Test Drive - An Introduction

Well, let’s give this a try.

I’ve tried to start a lot of things in my time. Most were never finished! That’s why this blog was birthed. It is here that I intend to tell you about all of my projects. Those that are half-finished, barely started; those that are still just a glimmer in their momma’s eye! Oh, I have lots of that last category.  There is a long list of things that I have seen and want to make. Which is worse? The ones I started but never finished or the ones that I never even started? 

Here’s the deal. I’m going to tell all of you (which for now, is just me) about these half-baked works. Hopefully writing about their progress (or lack thereof) will be enough to motivate me to actually FINISH them! Here’s hoping.

So, first a little about me. My name is Pam. I am 24, married a year and working in Atlanta for an archaeological firm. My husband and I call Athens, Georgia our hometown. I love the idea of making things with my hands. I want to master sewing, knitting, crochet, quilting, beekeeping, painting, gardening, spinning; I want to be a baker, a florist, a potter, a writer. Sometimes I even want to be a cook – though this happens rarely and usually with unfortunate consequences. I have yet to master any of these skills – well, actually I am a pretty good baker. I have mucked about in almost all of them.

My mother sewed for me for years, and she taught me some. Now, I am afraid most of that knowledge has been lost. I taught myself basic crochet in my college dorm on a whim. I knit a dishtowel once with my cousin, promptly forgot how and picked it back up years later after studying Stitch 'n Bitch. I love baking; I hate cooking.

So! Let’s make a list. What is to be done?

• There’s the quilt squares that guests signed in lieu of a guest book at our wedding, waiting to be pieced together.

• There’s the pile of cute fabric that I’ve snapped up at the fabric store, and patterns too, but no product. Those cute apron Christmas gifts aren’t going to make themselves!

• My mother’s vintage dresses are dying to be altered. Pants are waiting to be hemmed.

• There’s a hundred bookmarked crochet and knit patterns that I want to make, but by golly, I just get bored with counting. And I don’t know how to do half those fancy stitches, anyway.

• There may be a couple half-finished scarves in my yarn stash. I haven’t looked in so long, who is to say how much of that stash is yarn and how much of it dust bunnies?!

• What to do with the patches that my husband and I have collected from our travels and vacations? Who knows!

• There’s the exquisite quilt top that I got from my mother-in-law that I am really just terrified to touch. It is so beautiful that I know I will destroy it. Somehow it will crumble beneath my sewing machine. Really. This one legitimately scares me.

So, what to start and/or finish first? You tell me. Won’t you help a poor girl out?