CRAFTY SUNDAY

These little projects occasionally come my way because of my beloved, who is a rare and generous human being who tries to make the lives of those around her just a little bit happier as best she can.

This is why a few months ago we spent much of a weekend working on a wall chart in the run up to the wedding of one of her colleagues. There had been a growing sense of pressure of not having got everything done which is kind of normal for those events, I’m told, and this was her way of  helping her colleague to realise how much she had already actually got done and to help her to calm herself down a little before the big day by being able to show the things that were already sorted out and dealt with.

It was a simple thing, I thought, created with the barest minimum of what used to be my practical artistic skills, but it seemed to have been well received at the time, and did its job.

A few months later and another of her colleagues was about to jet off for her first “proper” holiday in a dozen years or more, and so, in order to build up some of the excitement and anticipation at work, another little project was suggested and a spare Sunday was set aside for the task, and much in the way of preparatory work was done before I needed to be involved in the project.

Of course I misunderstood and expected another wall chart, but when I was told that this wasn’t the plan, I managed to solve the tricky problem of representing a cruise ship with a bit of paper mechanics, and we were so pleased with the result of that that the other idea – dressing one of those cardboard dolls that you used to see in the kind of comics that were around when I was younger in various holiday outfits – was abandoned, as well as the “sea and sky” around the ship, as the ship on its own seemed impressive enough to do the job.

Oh, I know that it’s not the finest of pieces of artwork in the great scheme of things, and that those “expert crafters” out there would pour mockery and scorn upon our humble little offering, but it was nice to get the “problem-solving” part of my brain unpacked again and quite nice to have a Sunday where I wasn’t constantly thinking about the other madnesses going on in my life…

So, it’s now been bundled up in anticipation of transportation to my beloved’s office, and I hope that her colleague likes our humble efforts and has a fabulous holiday.