Crafting a Tale of Insanity

In case you couldn't tell right off the bat, this is an ornament of Joseph's coat of many colors which I was assigned to make for the Jesse Tree ornament exchange I attended today. I'll just say running a close second to Jesus's birth, the greatest miracle of all is that my sanity is intact tonight and Dean still chooses to remain married to me after I went on a journey to craft hell and back this week, dragging my family with me every step of the way.  Crafting to me is the equivalent to Lesli singing opera in Chinese:  painful and unpleasant on every level.   

To acknowledge that I have been refused any inherent gifting or tendencies which favor the tactile creative arts is to affirm the most obvious of natural laws.  The problem is that in my excitement to attend the exchange and be able to enrich my family's anticipation of Christmas with the Jesse Tree tradition, I chose to deny this basic truth about myself and plunge headfirst into fantasyland--a trip which would ultimately immerse me in the lowest depths of craft despair.  

If you haven’t heard of the Jesse Tree, it’s an advent tradition full of meaning—a series of Bible verses and devotionals which focus on prophecies and events which led to the birth of Christ, one for each day of December until Christmas.  For each day/devotional, there is a coordinating ornament to hang on a separate little tree in your home.  Doesn’t that sound amazing?  There are very simple printouts that you can use for the ornaments and probably be good to go in about 30 minutes.  Lesli chose to forgo the 30-minute route and instead chose the 2-week valley of the shadow of death route.  My jumpsuit of pride zipped up like a glove and rose-colored safety goggles in position, I was ready to soar through the air of craft triumph.  I can do this!  I am woman, watch me appliqué.  

The way the ornament exchange works, 25 days worth of ornaments are needed for a full Jesse Tree set for each person attending and the idea is to share the work.  There were 30 people participating, 25 of whom were assigned to make 30 ornaments each of their assigned ornament.  Don’t ask me what the other 5 people did—I’m having negative thoughts about how minimal their task was compared to the 25 ornament-makers’ and thinking on this inequality draws me away from God, not toward Him.  I was assigned the ornament for Dec. 7:  Joseph’s coat of many colors.  Thirty colorful coats, coming right up!  Feeling extremely perky.

Upon my first google, I found my inspiration:  a felt-shaped coat with multicolored felt patches, sewn in an adorable pattern, neat and tidy--not at all "crafty."  Perfect.

 My brain quickly booked a first-class ticket to Delusionville.  No matter that I didn’t own a sewing machine nor had ever attempted using one in my life.  The longer I stared at my inspiration photo, the more convinced I became that my passion for conquering the patchwork felt coat would trump any obstacles in my way, such as NOT KNOWING JACK ABOUT SEWING.

Passion hijacked logic and before I knew it, I had clicked “submit” on an Amazon order for a sewing machine (yes, that's right) and a slew of felt samples from some felt specialty store in the midwest.  WHAT?!  A blatant disregard--nay, an outright slaying of common sense.  Don't listen to those voices, Lesli--they want you to end up with the ornament print-out, not something amazing.  You are capable of much more.  Fear the generic.  FEAR IT.  Haste via fear of the generic will take me to some crazy places....    

I have to pause at this juncture and confess that I am essentially a lunatic.  Five weeks post-Paris return and I am still treading water in the deep end.  I know--you don't feel sorry for me and that's fine.  Hush.  Every Sunday night, I give myself a pep talk and convince myself that this {insert any week from the past five} is the week I will start and finish laundry in the same week, have all the normal items in my pantry and fridge, actually cook a meal without having an emotional breakdown, *think about* recommitting to moderate exercise and feel as though I have the slightest clue as to what is occurring in my children's classrooms with regard to activities and homework.  I cannot catch up.  I'm now looking at Christmas break as my only hope.  Never mind that I just started a blog.  

ENTER: THE SEWING MACHINE.  Enter:  Thirty colorful coats.  Enter:  Learning a completely new skill which I have no business devoting time to in an already helter-skelter season.  Enter:  My husband's well-founded yet nonetheless annoying and unspoken assumption that this will be yet another "unfinished project" of Lesli's to add to the graveyard of forgotten and overwhelming projects and all their paraphernalia.

Monday morning, once the kids left for school, I spent an hour and a half reading the machine manual and watching instructional DVDs, which got me as far as threading the bobbin and running the thread through the little crevices and the needle so that I was ready to sew.

I felt victorious for a half-second and then I froze.  I stared at my inspiration photo again.  In a moment of horror, I realized the reason it looked so lovely was that every differently-colored little patch was sewn on with matching thread.  It had taken me an hour and a half just to thread one color.  I admitted defeat...privately.  I had to.  But if not this, then what?  My weary wheels began to spin....  Time to switch tracks.  Just to prepare you, dear reader, there would actually be 3 forthcoming switches from the original inspiration idea.

Switch #2:  Maintaining commitment to my felt purchase yet substituting the glue gun for the sewing machine.  This resulted in a scorching glue gun burn and rampant cussing.

