In celebration of my very first Etsy sale (joy! excitement!), I'm taking a tip from last week's Shop Makeover Challenge and attempting to write my "story" in six words or less.
My first unrehearsed top-of-my-head take is... Passionate fiber artist, loves cats. There, I even have an extra word to play with!
Well, anyways, getting into the meat of the exercise, the first adjective that comes to mind describing myself is passion. I throw myself full force into every new project or hobby that comes my way! Unfortunately that passion is oft short lived, so I have many abandoned half-finished projects squirreled away around the house. Sweaters waiting for zippers, bags of flat-backed marbles with pictures mod-podged to the back...I even have long expired black and white Polaroid film in the freezer from when I thought emulsion transfer was going to be a fun side project. But the passion is always there! It just jumps around...a lot!
Fiber...well...knitting will always be my first love. No matter how long I stay away (and it's never all that long), I always come back to the needles. When I walk through a yarn store I investigate more with my fingers than my eyes, kneading and caressing the yarns. All my other favorite crafts - dyeing, sewing, felting - also involve fiber and the tactile pleasure is a big part of it for me.
And artist? I started typing out the story of a fight my husband and I had many years ago about his habit of calling my stash "shit" - as in, "your shit is all over the house," or "I can't fit my clothes in the closet because of your shit." I'll tell the story another day, because it's pretty good, but the short version is that he never called my yarn "shit" again. I feel that the materials of my chosen art should be treated with the respect they deserve. I even balk at using the words "craft" and "hobby," though you can see I do use them anyways for lack of a better substitute. They seem too diminutive for this act of creation that I take so seriously.
Loves cats. LOVES THEM. We sleep with two in our bed every night, and I have my lovely husband 90% convinced to get another kitten. You know, for the baby. He needs his own cat. I know some people aren't crazy about buying knitted/fluffy items from a cat friendly home, and I totally get that. I minimize cat contamination as much as possible and wash garments before sending, but that cat hair floats! So that's fine. If it bothers you, you can buy from someone else. My kitties are #3 on the list of Things I Love. (#1 and #2 are the husband and the baby and they are pretty much tied.)
If I could add more words, "Mama" would be in there somewhere. It's my favorite title. I try not to let it define me too much, but it's the life stage I'm in right now and I can't deny it. "Nerd/geek" would be a good one too. Even with a little monster and a hopeful internet business and a house to clean, I still manage to fit in video games every day. In my previous corporate life, (this is TOTALLY going to give it away, but oh well), my absolute favorite of my company's core values was "Embrace Your Inner Geek." It really speaks to that passion thing - you could say I totally geek out on yarn!
So maybe an acceptable revision would be "Fiber nerd, loves babies and cats." There, all six words! Ta da! Now, off to tenderly package up my Pumpkin Longies and send them to their new home!
