In the Beginning...

Well, maybe not the beginning, but somewhere in my childhood I fell in love with found objects and what you could make from them.  Why am I telling you this?  Recently sweet Miss Mustard Seed shared that sharing yourself, being you, is what helps make a blog unique and one people want to come back to.  I realized that I rarely share myself with you, just my projects.  And while my projects reflect a part of me, they don't really help you to get to know the person who created them. 

Me--circa 1974 at my grandparents cabin.

Now I am making a dangerous assumption here that puts me out on a limb, and that is that you actually want to know me better.  Maybe not, but for those of you who do I will be attempting to share more of me with my blog posts. 

I thought I'd start with what I recall as some of my earliest memories of being interested in junk or free things.  I grew up (at least until my teen years) in Northern California where I spent many days playing with friends along the levy of the Delta, unsupervised nonetheless.   One day my best friend I found a trench coat with some pennies in the pocket.  We were so excited to have a found a coat in the bushes that we carted it home to show it off to my mom.  Mom was alas, not quite as thrilled as we were and the coat, which she explained probably belonged to a transient, was promptly thrown into the trash and I am sure a bath followed.  I guess my treasure wasn't fabulous and certainly was most likely less than clean, but I remember the feeling of finding something that I deemed worthy for free.

Another early junking memory that did not horrify my mother and that she supported came in the form of several free fruit crates that I believe my dad brought home for me from the grocery store. 

 

I stacked them and nailed them and soon I had a great fort.  I wish I had a picture, but imagine several crates stacked 3 high and side by side to create walls.  An old piece of plywood across the top and some white paint and I had a dandy clubhouse, complete with shelves (the insides of the boxes) in the interior. 

I attribute those two experiences, and I am sure there were others, in helping to shape who I am today--someone who loves finding a discarded item and creating something new and valuable with it.

Thanks for "listening".