I checked this book out from the elementary school library over and over and over. It was full of fascinating things I just knew I could never try -- projects involving plaster and sharp knives and dead fish!



Out of the blue, I thought about it the other day, just a passing wisp of memory that couldn't go anywhere because I didn't know any actual details about the book, just that it had instructions for making prints with paint and dead fish and punching holes in empty tin cans to make lanterns.

I wasn't looking for it this afternoon. I was trying to hurry the kids out of the library so we could go meet Grandma across town and Alex needed a book with directions for braiding hemp bracelets and I was out of patience and bypassed the computers and helpful librarians to see if something would jump off the shelves at us. I wasn't even looking at the shelf this book was on, but the familiar spine jumped out at me.

While Alex was in karate, I flipped through it. The text is all handwritten, and I remember struggling to read it. I don't remember actually trying to make any of the projects, although I'm sure I would've tried some of the little paper ones.

Now that I'm all grown up and can buy plaster and risk my own fingers playing with tin cans, there are other things to be inspired and intimidated by. Like a whole stack of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazines that I got off of Freecycle this morning.

I've been seduced by that magazine since I first saw it at the grocery store, but $8 an issue is a lot and there were always a couple of quilting or knitting magazines that I wanted more. I actually know how to quilt and knit. There's the possibility that I'll do more than drool over those.

I'm seriously loving Freecycle. It even found a happy home for our old love seat and chair, which weren't quite ready for the landfill yet.