For now, I have to keep the actual item a secret, but I just finished making technocowboy‘s birthday gift. The actual birthday was about a month ago, but the inspiration didn’t come until then, and it took me time to find the materials and work out the actual process of making it.

Which is how i basically do all of my crafts. Somehow I never seem to want to create something that has a ‘recipe’ or set of specific directions (except cooking). I’ll use a set of directions as a template (like this one one — a pleated silk purse), but then I’ll change it. Yes, even before I created one to try out. And I’m a self-taught sewer, so even though I have a sewing machine I have to spend a lot of time figuring out how things go together before I start — of it looks like crap (I’ve learned) because I didn’t think it through. I’ve ruined a number of otherwise amazing projects by not spending enough time thinking about them before I start making them.

It’s a curse, more than a gift. If I don’t make more of one thing at a time, I basically have to re-invent the wheel if I want to make another at some point in the future. Every time I think “I should keep notes, or take pictures.” But once I start I get so caught up in it that I don’t want to stop to document what I am doing.

As for this most recent project — I’ll post pictures once USPS delivers it to him.