Saturday, March 10, 2012

Crafts and Family History

Plastic Canvas Organized by midgefrazel
Plastic Canvas Organized, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.
What do crafts have to do with family history? [Blog Post 1]

Just in case you read the title of this blog post and thought, "Oh, this is just about knitting, crocheting or something (dumb) like that." You are wrong. This blog post is about genealogy and family history. (I have two photos to show so this is blog post #1.)

I am slowly getting to the unpacking of various plastic totes that are not considered immediately essential to my daily life. This week, I walked around in a craft store looking for materials for doing scrapbooking. My daughter loves to do that and I support her habit. I think it is her way of "doing family history".
I hope you agree.

While in the store, I wandered over to the yarn section and looked at the "plastic canvas" materials. My grandmother, who was an accomplished needle-worker, loved to work with plastic canvas when she got old and bed ridden. I bought her anything she wanted and while we talked she would pick up the needlework and talk to me. This is a way of working with oral history. [Gingerbread house]

I am thinking that I should start preparing myself for being old and I can do that by gathering up some materials and working on projects while I sit on my new porch. Hey, I am a grandmother now.

Hubs has become a connoisseur of plastic bags and boxes. He likes to fish. He's been amazed at all the cool organizing things he can buy to store his lures. He's been eying my collection of zippered bags. He's been stealing my stash. Hey.

As you can see, I have made progess this week with the organizing. Wegman's ("the Disneyland of grocery stores") carries the PINT Ziploc freezer bags. I was very excited. I use these for everything and I was getting low. I use them to pack items in my suitcase, too.

Shown here, tiny zippered bags are for putting pills in your pocket and I buy them in the pharmacy section at Walmart. Just in case, you need them.

The other bags are for crafters. They come in various sizes. I have decided to start collecting them. Hubs is stealing them too!

This week, Marian Pierre-Louis, started to talk about knitting. I began to think about how many people I know, who are educators or genealogists who enjoy doing crafts. It reduces stress. I am sure of this, especially after going to the craft store after grocery shopping, where I felt amazing better. Well, maybe it was the coffee and chocolate croissant.

Anyway, I have pulled out my craft tote and reorganized it all. I put the small project in the tote bag shown here. Think of it as the file folder or pile of papers on your desk that are a brick wall ancestor. Every once in a while, you pull them out and review and maybe find out more information. This bag is now holding zipped bags with plastic canvas projects that are ready to be worked on on my front porch.

However, I ran into a problem....

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