The far and the near: a craft room in progress

​My craft room does not photograph the way I wish it did.

That is not to say it isn’t charming. Parts of it are very charming. Up close, it can look almost exactly like the room I carry around in my imagination: a basket of papers, a bit of lace, a little red gingham, a doll face behind glass, pens standing up in cups like flowers, a wooden table by the window, old things and useful things living together like they have known each other for years.

Up close, it is a nest.

From farther back, it is more honest.

From farther back, we can see the in-between stage. The stacks. The boxes. The rolling carts. The projects that have not found their permanent homes yet. The things I have brought down from high places because I am tired of owning lovely supplies I can’t reach. (Hayleigh and Brenda have actually brought those down. Full disclosure.) The room is becoming more useful, but maybe not exactly more photogenic.

I keep thinking about Thomas Wolfe’s short story “The Far and the Near.” I loved teaching that story. In it, a train engineer spends years passing a little house on his route. He sees a woman and her child from the train, and they become, in his mind, almost a symbol of goodness and beauty at home. Then, after he retires, he visits them. And what was lovely from far away is not lovely up close.

My craft room is almost the opposite. The close-ups are beautiful. The far away view still has a little bit of work to do.

One basket can look like a poem. One shelf can look like memory. One little cup of pens can look like possibility. But stepped back, all those little poems are still waiting to become a chapter.

That is where I am right now.

I am trying to make this room usable without forcing it to lose its romance. I am trying to bring things down where I can reach them, sort them, touch them, use them, and love them – instead of keeping them tucked away in places that make the room look neater, but my life less possible.

There is a difference between a room arranged for a photograph and a room arranged for a life.

I am a retired English teacher, a junk journalist, a doll keeper, and afghan namer, and a memory keeper. Wow! That sounds a little grand, but it is also fairly accurate, I have spent most of my life loving words …and old paper …and pretty scraps …and family stories …and objects that still seem to have a little breath left in them.

That exact concoction is this room.

It is not just craft supplies. It is old books and calendars. It is lace and old baskets and buttons and beads. It is dolls that remind me of my childhood and motherhood —- and my mother‘s childhood. It is notebooks waiting for truthful words. It is paper waiting to be cut and glued into something that feels like a page from life itself. It is yarn becoming an afghan for someone I love. Right now I spend most of my time working on an afghan for Adrienne. She knows I’m making it, so I can say that much. I usually like to make surprises. Yarn in progress has its own kind of hope. It is row after row of intention. I think it is warmth before it is finished.

And maybe that is what this whole room is: Warmth before it is finished.

My craft room in progress is a funny thing. It can look messier at the exact moment it is becoming more useful. It can look less finished at the exact moment it is becoming more alive. So this is not the grand tour. This is the “during.” This is both the close-up and the longshot. This is the nest still being feathered. Maybe that is a good enough place to begin. Around here, beauty does not always arrive polished. Most of the time it comes in a basket, with a lot of lace hanging out, waiting for life to notice….