Wrapped Earphones

Crafty & colorful is the way to be. :)

One of the most fun (and it goes without saying, pretty easy) crafts I decided to try first was the yarn wrapped earphones. There are a number of tutorials that you can find on Pinterest. I used this one which had lots and lots of pictures to explain the process, just the way I like it. I did tend to go WILD and made mine with tonnes of bright burst of colors in different lengths. And I love it more everyday.

Along with looking totally RAD and adding a lot of color to my day, the thing I love the most about it is that it saves me at least an hour everyday, otherwise spent in the process of untangling headphones. No really. wrapping yarn around your headphones prevents tangling to a huge extent and it might have taken me all of one hour (my precious hour between when kiddo goes to sleep and I finally do. :D )

One note: The thicker the yarn, the lesser the tangling and of course, quicker the entire process of wrapping. But, I feel the thinner yarns look better. So find the right balance of yarn. And it's as easy as that!

And now, you hardly ever see me without this burst of color running down from my ear to my bag. :D 

The fun thing is, I also just love seeing it lying on my office desk or bed, when not stuck in my ear. It just makes every space look fun and happy.

Getting Crafty

Where to go? What to do?
Emptiness, through and through.

For a few months now, I had been going through a very torturous phase. (Nah. I am not talking about THAT torturous phase all over again!) This torturous phase was more monotony, a lack of a purpose except for living and functioning and of course being Sid's mom which in itself is sooo fulfilling; and yet something was missing. I just could not understand this terrible void, an emptiness, considering I had not even a second to spare or to call "empty". Things have gotten so hectic with all the juggling, that I was not even getting time to READ! And yet, I was feeling empty. Like I was not doing anything meaningful.

After a lot of time of feeling like this, thinking, fretting, I finally realized I had to do something that was purely and entirely for me, my time, my space, my fun. No one else needs to "gain" from it and no one else needs to understand it. Appreciation would always be welcome, an added bonus, but it wasn't technically for anyone's approval of appreciation. It just had to be my own craziness. I know reading has always been my escape from this world, a relief, a "me time", for as far back as I can remember. But somehow, now, even that was not enough. In fact I was facing it difficult to even "start" a new book and simply blamed it on lack of time. After a little more of thinking and fretting, I realized I had to create. Do something that was just me, that I could look at and feel proud of. Just for fun and whatever pleasure I derived from the work I put in to create that final product. 

One of the first (and, considering office wi-fi, the easiest,) things I did was to revive my year old, un-updated twitter account and start some tweeting. That went okay in terms of the conversations I had, the nice people I got to interact with, the knowledge I got from it and of course the followers. :D. To be honest, twitter has done so much to my life in the last one year that that it is soon to be a post in itself. Twitter gave me life and turned me around in so many many ways!

No this is NOT my "creation".
Just an image.
Trying a hand at painting?

But what about "creating" was the question and to this I tried the obvious answer. I have (very intelligently) given up on myself on the drawing/sketching department a long long ago. So I decided to try my hand at some painting. Right away, a lot of drawing books, papers, brushes,  oil colors, water colors, pastels, everything was bought, creation started, tried, tested and then kept aside with a promise of getting back to it with more regularity  (this has been about 6 months now. Sigh!). I did manage some "not too bad" pieces (by my own standards) but it still didn't do anything for that "something missing" feeling. 

Then there was this blog. An old old one I had started but never felt like updating as I never seemed to know what to write about (somehow 140 characters of randomness seemed easier at this point), for whom to write and my inherent laziness to type. I also had my kiddo blog that I had started so as to log his growth stages and events, but that was also lying abandoned for an year now (And he is just 2 years old!) I have been very very lazy and to be honest, inattentive of myself and my interests. Somehow the emptiness in my head translated to the emptiness of the blogs as well.

I also bought myself a notebook and started writing (writing?! I think I had forgotten how to, with all the typing I have been doing!), hoping this might get some creativity flowing as against staring at a blank white blog page. This was fun for some time, but then slowly that also got boring. Probably, it was still not something tangible enough, for me.

And amidst all this confusion and emptiness I hit upon Pinterest (Thank God for office Wi-fi again). To those who do use it, I need not explain how crazily addictive it can be. First thing that took a hit was tweeting (and no, I am not even going to talk about my work). I was spending my whole day poring over pins and making scores and scores of "To-do"s. Just the ideas on Pinterest were mind blogging enough to keep me occupied for days on end without feeling an emptiness what so ever.

  Oh! The things people did! 

The things I could do "one day" when things were not so busy! 

I wanted to do "this" and then "that" and then "this too" and like that the pinning continued. And I was so excited.

Then in a few weeks of this excessive pinning I came across crochet projects on Pinterest, first a few and then an abundance of it everyday. Now, we had been taught some basic crocheting back at school during an hour called Socially Useful Productive Work or SUPW, which we used to (fondly) called Some Useful Period Wasted. (Now how much "use" we put those other periods to, don't even ask). And I also remembered that I used to quite enjoy it. So much so that I had made mom buy me an abundance of yarn and a couple of needles. Yup, equally enthusiastically wasteful me, then and now!

Well, coming back, Pinterest re-introduced me to Crochet and then I realized that time or no time I HAD TO start making something. Out came the old needles (call them a waste but they were there when I needed it) and the nearly impossible mission of finding yarn in this hot and humid region. But, that was also tackled thanks to some tiny corner shops hidden inside major market places that have all inane and "not very useful" tictacs and of course, the internet! And just like that,my crocheting experiments started. They started with the usual granny squares and moved onto slightly better projects whose details I intend to keep updating, with pictures, in more posts.

Along with crocheting, I also started implementing small little "home improvement", "recycling" and other such small scale "DIYs" that you keep coming across Pinterest. And guess what, I have been feeling pretty proud of myself for being able to come up with this stuff. 

It is not much to show. I haven't done any of those big beautiful projects Pinterest is full of. But now I can't wait to get started on something that big and in the mean time I am completely happy with myself doing these small little things everyday, "creating" stuff and making myself proud along with pinning more and more probable projects for later. Something new to do tomorrow. Something new to do in the future. A small project. A little purpose. It means so much to be. And the funniest thing? From the time I have started these craft experiments, these little games with yarns and fabric and needles and glue and color and scissors, I have also gotten back to reading more, updating the blog (at least the kiddo one) more and basically enjoying whatever little time I get for myself and with kiddo that much more. I guess, I have been living a little more.