grrlTravels

KITT, I need you!

I will be spending my weekend preparing for my 15 minutes of fame making a craft with E.'s Kindergarten class on Monday. I gave E. 3 choices and he chose to make these cute guys. It's a good choice, although I am questioning the decision to make 3 of something with 22 kids. But I am going to do a lot of prep work, meaning they will basically be made before I get into school. I am worried about taking up too much time. Kindergarten is much more rigid and curriculum-based than I recall. The time seems important, and I and my project, not-curriculum-based, seem so expendable. Must. Not. Suck. Up. Too. Much. Precious. Kindergarten. Time. (I recall quite clearly playing kitchen, a LOT, in Kindergarten. From my recollections Kindergarten was mostly moving from one activity center to another, playing furiously. 37 years ago.)

This project involving paint and felt and glue and googly eyes will slosh some water into the empty well that is my creative life right now. I looked at how many photos I have taken since R. arrived home and realized that I have stomped down most creative endeavors due to lack of time, lack of organization, and lack of ability to form coherent thoughts. My creative juices have been juiced.

During this little wander in the desert I've turned to kits. I loved kits as a child. With a kit all of the supplies are presented in a neat little package, pre-cut and pre-determined. All of the decisions have been made, all of the shopping has been done. I ordered this fabulous dress as a kit on etsy. I opened it and was sewing within 5 minutes. No patterns! No pinning! No cutting. Just the juiciest bites, all for me. Kits, I love them. And I need them. Right now.

I have become so kit-crazy that I spent the past week assembling a kit for some of E.'s far-flung buddies. Our kit consists of print-outs of one of the rejected Kindergarten class crafts and lots of edible materials (almost 4 pounds of misc candies the scale at the post office informs me). It took a long time to find all of the various candies, and I just gave up on large gum drops (seriously, where ARE the large gum drops?? I cannot find them!) and pastel non-pareils and send the packages with replacements. (The perfectionistic part of me did not like this one bit, but I had been to 4 shops and I was done.) We will also be making the polar bears and the skiing people and whatever else we can dream up with toothpicks and candy. Sweet candy, get those creative juices sugared up. Winter is coming and we will be stuck in the house with nothing but our wits to get us through.