You Never Know What You Will Find In An Old Project Bag
The fun thing about moving is when you find stuff you haven't seen in a long time. Like this project bag. It was the one that had all my psychedelic squares in it. I found it in the closet with another project I will show you later.
A couple of things about this bag. Look at it. My mom made this bag for me I don't know how long ago. (But my mom's been gone for almost 30 years, so a long time ago.) It's made from this denim material that she got on sale somewhere. She used it to make some denim jeans for me.
About those jeans... First of all, we were pretty poor, so just purchasing the material was probably an extravagance. But I didn't realize it at the time. Everyone at school was wearing Calvin Kleins and Gloria Vanderbilts and, at the very least, Jordaches. So having handmade jeans was (to me, at the time) like wearing a neon sign that said "Outcast."
And there was ridicule. You know, that shit doesn't change with the times. There were mean girls back in my day, too. The popular kids who always had the latest styles and the name brands, they were not kind to people who didn't. There were some girls who had handmade clothes (which, looking back on it, were pretty nice) and the popular girls ridiculed them mercilessly. And so did other, less popular people. Maybe, I guess, so they could be on the same side as those popular girls?
But--and this is the interesting thing to me--even though you could count on the popular girls to mock you for doing anything different, you could very well also get mocked by your own friends. Seriously. I remember a pair of red pants that I loved so much--the way they looked, the way they fit, the fact that they were bought in a regular store and not a discount store. One day I was changing in gym class and my friend Kelly said "You're wearing red pants to hide your period!" and that got a big laugh. So she started calling them "Period Pants" and so did everyone else. It totally ruined those pants for me and I stopped wearing them.
And this was my friend.
Anyway, my point is, even though the jeans my mom made me were nice--they were the trouser-style jeans with the high waist and wide cuffed bottoms that were in style at the time--I really didn't want to wear them to school and make myself a target. So, Mom had all this denim leftover that she had planned to make me a jacket out of, but that there was no way I was going to wear a handmade denim jacket (I know. I'm a shit person.) so she decided to make me a bag, instead.
Actually, she made a couple of bags. One for me and one for her. And this one has my name in iron on letters (an extra expense). I can't remember using it for anything except putting stuff in it for the car trip we took to California to see my grandma one year, and maybe I put my swimsuit in it a couple of times to go to the lake. I do remember that I left it at home on purpose when I went to college.
Jeez. Now that I'm thinking this over, I really feel terrible. My mom really did something nice for me--a lot of nice things--and I was a total bag of dicks about it.
Later, after I was married and got all my stuff from my mom and dad's house, I used this bag as a project bag for my knitting and crocheting. And so, now we're finally getting to the point of this blog post, after all of that.
The point is, I found this bag and, after emptying out the psychedelic squares, I noticed there were things in the bag that I had not seen in a long time. Like a package of stitch markers, an old shopping list (that I threw away), a pen, a stitch guage, some needle threaders, plus a couple of patterns--one cut from a magazine and one from a ball band of yarn--and all these little crochet rounds.
Not sure what I was doing with these. Maybe they were the center rounds for a granny square afghan, who knows? But it was interesting to see them again.
I'm not sure what I will do with them. Seems a shame to throw them away, but they're kind of awful. What do you think?
A couple of things about this bag. Look at it. My mom made this bag for me I don't know how long ago. (But my mom's been gone for almost 30 years, so a long time ago.) It's made from this denim material that she got on sale somewhere. She used it to make some denim jeans for me.
About those jeans... First of all, we were pretty poor, so just purchasing the material was probably an extravagance. But I didn't realize it at the time. Everyone at school was wearing Calvin Kleins and Gloria Vanderbilts and, at the very least, Jordaches. So having handmade jeans was (to me, at the time) like wearing a neon sign that said "Outcast."
And there was ridicule. You know, that shit doesn't change with the times. There were mean girls back in my day, too. The popular kids who always had the latest styles and the name brands, they were not kind to people who didn't. There were some girls who had handmade clothes (which, looking back on it, were pretty nice) and the popular girls ridiculed them mercilessly. And so did other, less popular people. Maybe, I guess, so they could be on the same side as those popular girls?
But--and this is the interesting thing to me--even though you could count on the popular girls to mock you for doing anything different, you could very well also get mocked by your own friends. Seriously. I remember a pair of red pants that I loved so much--the way they looked, the way they fit, the fact that they were bought in a regular store and not a discount store. One day I was changing in gym class and my friend Kelly said "You're wearing red pants to hide your period!" and that got a big laugh. So she started calling them "Period Pants" and so did everyone else. It totally ruined those pants for me and I stopped wearing them.
And this was my friend.
Anyway, my point is, even though the jeans my mom made me were nice--they were the trouser-style jeans with the high waist and wide cuffed bottoms that were in style at the time--I really didn't want to wear them to school and make myself a target. So, Mom had all this denim leftover that she had planned to make me a jacket out of, but that there was no way I was going to wear a handmade denim jacket (I know. I'm a shit person.) so she decided to make me a bag, instead.
Actually, she made a couple of bags. One for me and one for her. And this one has my name in iron on letters (an extra expense). I can't remember using it for anything except putting stuff in it for the car trip we took to California to see my grandma one year, and maybe I put my swimsuit in it a couple of times to go to the lake. I do remember that I left it at home on purpose when I went to college.
Jeez. Now that I'm thinking this over, I really feel terrible. My mom really did something nice for me--a lot of nice things--and I was a total bag of dicks about it.
Later, after I was married and got all my stuff from my mom and dad's house, I used this bag as a project bag for my knitting and crocheting. And so, now we're finally getting to the point of this blog post, after all of that.The point is, I found this bag and, after emptying out the psychedelic squares, I noticed there were things in the bag that I had not seen in a long time. Like a package of stitch markers, an old shopping list (that I threw away), a pen, a stitch guage, some needle threaders, plus a couple of patterns--one cut from a magazine and one from a ball band of yarn--and all these little crochet rounds.
Not sure what I was doing with these. Maybe they were the center rounds for a granny square afghan, who knows? But it was interesting to see them again.
I'm not sure what I will do with them. Seems a shame to throw them away, but they're kind of awful. What do you think?
posted by Patwoman | 6:00 PM
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