DIY

I love crafts. 

It started around age 5 with Play-Doh and Shrinky Dinks and has since evolved into a full-blown obsession with creating. On any given day you can find me tweaking my favorite brownie recipe, tending my houseplants or practicing a new embroidery stitch. I've taken on everything from stained glass art to jewelry making to knitting and I dream of a day when I'll have space for quilting and gardening. In a perfect world I would spend my days mixing my own organic cleaning agents, reupholstering vintage chairs and aging homemade cheeses… The fact is, nothing makes me happier than working with my hands. 

However. 

I'm terrible at it. 

Not that the final result is bad- somehow I always manage to more or less achieve the expected outcome - but the process of getting there is always disastrous. Which is fine. I'm used to it by now and it's pretty common knowledge that all of my crafty undertakings trend more toward Lucille Ball than Martha Stewart so imagine my surprise when I was recently praised by my good friend, Melanie. I had just mentioned in passing that I was planning to make my own almond milk that coming weekend. 

“Every time I talk to you, you’re sewing pillows or making a soup from scratch.” She cooed. “You’re so domestic. I love that about you.” 

There was not a hint of cynicism. Not a trace of mockery. There was genuine admiration in her voice and in that moment I saw myself the way she sees me: Betty Crocker in a checkered apron, lovingly placing pies in the window to cool. So radiant. So competent. So hilariously wrong. 

To my dearest Melanie who always sees the best in me, I offer the following chronicle of a recent Sunday afternoon, when I endeavored to spray paint my coffee table while also preparing homemade nut butter: 

1:00 Begin by roasting nuts for butter. Set oven to 450. Spread a cup each of outrageously priced raw organic walnuts and almonds on a cookie sheet. Add a quarter cup of flaxseeds, which hop and bounce and scatter all over the floor. Hear dog coming to eat seeds off the floor, lunge to keep her away, spill entire sheet of nuts on the floor. 

1:06 Vacuum kitchen. 

1:13 Start over. Put fresh batch of nuts and seeds in the oven. Set timer for 10 minutes. 

1:22 Carry table to the courtyard garden. Realize that even though “drop cloth” was noted on Iphone calendar, Wunderlist app, a Post-It taped to the front door and a napkin laid out on my wallet, a drop cloth was never bought. 

1:23 Stare at drop cloth-less ground.

1:24 Struck by genius idea to improvise with garbage bags. Congratulate self on creative brilliance. 

1:25 Cut up garbage bags. Decide to tape them together with masking tape. Do not have masking tape, only painters’ tape. Same thing. 

1:27 Not the same thing. 

1:28 Tape inexplicably not adhering where it needs to yet adhering everywhere else. Bag bunching and gathering and puckering and ultimately resembling a deformed spaceman. 

1:29 Curse. Wrestle. Surrender.

1:30 Take plastic bag spaceman to the garden; lay it on the ground, rest table on top. Plastic bag spaceman is actually performing better than expected by bubbling up and protecting surrounding bushes. Genius restored. 

1:31 Prepare to spray. Shake can as directed. Pop plastic security tab off nozzle. Aim and spray. 

1:32 Realize plastic security tab was not a plastic security tab. It was an innovative spraying mechanism that has now been broken off. Paint foams out the bottom and splatters all over self, the garden and the table so that table is now stippled with paint. Must avoid uneven coating! Step back to inspect malfunction, spewing paint all over concrete walkway. 

1:34 Curse. Curse again. Realize mid-cursing that paint is drying on the concrete. See hose coiled in the garden across the walkway. Turn on water and flood the paint splatters, to no effect. Curse. 

1:35 Reach angrily to turn off the spigot, slip on the slick concrete, trip on the coiled hose and fall through a cluster of Birds of Paradise, crushing them and hitting head on my apartment window. 

1:36 Curse. Question the logic behind wearing a strapless mini dress to paint furniture and send up a silent prayer that the events of the previous thirty seconds transpired without witness. 

1:37 Regain bearings. Note a trace of smoke. Burning. Food burning. Food burning in apartment. 

1:38 Race inside and instinctively pull smoking tray of charred nuts from oven without a mitt. Holler, sending tray to the floor. 

1:39 Curse. 

1:41 Run scorched hand under cold water.

1:43 Fire alarm sounds. Need a broom to wave smoke away. Do not own a broom so wave Swiffer back and forth in front of the alarm, accidentally hitting alarm, sending it to the floor and breaking it. 

1:45 Bandage burned hand. Vacuum another $21 worth of nuts and start over for the third time with a fresh batch. 

1:56 Return to the table outside, which is now splattered with drying paint. Plastic bag spaceman has kicked up in the breeze, stuck to the tacky surface and is drying onto the table. 

1:58 Anchor plastic bag spaceman with three pairs of flip flops, sand table and re-spray with second can of paint. 

2:13 Table is coated and drying. Renewed belief in abilities. Return to kitchen to finish nut butter. 

2:14 Place roasted nuts and seeds in food processor. Blend. 

2:19 Keep blending.

2:28 Worry that food processor was not intended for this purpose and might short circuit. 

2:32 Open brand new jar of $10 local, small-batch wildflower honey and add three tablespoons to the completed butter. 

2:33 Test a sample. Butter is delectable. Swell with pride. Wasted materials, burned hand and broken smoke alarm are a distant memory.

2:34 Fantasize about quitting desk job to craft custom artisanal nut butters for neighborhood eateries while setting the jar of honey back on the counter. Miss the counter entirely. Watch in slow-motion as $10 jar of honey plummets to the floor and shatters. Honey everywhere. Glass everywhere. Dog trots over to investigate. 

2:36 Wash kitchen floor. 

2:43 Wash dog.

2:49 Vacuum kitchen floor for the third time in 2 hours.

2:58 Wash kitchen floor again. 

3:06 Jar nut butter and refrigerate. 

3:01 Check to see that table is dry. It is! Bring inside the house. Inhale three painful, paint-fume laden breathes and immediately relocate coffee table outside apartment door to aerate. Subsequently live without coffee table for 4 days, using a small chair as a substitute. 

3:09 Shower. Scrub paint-encrusted fingers with nail polish remover. Open a bottle of wine to toast crafting success but decide to nap instead.

I wish I could tell you that this was an unusually blunder-full day but it wasn't. This is entirely typical and anyone who has ever lived with me can attest to that. But no matter! The nut butter was amazing and I've gotten many compliments on the coffee table. Next up is making my own multi-grain bread and rehabbing a bookcase I found on the sidewalk. What could go wrong there?