Last December at a get-together with one of my social groups, a friend proposed
a challenge to the 4 of us for next Christmas.
She proposed that instead of buying each other Christmas gifts, we should
make them and spend no more than $5.00 on each gift. Now here we are at the next year. The annual gift exchange is tomorrow and I am excited to
see how we all did with that challenge.
Possible Resource
The $5.00 challenge got me thinking about making things. As you can see by my knitting obsession, I do
make quite a few things, and I made many gifts this year. My reflections took me back
to the first thing I remember making….a cupboard for my sister’s doll
dishes. I still have that Doll Dish Cupboard
and I have dragged it around throughout my life for about 50 years. It must hold meaning for me. In the house where we now live, it has gone from
basement to garage, to inner basement, to garage, to camp, to garage, to
basement. You get the picture. Well, since I have been having these
nostalgic flashbacks, I have gone to the basement, dug it out
and washed it off. It deserves a place
of honour in my Knitting Studio, obviously.
I must have hung on to it for some reason? I will be able to use it to hold yarn, or
doll dishes, or turnip tags, or expired flashlight batteries, or
something. It already holds memories.
The Doll Dishes Cupboard
When my room-mate Tom walked into the kitchen, he looked at the cupboard mournfully and said, "It seems so sad. And lonely." How can a cupboard be sad and lonely, I thought. Decrepit, for sure, but it is 50 years old.
This Doll Dish
Cupboard started out as a crate that held grapes. My father would have dragged it home from
Atlantic Wholesalers or Willett Fruits upon making delivery of our rhubarb or turnips or
cabbage or squash or potatoes. He would
have seen some use for that wooden crate, although I bet doll dishes was not
his first thought. He would have seen it
as useful to hold tools or ropes or chains or a motor or something. He may have even brought home some half-rotten
grapes in the crate.
Wooden Grape Crate
I can imagine
the conversation between my father and me about that crate.
“Barb, that crate would make a
great little cupboard for doll dishes.”
“Yeah,” I would answer, assessing
it with my 6 or 7 or 8 year-old eyes.
“You should make one for your
little sister.”
Kathy, my little Doll
Dish Sister, was about 4 or 5 or 6 years old, and the definite favourite. Did I buy into the cupboard idea because I wanted to
make something, or because I was a nice big sister??? You can guess the answer.
Doll Dishes
My father would
have gone into a brief description as to how a cedar shingle was exactly the
right size to work as shelves and that I could paint it afterward with some left-over turquoise paint. And then, he helped me build it. Or should I say assemble it. A real cabinet-maker would not use the word build.
Cedar Shingles
Leftover Turquoise Paint
As I look at it now, the assembly of the cupboard would have been pretty simple. A wooden crate, 2 cedar shingles and turquoise paint. I don’t remember every detail about building that little gem with my
father, but I remember parts of it. I do remember being in the garage
with hammer and nails and my father. A
saw would have been required to cut the guides that held the cedar shingles
that became removable shelves in that cupboard.
Cedar Shingle Shelf Removed
I remember
building one other item with my father in the garage….a 2-legged
milkstool. In my early years as
milkmaid, I was too little (or awkward) to balance on a one-legged milkstool
which was standard issue, so, rather than be excused from milking duties, my
father helped me to build my own little milkstool. I remember my Great Uncle Frank being in the
garage when I was trying to nail the 3 pieces of board together. “Hit the nail on the head, Barb. The wood’s
all right.”
The One-Legged Milkstool
My little milkstool was so
crude and so cute, built with dirty old used lumber, and lots of bent nails
where I missed with the hammer. After I
graduated to the one-legged milkstool, my rustic little artefact hung around
the barn, wedged into a corner awaiting repurposing. I wish I still had that milkstool; I could use it in my knitting studio as a
footstool. Alas, it went up in flames
when our barn burned when I was 12.
Did building that cupboard and milkstool start me on the road to making things? I still get the best charge out of making something from nothing---repurposing. Like my mitten tree.....
The Mitten Tree
or using scraps of yarn....
Bottled Scraps of Yarn
to make mittens.
Mittens Made from Scraps of Yarn
I know part of my inspiration is simply genetic cheapness but I wonder if part of it is genetic creativity or innovation. My father built things out of necessity and cheapness. There is some satisfaction in both.
No one would ever call my father a doting parent, but building that cupboard and
milkstool with him nurtured creativity and confidence in a 6 or 7 or 8 year-old
child. The best thing a child should be
allowed to make is mistakes.
In the Knitting Studio
Until Next Time....
