When I tell people that I craft daily, or they check out my shop or my Flickr and see how prolific I am (I can say this without any sense of bragging. I usually complete 5-10 projects per week. I think that's pretty dang good!) they invariably ask me where I "find the time." Because of that, I am very interested in how/when other crafters "find the time" to work on stuff. What's your schedule like?
My response is typically this: Firstly, crafting is like anything else that you like to do -- you make time for it. If you're a Bejeweled junkie or a fan of reality TV or running enthusiast, you work out a way to fit it into your life. Secondly, the projects that I work on are, in truth, not that time consuming. They might take several hours stretched over multiple days, but I choose my projects based on the amount of time they take, which is my preference. I don't have the patience for projects that take months or years to finish, I need quick satisfaction! A lot of the things that I made take an hour or two to complete. Which also ties in with the materials I usually work with. Projects like embroidery are easy to pick up/put down when time allows. It's not like oil painting which requires mixtures and tinctures and blended colors that you get just right and then - whoops! Time's up! Go to bed now! Finally, I multi-task. Since I started crafting more in the past couple of years I have completely destroyed my attention span. Now if my hands are idle for more than 10 minutes I start to fidget. Going to a movie in a theater is nearly torture - 2 hours with nothing to do! (I need to learn to crochet in the dark or finger knit or something) At home, I watch TV, listen to podcasts, listen to music, converse with my cats (Aw, shut up! You know you do it too!), and craft at the same time.
Basically, while you're watching 30 Rock and eating popcorn, I am watching 30 Rock and stitching popcorn.
A typical day for me:
8am: get ready, get set, go! (to work)
9am-6pm: work day
6pm-7pm: play "crazy time" with Rocket (his preference)
7pm-8pm: dinner
8pm-10:45pm: watch movies/TV, work on crafts
10:45pm-11:45pm: bath time (doubles as "reading time"; I generally read one book per week in the bathtub)
12am: get in bed, sometimes continue reading
1-2am: fall asleep (I'm not good at falling asleep)
I'm very lucky that my husband works at home and has a creative job, so generally after dinner, he's at his art desk and I'm on the couch and we're both crafting away, which gives the whole house really good energy. Our living room/dining room area is our studio space, and his desk is about 15 feet away from where I work, so we're near to each other and can be social, so it's actually really fun.
2 comments:
I was just thinking about this! I'm so glad I have incorporated stitching into my schedule. I get a lot of mom's who say, "How do you do it?" I just do it! It's just become another part of me. :)
Me too. It's actually so meditative for me. Even if I am multi-tasking, it still soothes my mind to be stitching.
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