9:57 a.m. - 2004-09-12
Unfinished Business

Unfinished Things

In my profile, I mentioned that I am always changing horses in the middle of streams. Because of this character defect, I have tons of unfinished projects around the house. I could have the most grand garage sale in the world and have often contenplated doing just that, but I can't bear to part with anything. What do I have?

The rememnants of my last business, Dusty's Garden. Dusty's Garden was a garden art shop. I started it about 6 months before garden art became something that was sold in every Kmart, Walmart and Target. I stocked reproductions and original art from American Garden artists. Stuff that even the garden centers were not carrying. This was on it's way to being profitable when the cheap crap from China started pouring in. Now I would no sooner have cheap crap from China in my garden than weeds, but unfortunately most people would rather sink 7.00 into a plastic resin sculpture of a phony looking squirrel than an expensive concrete piece from Carruth studios or a hand cut metal sculpture from an American craftsman. Dusty's Garden went out of business and the leftover stock is now taking up half of my garage. I don't have a large enough garden to use it all, yet I refuse to part with it for a fraction of what I paid for it...so it sits in my garage.

Then comes my desire to craft things that I don't have time to craft. I belong to the Crafters Choice Book Club and my home library gives this fact away at a glance. Crowding my shelves are books that tell you how to craft just about anything...from building a bat house to making statues out of concrete (like I need more concrete statues).

Then came my ebay addiction. When my mother died, she not only left that little voice in my head I wrote about in a prior post, but she left a love of anything and everything antique. In one short year, I have ammassed, 5000 antique post cards from 1907 or earlier....I love them all....I have often thought that I would put most of them back on ebay...but I can't part with any of them and I don't have the time to sell things on ebay right now..funny how I always have time to buy though.

My ebay addiction led me to other collections like old fashion magazines with colored pictures of fashions from the 1920's, old fruit crate lables, and antique, turn of the century hat pins and jewelry...which brings me to another unfinished project involving broken, vintage jewelry. I got the idea from somwhere that if I had enough really beautiful peices of broken jewelry, I could glue them on a styrofoam Christmas tree cone and make a antiqued look bejeweled Christmas Tree. I also thought that it would be cool to glue them onto picture frames and wreath forms and stuff. The bags of broken jewelry, tree cone and wreath form are still sitting in the pile of crap on my granny's old 1920's kitchen table that I have stashed in my extra room. I should take a picture...OK..here it is..

I cut out recipes. I have a stack of recipes I will never make taking up a piece of a shelf. I also bought a really cool recipe program and vowed to put in a few of them every day...the recipes still are sitting on the shelf because I keep finding new ones to add to my software program. By the way, if you are looking for great software for your recipes...try Accuchef...it is the best.

I could go on and on. This posting is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my projects. It takes me 16 weeks to paint a room because I get sidetracked in between walls and end up with 1/4 and 1/2 painted rooms while I get into yet more projects. I have knick knacks galore....some of them still in boxes or in drawers because I haven't had the time to put up the shelves to put them on yet....and then what do I ask for on my birthday?.....A gift certificate to my favorite knick knack store...I am sick I tell you....SICK!!!!!

Despite having all this junk, my house is really not in too bad a shape. The garage is a mess and this little table I have is piled high, but the rest of my knick knacks are rather decoratively displayed and when people come over, there eyes glance all over the room because they can't possibly take in all I have hanging on my walls. I am a minimalists nightmare. Give me a patch of bare wall and I HAVE to hang something on it.

I love all my crap though and I think it looks nice. I like having tons of stuff for my eye to glance at. I only wish I had time to finish all the 1/2 started projects.

Now I have diaryland and my new business venture. I can always find something to keep me from finishing what I start.

P. I. Yarnsmith

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