I’ve made a few new ornaments for my Easter tree! I like to spend the dark winter evenings making funny, ridiculously cute Easter ornaments and dreaming about spring.

I’ve only recently started crafting again after a 30-year hiatus. I grew up crafting because my mother was and is a devoted crafter. Her very favorite activity has always been “making things,” as she says. She sews, knits, crochets, embroiders, makes wreaths, does ceramics–the list goes on and on–and she’s very industrious; she knows how to get a project done.

When I was a little girl, my father would go out of town sometimes, to conventions. Daddy going out of town was a rare and wonderful event, cause for celebration. (Nobody could relax when he was around.) The first night he was gone, Mom and my sister Kris and I would get dressed up in our Sunday best and head to the craft store at the Tallahassee Mall. We’d each pick out a craft to make, then come home and work on it all night in my parents’ big bed as we watched Hawaii Five-O or some such fare on TV.

We’d have TV dinners for a special, fancy treat. I always got a Salisbury steak dinner, and Kris got fried chicken. Oh, and we’d have dessert too, which was also very special–maybe a frozen cheesecake with cherry topping, or cream horns and gingerbread boys from Heidi’s Bakery.

Anyway, whenever I craft now, it’s very comforting to me, and it feels like coming full circle, to the very beginning again. It feels like a return to my essential self. It’s heaven to sit and sew and listen to audio books with a cat or two on my lap.