don't run with the good scissors

you know, i should probably give a shout out to my mom, since she used to always talk up the fact that i was the first female in my family that is artistic. she would always tell people "well, nikki gets it from her father but she also gets it from my side of the family. her uncle doug is artistic too". at the time it annoyed the shit out of me but i think it ended up instilling a sense of pride in me about being female.

but i'm not so sure that fact about me being the first artistic female is true. i guess it just depends on your definition of the word. my mom is really into doing crafts, and is still always working on a project of some sort. she doesn't do it very much anymore but my mom is amazing at embroidery! she used to do these commemorative birth announcements for people when they were born. my grandmother started doing the birth announcements and taught my mom. my mom taught me some basic stitches, but i never picked it up. should probably revisit that...

i remember that my mom had this sliding door end table filled with her craft stuff in the dining room. i used to sneak in there because she had a stockpile of images she used as patterns for different embroidery projects. cartoon characters, flowers, animals of all sorts; it was right up my alley. she would collect images from coloring books and god know from where else (this is before computers, internet and instant image gratification) and she would trace the image onto tracing paper and then transfer the tracing on cloth or whatever using carbon paper. i loved that folder and adored the ghostly tracing paper images. i would sit around just looking through it whenever i got a chance. even the carbon paper was cool. my mom would use a single sheet over and over and it would build up multiple outlines over time.

but i wasn't really supposed to touch her craft stuff. i was never allowed to touch the sewing machine (granted, my brother and i decided to play race car with the foot pedal once) nor was i allowed to touch the typewriter. and it took forever for her to let me use the good scissors. i should go out and get a pair of good scissors just because. but i probably wouldn't let a kid near my scissors either...