What Do Writers Do When...

What do writers do when they're not writing? They get creative in other ways.

From what I've seen and read from others, we pretty much head in the same direction. Crafts. Knit, crochet, x-stitching, embroidery, scrapbooking, quilting. Oh, and there's photography and sketching. Have I left anything out? Probably. But as a footnote, some activities are more perilous than others.

A case in point.

I don't scrapbook, photograph or sketch anything. I have no talents in that direction but I'm pretty good at the rest of the list. Last Fall, I promised my son a quilt for a wedding gift. (Hopefully, it will be ready for their first anniversary.) His wife loves pink so I had to find something that would be a pleasing compromise. Not to masculine or feminine. No problem there. The original design I had in mind proved to be too boring when I started planning it out so I came up with something better. That meant getting more fabric to compliment what I already had picked out.

That meant trouble.

In mythology, Sirens called to sailors, their song irresistible. The sailors ended up on the rocks, their ship destroyed. Death was their only escape. Ulysses is the only character of myth to listen to the Sirens and live to tell about it. Then again, his men tied him to the mast so he couldn't jump overboard, and with their ears stopped up they couldn't hear his shouted orders to free him.

It's the prefect analogy and a good explanation why I try to avoid fabric shopping. Those stores are like the rocky shores and the Sirens are all the quilting fabric inside. Listening to those mythological, "angelic" voices is just begging for trouble.

And I was begging.

My sister must have been in collusion with said Sirens. In my innocence (ha ha ha) I'd asked her to come along and give me her opinion, but she kept drawing my attention to prints she knew I couldn't resist. A couple of them barely whispered and I knew they weren't right. They were easily ignored. Then there were the more...'experienced, more powerful voices.' The colors weren't so much 'vibrant' as they were pleasing to the eye and they were talking to me. She and 'they' made for great harmony. The kind of harmony you can't resist no matter how hard you try.  I suppose I didn't try too hard.

I fled from the rocks with seven different prints (not just the two I originally wanted) and my credit card still intact but with a discernible dent in it. I'm not sorry since, like Ulysses, I listened to their song and lived to tell about it.

As to my sister... Well, the Sirens aren't known for their loyalties. She'd been caught as well. In spite of her determination not to succumb to their vocal entreaties (she had no intention of purchasing any-thing) she left with several patterns.

The lesson for the day?  Never trust Sirens. They always catch you.

Bwahahahahahah