The ornaments were decent but they just looked too messy and crafty to me.

I then moved to Switch #3:  The latest Pinterest fad--melted crayon bits, version "colorful coat."

Visually, I loved this plan, but there was a very short window between 'liquid' and 'slightly hardened' in which to press the cookie cutter into the melted crayons and then no time to punch a hole for hanging.  If my timing was even slightly off, it was a total loss as the crayon coat would crack and break from the hole punch.  It would've cracked and broken anyway as it was quite fragile.  Switch #3 was especially stressful because it occurred during dinner prep on Wednesday night (just before we host our CollegeLIFE group from church).  I was trying to brown ground beef for taco salad in between peeling crayons, breaking them up and beating them senseless in a ziploc bag with a can of black beans, ironing the crayon bits between layers of parchment and coming up short every time.  I made four & cracked four before I gave up.  I was two days out from E Day (exchange day) and desperation started to set in.  Money spent so far on the 30 coats including the sewing machine:  over $250.  And I have seven irregular patchwork/glue gun coats to show for it.

At the height of my frustration Wednesday night, I had Walker falling apart emotionally from his failed glitter river in the pilgrim diorama he was working on and unable to assist him as I was blinded by my own craft rage.  In addition, I needed Dean home 30 minutes prior, dinner needed serving, there was a pile of blue glitter in my kitchen sink, I had 15 people due to my house in an hour and a half for CollegeLIFE and then that would be my Wednesday night gone.  Things reached fever pitch as Dean finally walked in the door, Walker was crying, I had all the toppings set out for taco salad and then went to grab the bag of blue corn chips I bought two days prior, only to find 90% OF THE BAG WAS EATEN.  I threw my hands in the air, exclaimed something tragic about never being able to cook a freaking meal in my house and stormed into the bedroom with a grand finale tantrum door slam.  Yes!!  Well done, well done!!  And what was this all about?  An ornament?  Meant to contribute to an advent tradition?  Meant to focus my heart on the coming of Christ?  NIIIICE.

During and after dinner, I was racking my brain about Switch #4.  What in my life was multicolored?  Please, God, please.  I need a Jesse Tree miracle.  And then, as if by divine implantation, a thought entered my mind:  sprinkles.  Sprinkles!!!  Oh, thank you, God, THIS IS IT.  I had already cut all the little coat shapes out of red felt.  I would only need to brush glue on each one, sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle, and then let dry.  I churned out 7 within 30 minutes.  The sprinkles were sticking, it was multicolored, not fragile and semi-cute.  This was going to work!!  Then in God's mercy, bestowed not long after my blue corn chip rant, my CollegeLIFE girls showed up and two of them insisted on taking over sprinkle coat production.  Before we even started our group time, they had finished all but two.  All I had to do was seal them with modge podge on Thursday and let them dry so they'd be ready by Friday morning.  I was at the finish line!!

Except I brushed the first coat with modge podge on Thursday aaaaaand it took the color off of the sprinkles!!!!!!

Are you hearing me?!???  Insanity draws nigh....

Thankfully, in God's mercy, I had read the modge podge instructions while standing in the craft store and it said to use a clear acrylic sealer after using modge podge, so I grabbed some of that before I left the store and I was able to use that spray to seal and finish the ornaments.  If I had been forced to return to the craft store once more that day, I would've ended up on the evening news.

I have an internal panic that sets in every time I get near the craft store and it doesn't fully calm until I'm back in my car.  There's a mental battle waging the whole time I'm physically in the store.  I tell myself, "You will get out, you WILL get out of here, Lesli."  And also, "These employees aren't equipped on any level--personally, professionally, socially--to be working here.  Yes, it's true.  But Jesus died for me and for them.  Grace is needed."  I alternate between praying and cussing when I'm standing in the longest & slowest checkout lines known to the modern age and then OF COURSE there is that *one* lady--holding up the line with discrepancies about her coupon(s) and what the sale price really was on that most tacky piece of crap she dug up from the clearance bin.

Five coats of the clear acrylic spray later and a few hours of ventilating my house and...it was over.  I walked with head held high into the ornament exchange the next day knowing I had given myself, body and soul, to these 30 colorful coats that would go on to be a part of so many families' advent traditions.

And now every December 7th, 30 someones in Knoxville will hang Joseph's colorful coat on their Jesse tree and for those who know me and are acquainted with this laborious tale, they will pause for a half-second in remembrance and reverence.  I don't feel like that's too much to ask.

The important thing is my craft storm has calmed, I have a wonderful set of Jesse Tree ornaments thanks to the efforts of 24 other ladies and for the first time this Christmas season, my family will participate in the anticipation of Christ's birth in a very meaningful and intentional way.  I am truly thrilled about this and look forward to seeing Christ shine brighter in all of us because of it!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sewing machine to sell (cough)--I mean....get to know better.