My life is not full of instant gratification projects. Parenting is NOT a project that lends itself to instant gratification. Yes, there are wonderful and satisfying moments along the way…but the whole project is a long haul.
Preparing for this coming year’s homeschooling has been a long (totally satisfying) project as well.
Knitting can take time. I am not fast enough yet…or maybe I don’t have enough time all at once…to finish a project in one sitting. Nic’s scarf took me about a week here and there to complete. Whinnie’s hat, several days.
Cooking is almost instant gratification. Last night’s dinner was made-from-scratch pizza. The bread machine takes care of the dough making process for me. Throw in the ingredients and 90 minutes later…dough is ready to work. Thirty minutes after that, it’s ready to roll out and add toppings. Wonderful. Not instantaneous, but yummy and good.
Yestereday did allow me one window of instant gratification though…these:
Six new bean bags. From the moment of inspiration to having these completed took about 60 minutes.
What is really wonderful about this, aside from instant gratification thingy is that it gave me a reason to bring out the sewing machine.
This wonderful old machine hadn’t been used for over a year and spent most of that time packed away in a box in the closet. I wasn’t sure, then, how much tinkering would be required to start her up and get her going. This machine belonged to my MIL when she was a young mother with two young sons…so it is older and sometimes tempermental.
I remember well the months it took me to learn the quirks of tension and bobbin winding for this particular machine — even though I wasn’t a sewing machine novice.
Wonderful surprise! She started right up! No fiddling with tension…no negotiating with bobbins.
So while Whinnie sat and played with the straight pins (there seems to be something magical about taking them out and putting them back in the pin cushion) I cut, pinned and sewed.
Eventually the boys came in from playing out in the woods and were intrigued.
Once all six of the pieces were double-stitched on three sides, all the attachlings helped to fill them. Each bag got approximately 3 ounces of dried black turtle beans (purchased some time ago for another project…but there was much left over) and about two teaspoons of dried lavender blossoms.
Yes, I am just geeky enough to have weighed and measured these things. Hey! I have an electronic scale handy. Why eyeball and just guess that they are about proximate in size/weight when I can use the scale and give the boys a chance to announce the readout?
So now we have six pretty equal (and totally awesome smelling!) bean bags for Circle Time. They will be used for tossing and counting and other merriment. And they will smell good and soothing. (I love the scent of lavender…does it show?)
And this project was a great one for repurposing. Like I mentioned, the beans had been purchased for a different project, so I just used the leftovers. The cloth was a cotton remnant that I had leftover from a sling I made two years ago. I definately wanted cotton for this, so that the lavendar blossoms would stay in but the scent could waft out. And then there’s the sewing machine. 😀
The only thing purchased for this new was the lavender…but not really. I actually bought the lavender to make soothing eye pillows…but I knew I could do that and this project, as I have more than half the bag left.
Using repurposed materials for this project made me smile. Getting it all done in one sitting made me ecstatic!
Plus knowing that my quirky-wonderful sewing machine is ready to hum…priceless! Now what do I want to  make next? 😉
happily,
Mary