How real people craft

Hi, my name is Jessica, and I am a crafter. There, it’s out. Judge me accordingly.
I don’t know if there is a direct connection between Pinterest or my newest discovery, Craftgawker, and my rejuvenated crafting habit. I think it’s more likely that I’ve been crafting due to the sudden lack of school deadlines. Whatever it is, I have taken to crafting like my husband takes to glass Coke bottles at Christmas—I just can’t get enough.

The thing is, I'm actually not very good at crafting. I don’t have original ideas, and I am not a visual perfectionist. If I was an artist, I’d be a throw paint at a tarp and walk away kind of artist.

Nevertheless, I thought I’d do what the serious bloggers do and make a tutorial of the craft I made today. Here is the result.

Materials:
Lamp shade
Mod Podge
Paint Brush (mine was too wide to fit in the bottle of Mod Podge)
Old calendar page (in this case a calendar of old world maps)
Butcher paper
Wooden Spoon
Cutting board
Utility knife (Probably should have used an exacto knife, but the utility knife was closer)
Lint Brush
Paper
Tape
Grafting Paper
Pencil


Step 1: Remove fake flowers from previous crafting atttempt on lamp shade. Don't bother picking off the hot glue. It will be covered by paper anyway.

Step 2: Use lint brush to remove years of cat hair from shade. What does she do, sleep curled around the thing?

Step 3: Lay shade on calendar paper and stare at it for a while. Accept that you don't understand enough math to put a square piece of paper evenly on a rounded lamp shade.

Step 4: Roll shade over calendar page while trying to trace pattern with pencil.

Step 5: Notice that you can’t see the pencil marking on the calendar page.

Step 6: Tape two pieces of printer paper together to make template.

Step 7: Repeat step 4 on blank paper.

Step 8: Now HERE is one of my more brilliant ideas. Place a stolen piece of graphite paper between new template and and calendar page. Trace curvy lines onto calendar.

Step 9: Flip graphite paper the proper way so it leaves markings on the calendar paper and NOT the template paper.

Step 10: Feel very proud of yourself and cut out curved shape from calendar paper.

Step 11: Roll eyes when you realize the calendar paper is much too small to cover entire lamp shade.

Step 12: Repeat steps 9 and 10 on spare piece of butcher paper found lying around (don’t worry, readers. It is previously unused).

Step 13: Dip paintbrush that is far too wide as deep as you can into the bottle of Mod Podge and manage to cover the tips of the bristles in glue. Paint a thin layer of glue on the backs of calendar page and butcher paper, and surface of the lamp shade.

Step 14: Line butcher paper onto shade first and press down. Ignore the fact that the shape isn’t perfect and doesn't quite reach the edge of the lamp shade in some places.

Step 15: Attempt to use wooden spoon to smooth out wrinkles. Forget that, too much effort.

Step 16: Apply a thin-ish layer of Mod Podge over surface of butcher paper, trying to stick down edges as best you can.

Step 17: Repeat with calendar paper over space not covered by butcher paper.

Step 18: Cut little corners of butcher paper to cover places your math skills are just too lacking to account for.

Step 19: Realize the level of Mod Podge has dipped too low in bottle for paintbrush to reach and dump a puddle of Mod Podge onto cutting board instead.

Step 20: Paint three new layers of Mod Podge over entire shade, allowing 15 minutes to dry between coats.

Step 21: Put new fancy shade back on lamp and feel very proud of yourself.

Step 22: Turn on lamp and discover you can see the dates from the back of the calendar page.

Step 23: Find it all quite hilarious and love your little Mod Podged lamp shade anyway.

Next time: Hand-knit sweaters for everyone!

An unexpected treasure

I spent the first part of my childhood in High Level, Alberta, touted by many as the last real stop before the Northwest Territories. To me, the Peace River Country was a place of magic and merit. In the summer there wasn’t quite a midnight sun, but there was midnight twilight, when the sky only darkened to a milky grey before the sun rose again, and when it was at its highest it burned so intensely I knew what it must feel like to be microwaved. High Level also got all the bragging rights of the cold and the bugs like any other part of the north. It was the sort of place that made you aware that the world was bigger than you, and you could be tougher than you ever thought possible.

So imagine my delight when I was looking through a bookshelf in the old family house today and I found a book called Poems of the Peace River Country by Jessie M. Bresnahan, published in 1960 by Arthur H. Stockwell Ltd. out of Elms Court, Ilfracombe Devon. I can’t find much information about Bresnahan, but according to the frontispiece she was a district nurse in the Peace River Valley and Mackenzie Basin. I know from reading Dr. Mary Percy Jackson’s biography A Homemade Brass Plate that there was a call for nurses in the UK to immigrate to Northern Alberta around the turn of the twentieth century, and based on some of her poetry, I have a suspicion that Bresnahan was one of the nurses who answered the call.

This blog post is going to be a little different, because there is no easy research to bulk up what I learned from reading Poems of the Peace River Country. Instead I’m going to offer a selection of her poetry here so that you can learn a part of history of an important Alberta place through the eyes of a wonderful Alberta pioneer, just like I did.

“Mystery of the Little Smoky”

On the mysterious supposed death of O. Hansom while hunting whose horse returned without housing or saddle

If horses they could speak
How one could tell and solve a mystery so dark and deep,
How a stray bullet from a poacher’s gun did
Strike its master’s head and falling headlong on the ground
That strong man lay and bled.
Soon shaking hands beside him knelt
And tried to staunch the flow, but all in vain,
The life had fled, that life, they had laid low.
Then guilty hands the saddle loose and other housings too,
He’s off to free and open space, then stops and stands to view,
Those guilty hands then carry him,
Whose life had lately fled, they pause and think, just
On the brink, of Little Smoky’s bed,
They hesitate to make their sin, a deeper darksome crime,
Then on they drop in a pool where sun doth never shine;
Dead men tell no tales, they say.
But guilt will make them shudder
In days to come, we know someone
The crime will have to utter.

“In Alberta”

I thank Thee, Lord, thou broughtest me here,
I did not want to come,
It seemed so very far away,
From my first dear old home.
Aye! Thou art leading still,
I came, I saw, was conquered
Almost, against my will.
When once you drink from mighty Peace,
The aged Indian said,
“You will come back. You must not break.”
He shrugged and shook his head.
I drank its water, turned away
And left for other lands.
Thou called be back again to tread
Alberta’s sunny strands.
My three score years and ten have passed.
The tide may come this year,
To bear me through the Sunset Gate,
But I’ll be waiting here.