By PAT NEWMAN
pnewman@thecitizennews.com

Feeling crafty? You should. March is National Craft Month, and it's time to drag all those unfinished ceramic Santas and half-decoupaged napkin holders out of their hiding places and complete them!

This directive is not for you Martha Stewart wanna-be's whose homes are showcases for their creativity. It's for the closet crafters like me who could open a Michael's clearance center with all the paints, pots, styrofoam and fabric they've accumulated over the years and never used.

Sifting through my oversized Tupperware bins of craft items is like unearthing a time capsule. On the very bottom of the largest and oldest tub are spools of hemp from the macrame days. Remember those lovely hanging plant holders from the `70s? Right beside that ugly brown twine is a collection of crochet needles and neon colored skeins of wool, remnants of the cool crocheted vests I made one Christmas for everyone including my Uncle Bill.

Decoupage paste and sealer, plus an assortment of wooden plaques, are crammed into a corner along with a book of Rod McKuen poems. Beside that is an envelope chock-full of needlepoint designs, embroidery floss and leftover key chains from the monogram year.

Into the 1980s and the beginning and rapid end of my smocking phase — when you live in Charleston, S.C. and have a baby, it's understood that new mothers take up this tedious craft and sew cute little puffy-sleeved dresses for their daughters and gingham rompers stitched with tiny train engines and puppies for their sons.

I took the classes, bought the supplies and made exactly two items — an inset for a boy's romper with the definitive choo-choos stitched in red and a christening outfit which life-sized Barbie now wears as a nightgown.

Members of my family shudder when the infamous christening gown comes up in conversation. Sewing what I thought would be a “family heirloom” put me on the verge of a nervous breakdown. For three weeks, I stitched and knotted white embroidery thread on white batiste, sewed French seams and finally got the neckline closure done ten minutes before we left for the church and my first child's Baptism.

My original idea to embroider the names and dates of all the lucky babes to wear this original creation got canned the minute my son spit up on the pleated front.

I did not craft again until those puffy paints and sweatshirts hit the scene.

Since then, I've invested untold hours and dollars into low heat and inferno-hot glue guns, stick-on jewels, popsicle sticks, beads, feathers and Fimo clay. I have pillow forms awaiting covers, beads begging for string and rose stencils and pouncing brushes getting stiff.

Fortunately I have a daughter who was born with a craft talent that goes beyond crayons and sand art. So Martha, watch out! The next generation has glue guns poised and ready to shoot. These young ladies are on the cutting edge of the ethnic bead trend and can paint lady bugs and dragonflies on wood faster than you can say “chenille stem.”

So if you can't see to read the directions anymore without your magnifier half-glasses, turn over the fusible web to your offspring and just wait until Christmas.

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