I make things but I'm not a Maker

We didn't go to the Maker Faire. My husband was more interested in working in the garden and to tell you the truth I wasn't sure I wanted to go either. I love to make things, both artsy and mechanical and I've been doing it all my life, so you'd think the Maker Faire would be right up my alley. But something about this event didn't sit comfortably with me. Maybe it's that they call it a Faire. Maybe because it attracts some of the same people who go to Burning Man. Maybe it's that I liken it to a Star Trek convention - I enjoyed the original TV series and I work with satellites but that doesn't mean I speak Klingon or want to dress up as a crew member. Maybe it's that making stuff is now trendy and has become a sort of cult, especially when the stuff you're making involves recycling and will save the earth from global warming.

I never thought of it as recycling when I saved the cardboard from dress shirts for some future craft use or when I rescued the fine veneer that was wrapped around some of my dad's cigars to use as floors in my dollhouse. I grew up seeing potential out of stuff that was still usable but would normally be discarded. My mother once made a doorway curtain out of the plastic lids from margarine tubs (she cut out the centers to leave rings, painted them orange {I think} and strung them in vertical rows - it hung in the basement and was quite 70's mod). One Christmas mom turned tuna cans into little dioramas with a bit of felt, gold trim, and some tiny plastic reindeer and Santas. My dad was a marvel with wood and metal and also built radio-control planes with Barbie as the pilot. My sister dressed tiny plastic mice in Victorian outfits and sold them. My brother put together plastic car and truck models, but he customized them as a NASCAR car/transport combo. My sister and I shared a room and were told we couldn't have wall to wall carpeting until we stopped leaving so many snips of paper on the floor. We were always making stuff in our family.

So about the Faire...maybe I'm being cynical and we would have had a good time. I was intrigued by the life-size Mousetrap, especially since I still have and enjoy this board game. I would have been interested to see the ingenious contraptions people come up with. I wasn't, however, interested in the fiber crafts too much - the craft events I saw online seemed to appeal to someone 20 years younger and for those not skilled or interested in operating a sewing machine.

I think in the end, we didn't go because we wanted to make our garden.

Now that the vegetable planters are in and the plants are growing, we turned out attention to the pathways and other planting groups in the yard. We bought more plants, set up drip lines to everything (it won't rain again here until October), and my husband set bricks to line the edge of the pathway. I hope to snap some pictures tonight and post them when I get some time. We enjoyed a few ripe blueberries and strawberries and noticed new blossoms on the squash plants. Since we're a few weeks from harvesting anything substantial, we made a trip to our local farmers market to buy some fruits and vegetables.

I squeezed in a little time to work on my sewing Friday night. I traced off one of the Butterick tops and made full size pieces of the ones designed to be laid out on the fold. I'm going to take Gorgeous Thing's advice and cut the pattern out on a single layer of fabric. Since I'm working with a plaid for one of the tops and stripe for the other, this is almost a necessity but I probably would have cut them out folded had I not read her post. With the plaid, I'm thinking about placing either the top portion or the bottom on the bias and leave the other portion straight. And I'm toying with making the sleeves puffy. I might also do something interesting with the stripe. These were supposed to be quick summer tops but I don't do anything quick.