge?
I am proud of my many and varied pieces. But also, I don’t need to put a judgement on everything. Why does a completed project have to mean more than an unfinished one to me? I am learning. I am playing. I am thinking. Why isn’t that just enough?
I heard an anecdote recently about a school that had two pottery classes. One was graded on the beauty of their final project. One was graded on the number of pieces they could make in the semester. They literally just put them on the scale and added up the weight. And then they had people (artists and non artists alike) view them in two rooms, and everyone said the best pieces were in the room where they prized quantity over quality. I bet the worst were there too. *shrug*
I want to play. I am almost 50 years old. I want to make and hate and throw away and love and be surprised, and push through the hating stage to the loving stage, to trust the process.
I only have this much time and awareness right now because I have twenty years of having my eating under control. In the food I exhibit all of the addict behavior. Because I have all of the addict thoughts. Two decades of not having constant food noise in my head gives me time and opportunity to examine my life, my choices, my body, my thinking, my morals and my priorities.
So anyway, I DID finish my toy. “Be home by midnight or you’ll turn into a Pumpkin.”
