My whole life I have been a crafter of some sort....there are very few things that I haven't tried (thinking about tatting, now) and have not enjoyed. The problem comes when you acquire a whole lot of different items devoted to these different hobbies. My husband thinks that I am addicted to collecting embroidery designs....I am so enthralled with the many things you can do with it and I do admit that I have a few designs. A lot of people collect things. Some collect stamps and coins, but I collect embroidery designs with the hope of some day retiring and setting up a little etsy web site and subsidizing our income. I have a good friend who tells me she makes enough with her business to take a nice vacation with her family each year. That's a nice goal. I ask you, my facebook friends, is there real harm with an addiction to collecting designs? Do I need some type of treatment? I collect free ones and sometimes I find really cute ones on sale. I like to make things for friends and the grand children. But I find that I don't have a lot of time right now to use the designs I collect. We are not going hungry nor do I not have money to pay the rent, so I con't think it is very serious. What do you think?
hugs
Michelle
Like most of us I have more designs than I can stitch in a lifetime but this is my personal stress-relief. Other women are shopping shoes (and their husbands have to build the shoe bins for them *lol*).
Does he have a work shop or another hobby? How often did he uses this? I was working as a kitchen sales(wo)man and so often men said that their wife don't need a dishwasher ("useless stuff - too expensive" or "my wife is the dishwasher"!). If you have asked if they have tools how much they have costed and how often they really used them they became quickly very quite...
Greetings, Bettina
PS: >my facebook friends??? I'm not on fb and many other here too ;-)
How can I be so wise???? Well, my son's gorgeous partner asked me, at Christmas time, if I had crocheted a big rug snuggled onto a lounge chair. Yes, I replied, I have made many of those rugs. Next day I had pulled out a partly-made rug, yarn and crochet hook, long hidden under sewing fabric, and I had finished that forgotten project. Off I went to the yarn shop and purchased enough yarn to make my lovely DIL a knee rug to keep her warm while she studies. Next, I found yet another rug begun for my DGS, now five years old. That is well on the way to being finished, this time for my friend's next little girl, due in early February.
Now, during those intervening years my hands had begun to twist and ache with arthritis and at one stage I couldn't even hold knitting needles or crochet hooks but I still hung onto my craft stash. One day, early last year, the bug took hold of me and I just began to knit and crochet again - skills which have stood me in good stead while waiting for hours in hospitals in recent months - and my hands haven't complained once for all the work they are doing. I made ten pairs of socks for Christmas presents and sweaters and caps for grandchildren. I can even do fine hand-embroidery.
My ME collection is Huge because I like to have a good selection from which to make my choice for any given project. It's a whole lot easier storing ME designs than storing other craft supplies, but then, of course, you do need a good choice of fabric for any given project, too.... :} ... If collecting ME designs is your 'thing' why beat yourself about it. Collect all you can because that's the way you'll educate yourself about 'good, better and best designs' and you'll become selective and your creations will shine with the love that's been put into them.
Darn soap-box.... gets higher every time I climb up on it.....
AlmaG.