There are so many types of crafting these days – a quick look in my spare room confirms the variety of crafts that I dabble in. Many times, it seems as though “like congregates with like” and you have to pick your craft for an event: knit/crochet nights, scrapbooking weekends, etc. Here in Chicago, a “movement” is underway to change that and bring together all types of crafting for an evening of fun. On Friday evening, I participated in the second Chicago Craft Social. The premise is great:

150 crafters + 10-12 hosted craft tables + tables for other crafting
= an evening of collective crafting

I went to the evening not really knowing what to expect. In my bag was my current knitting project. A quick look at the list of hosted crafts for the evening had me wanting to try them all. After walking around all the tables, I decided to work on Embellished Napkins for the evening.

Erin showed us how to use her self-designed clear stamps and in no time at all, 6 of us were figuring out what our napkin designs would be. Chelsea, Chris, Jesse, Charis, Cindy, and I quickly got to work. Once the napkins were inked I decided to brush up on my embroidery skills a bit & do a few embellishments to the leaves & buds. While I’ve done some embroidery in the past, the french knot always gave me fits. After Erin showed it to me, I felt like it finally clicked. I jokingly said the evening was a success because I had finally mastered the French Knot.

At the end of the evening, each of us at the table had a set of napkins stamped & were each well on our way to having the embroidered embellishments finished.

So many times, I have discovered that my crafting has provided “small world moments” in meeting people. Small world moment #1: As I was signing in for the evening, I discovered that one of my co-workers was leading one of the tables. Since we haven’t worked for the same clients, we didn’t realize all the crafting that we had in common. We’ve decided that we will need to get together for our own crafting night soon.

Small world moment #2: After the fact I learned that a friend from my Kansas days (who now lives in Thailand) was college suitemates with one of the organizers and had been seeing Megan’s blogging in anticipation of the event.

All in all, it was a great evening of crafting & inspiration! The knitting & crafting have been a bit less in recent months; however, I think this was just the jump start that I needed jump back into some of my artisan pursuits.