The Crafty Years

This is a handmade decoration, completed partly from a need to get creative with a small project and partly from a dearth of decorations with Christian significance. Even the angel on the top of my tree owes much more to pop culture [of its Victorian time] than it does to Scripture, it’s a girl for a start!

Anyway, in the years before I was expending all my creative energy in cyberspace I was a [not so] closet cross stitcher. Partly because its creativity is a paint by numbers kind and at the time that suited me a lot better than having to come up with the goods and partly because, well I liked the stuff.

So in the bottom drawer of my dresser there sits a number of beautiful cross stitch pictures in need of frames and in the cupboard above my wardrobe there sits a big box of threads and fabric awaiting the desire to strike again (I’m not optimistic of that happening…).

Hearking back to those days, I guess I had a lot of time on my hands. I was a nanny by trade at the time and had young children in my care. They’d sleep, I’d stitch. I also was living as a lodger in peoples homes and didn’t have a tv of my own and needed to entertain myself without it!!

The stitching projects were varied. At Christmas time they’d usually be small gifts like the decoration above 3 of which (over a 3 year period) I gave to my nanny agent at the time, she who shall be called Dingle.

Dingle was a great chick and was a bit fond of me which was a good thing, it meant I got a good bit of work out of her. I think it was her that set me up (after 6 months on the dole) with my first full time nanny job in NZ. However until that time I’d do the odd ad hoc job here and there as a casual.

The most memorable was for an actor whose name you will recognize, however, rather than confess straight up I’ll just say that he was in NZ(where he has home) to film a certain movie that would go on to win Oscars for a young NZ girl, its director and leading actress (3 out of 8 nominations).

I got the call early in the am.

“Dee quick, are you busy today?”

“mumble… mmmf, Dingle?”

“yes” Get up, I need you to go to the [insert hotel name] at once; [insert celeb’s name] needs a baby sitter for today and tomorrow.”

“I’ll try, I haven’t got a car”

“Figure it out and call me back”

“Scoozi?”

“ok, but don’t break it”

And off I went. To the then nicest hotel in Auckland for breakfast with him and his girls.

Me, and Sam, and the 2 girls.

Having breakfast.

2 days running…

Of course, he spent most of his time with his nose in a book/script…. But still… I was this far away from him!!

The job was a breeze but for the boredom that comes from trying to entertain children in a hotel. The novelty of pay tv and room service soon wears off. However, the mileage I have got out of the story (and still get) every time you see his face on tv has been worth it.

Even worth the embarassment of rocking up to [insert hotel name] in the oldest dodgiest red Ford hatchback and asking the valet to park it.