Quickie

I’m sure that all of you have perfectly organized, tidy, ordered lives.  The sort where you have time to undertake intricate craft projects.  The kind that take weeks if not months of dedicated, focused attention and result in achingly beautiful finished objects.  You seem like those sorts of folks.

Me?  Me, I needed a five minute fix the other day.  The sort where explaining it will take longer than making it.  So…onto the explanations.

Last fall The Boy and I went to Maine.  We spent as much time as possible doing this.

Most marvelous thing ever–beach, fire, ocean-dipped marshmallows–you could not ask for more.  Now alas, that’s a hard moment to bring home with you.  You can take a picture.  You might even put the picture on the wall.  But it’s not very tactile.  Here’s where the five minute fix comes in.

The wood for those fires (those glorious, marvelous fires) came in plastic packages with handles made of some sort of strapping.  Colorful, woven, nylon handles.  I squelched my inner minimalist and declared that the handles would be coming home with me.  They went in a drawer for a while, but I thought of them the other day when I found myself in need of a bookmark.

Now the edges were ragged and would fray if left unchecked.  So first I trimmed them down to be nice and crisp, then I scorched them a bit with a match to keep them from fraying.  Then, noticing they were a tiny bit wrinkled from their previous life as handles, and having a whole two minutes left in my five minute window, I hit them with a blast of hot air from my hair dryer to encourage them to lay flat.  I hereby declare them bookmarks.

I may (should some of that elusive spare time and that even more elusive motivation hit me at the same moment) embroider the place and date on them in the future.  But for now, they serve as a lovely reminder of our trip every time I open my book.

Anybody else putting unorthodox trip souvenirs to good use?  Or doing any quick and simple projects?