Is the Duck a Gateway Drug?

So, I have this thing I do, where I'll see something crafty and think: "I want to be crafty! I want to make things! With my hands!"

So, I'll start trying to do something (like sewing, or quilt making) and feel all useful and practical because I know if I can keep it up I'll be able to do handicrafts... before realising that my attention span isn't really up to these sorts of challenges.

I'll buy "simple patterns" for some skirt or blouse, and never make them. Or I'll get all of the material needed for a "simple" quilt design, and never get past cutting out the first few squares. Or I'll buy a crochet hook and a ball of yarn and make about five inches worth of a scarf.

I even flirted with the idea of taking up spinning and weaving once. I went as far as going to the local textiles club to see if I might be able to take classes or something. Some nice woman put her own knitting aside to show me how to spin, which was great, only I realised before I'd even left the building that I'd never see it through. It required a level of patience, competence and continuity that I struggle to produce at the best of times.

I know this about myself, yet I still can't seem to avoid the trap of walking into a shop that sells crafty things and thinking: "I want to be crafty! I will buy this easy guide to something-or-other and then I will make things!"

So, the other day, while I should have been looking for something else, I bought a counted cross-stitch pattern. It was a simple pattern obviously designed for complete beginners and/or children. It was a duck, and the price-tag was 99c.

"I'll buy a duck for a buck," I said to myself, and ended up buying that instead of what I had been looking for in the first place.

I've been working on that duck all week (on and off). Turns out counted cross-stitch is kind of like jigsaw puzzles - You have a picture on the "box", a blank canvas and a whole bunch of pieces with which to make the picture.

I haven't been very efficient, or very accurate, but I actually finished it. Not to sound melodramatic, but this is possibly the first time I've actually finished a crafty thing in my life.

And I want to do another one.

So, on the one hand, I'm all: "Yay! I've done a crafty thing! I can be crafty after all!", but at the same time I can't help but notice it's cross-stitch.

Cross-stitch is completely decorative. You don't use it to make anything useful. You can't cloth yourself with cross-stitch. You can't make blankets with cross-stitch. You can't mend socks or shoes with cross-stitch. All you can do is make pretty pictures.

I want a proper, useful, womanly skill that will enable me to be a constructive member of society after the Great Wipe takes out all modern technology and we have to go back to making things for ourselves. Heck, I'll even take one of those manly skills, if it means I'm good for something.

Sure, I can cook, but I can't fish or hunt, I can't recognise the difference between the poisonous berries and the good-eating berries in the wild, I can't raise chickens, I can't tan leather, I can't make furniture or build log houses... Heck, I even have trouble growing vegetables.

I want useful skills, goldern it! I'm not pretty enough to be this decorative!

On the other hand... I made a duck.

Osterbaum

Well, that was a quick turn-around - even for me. I went from "what the heck is an Easter Egg Tree, and why would anyone make one?" to "I'm going to make an Easter Tree!" in less than 24 hours.

Okay, not quite. I had borrowed a book on "Easter Treats" from my local library about a week and a bit ago, thinking it would contain things like recipes for marshmallow bunnies. Every now and then I like to pretend I'm likely to make something like marshmallow. I've never made marshmallow in my life (there may have been a 'cooking' project in primary school that involved making marshmallow, but I can't remember), but I do like to believe that one day I might.

Anyway, the book didn't have marshmallow rabbit recipes (or even Easter egg recipes, which I thought was a bit odd), but it did have some stuff about making decorative egg whatsits out of blown eggs. One of the decorative egg whatsits was something called an "Easter egg tree".

Now, I had never heard of an Easter egg tree before, and the picture in the book made it seem like something those bizarre home decorators on TV do to make themselves look creative and artsy (I can't watch those shows seriously after watching Life Support - it was barely possible before hand). So, I dismissed the entire concept of said EET as being pretentious and pointless.

And then I happened to catch a show that was never meant to be on TV (at least, it wasn't advertised in any of the TV guides, and when you hit the "info" button on the remote control the programme was identified as "unknown"). It was all about a group of German immigrants (and their children and grandchildren) who have been camping at the same spot every Easter since 1969. It was oddly fascinating, watching these people talk about the traditions that had built up over the last thirty years. And, on Easter Sunday, they decorated their tables with Easter Trees - which they had made on the camp site from carefully selected branches, eggs they had decorated the Saturday and whatever other shiny things they happened to have lying around.

My first thought: "Hunh, those Easter Tree thingies are actually real things that normal people make". This was quickly succeeded by several other thoughts which eventually cumulated in "I'm going to make an Easter Tree!"

Truth be told, I'd been thinking of decorating for Easter. It's always irked me that my family doesn't put any effort into Easter at all. It's always a bit of a struggle getting them to do things for Christmas (if my mother had her way, the tree would go up on the 24th and down again on the 26th), and Easter is practically a non-event. This year I just wanted to do something - paint an egg, make a marshmallow bunny, roll something down a hill (I can never remember if it's supposed to be boiled eggs or cheese)...

Well, this year I made a quick-n-dirty Easter Tree. I tried to die the eggs, which didn't turn out quite as well as I had intended. It seems that brown eggs don't take food dye as well as white eggs, but I can't remember the last time I saw a white egg in the shops. I swear must still exist, but I haven't seen one for years. I also only had four eggs as I didn't want to waste any more than that in case it all went horribly wrong.

So this year's Easter Tree wasn't the greatest Easter Tree in the history of Easter Trees. Next year will hopefully see a bit of an improvement.





Oh, and just to prove that Easter Trees (or Osterbaum) are something real people actually make (in case you, like me, were raised in a cultural vacuum) take a look at these.

I have, of course, gone with an autumnal theme for my Easter Tree, as in this hemisphere Easter occurs in Autumn. I am nothing if not seasonally appropriate.