Embrace your inner Hippie

Start writing....

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The Hippie Festival I attended last year asked for some Yarn Bombing Volounteers for the Campgrounds Bowl Stage area and so it bagan...

I'd been craft stagnant for awhile, several years worth of stagnant really after a relative randomly showed up with a pattern, fabric and novelties for "a" sewn, stuffed, clothed and painted chicken (complete with unpainted eggs of which were to be assembled after painting & speckling into a tiny wicker basket lined with a woven hand fringed woven mini blanket that She wanted me to make 4 of for her - of course it was a free gratis intent (on her part) based on that I "got to keep one".

The chickens required tea dyed leggings that I made from the tops of socks to go over their painted legs. Their tiny wattles & combs were to be cut from fabric, stitched, clipped, hand tied, painted and then attached.

The stagnation came after likley 80+ hours of work completed chickens. Years later the sister asked if I still had the pattern she gave me wanted "another one of them".

I. Was. Shook.

I recalled how not long before the same said sister remarked on her "poor friend Anna" that sells crafts at craft fairs and how she "just couldn't make any money because no one wants to pay her for her time" and I couldn't motivate.

It had been years since I'd sewn and the fabric she wanted me to use was from a set of high end linen curtains that she'd taken down from her daughters room.

So finally after a few days of beating myself up I drug out the chiken pattern, ironed it, arranged it on fabric, pinned it & wallah, began to cut, or so I thought. I no longer had my sewing shears, it'd been some 15 years and with that, attempting to cut the fabric with the scissors on hand was like using pliers on limp cardboard.

I was having a hard enough time motivating and normally Im staving off strenuous wrist & digit movements to guard against carpal tunnel flare up.

Being Disabled & on a fixed income and expenditures lifestyle I was not in any type of position to purchase a new set of quality scissors.

That same sister (that also "mentioned" how she and her husband have "saved up 800,000.00 dollars" in a snide remark as if "anyone can do so, I know it can be done" if they try) did say "if you need anything else, just let me know" - well, see, she really meant "notions" etc. not a tool. A tool that was needed so that the (unpaid) work required to begin.

Instead of telling her/asking her for money for an adequate pair of new scissors, nominally at the very least $20+, (that I envisioned her saying "was extravagant") or I figured she'd may come up with a random pair I could borrow etc etc, - any excuse to avoid the purchase of such a frivolous item. I can only base what I feel she'd have responded with based on what I've known and seen through the years. I wasn't ready for another put down.

So instead I cried, I looked at the mangled linen with the now torn pattern piece & pins all awry and cried, sobbed really, angry with myself for even trying.

Angry at myself for never expressing to her before when approached to fabricate the initial chickens and the hurt that came with her knowing any rational person expects to pay for requested skilled work.

Her son is a carpenter, should I expect him if I were to boldly ask him to build me a cabinet & drop off enough wood & hinges & screws etc buy all the stuff & say "I'm giving you enough to make one for yourself as well"? Well, I'm certain that would not go over well. At ALL. Likley someone would spout off that I had alot of audacity to expect free labor for random goods & be appauled that I asked.

I felt used, insulted, hurt and basically remained emotionally damaged now 30 years over doing a favor for her that she so nonchalantly expected to be repeated 15 years later at whim.

I thought to myself...but, why does she not ask her "friend" to make them?...(that friend that expects pay for service?) I know why, cuz at a Seamstress hourly rate a, "one" chicken of that caliber, approximately 20 hours worth of work would cost about $500.00 in all inclusive labor to procure a finished product...

Not ever do I recall saying anything to the effect of "Whatever you want me to craft for you I'll do it for free" to her. I realized being 11 years younger than her that she'd been doing it since I was young.

As a pre-teen I made Macrame' plant hangars for her, of course by pattern, with beads and it took literally days...days.

I'm feeling grateful now tho, grateful to have the opportunity TO volunteer without BEING volunteered.

I've been enjoying crocheting some freestyle flowers to place within the Yarn Bombing applications at the Hippie Festival this coming Fall & even going to try to fabricate some footless sandals from hemp twine & beads & sueded cord.

Happy Hippie crafting from here on out!