Grocery Bag Basket

Sigh, it’s a craft day, and you guys know how I feel about crafts, don’t you? No sir, I don’t like them.

This all stems from my childhood. More on that later. Here’s what I’m making today: a basket made out of a grocery bag…

Image from Elli.com

The sarcastic among you will undoubtedly note that a grocery bag is a thing to put stuff in, as is a basket, so we are using one carrying receptacle to make another carrying receptacle. Shut up, sarcastic people. The basket is way cuter.

Now, more on the reasons I don’t like crafts: They make me think about elementary school art class. You even start with similar materials.

We may have done this exact craft, in fact.

Now I know some elementary school art teachers, and I fully and deeply appreciate everything you folks do. You dedicate your life, time, and probably your money to sticky-fingered and under-developed children who really only like art class because it’s the one hour of the week when their tyrannical teacher-of-all-else gets to take a well-deserved smoke break.

I really only liked art class because it didn’t involve much math. (And I saw you try to sneak some geometry in there with that tessellation collage. I ain’t dumb.)

This project actually did involve some math, as there is a lot of cutting of strips of paper and measuring those strips.

And the instructions aren’t super clear on how many you end up with, so Imma break it down for you in case you don’t want any math in your art project, like me:

You cut 18 strips of the same length.

You take 2 of those strips and cut them in half. Now you have 20 strips (4 short ones and 16 regular ones).

You take the 4 short strips and glue them to 4 of the regular-sized strips. Now you have 4 extra-long strips and 12 regular-sized strips.

See? Math.

Then you take those strips and fold them into thirds, which really just sort of made me mad because I spent so much time carefully measuring them before I cut them out. But I think it’s so you can hide the ugly parts on the inside.

(I am a big proponent of hiding the ugly parts. It’s why I wear clothes and make-up, people. And if a make-up artist ever tells you make-up is not meant to cover the ugly parts, she’s a damn liar.)

I was talking with a friend the other day and realized, once again, that this blog is sort of just therapy for my debilitating perfectionism. The thing is, I am not blessed with the sort of perfectionism that comes with endless talent. My particular brand of perfectionism is paired with a severe lack of athleticism and craftiness. If that shit don’t make ya a little crazy, I don’t know what will.

But on this blog, I am forced to show my less-than-perfect results to all of you and declare to the world that this is who I am.

That doesn’t stop me from wanting my blog to be perfect, but anyways… It’s a vicious cycle, guys.

It took me like twenty godforsaken minutes to get the 12 short strips to look like this.

And it took me another hour or so to weave the long pieces in as the sides.

There was no small amount of cursing and back-tracking along the way. “Christ with a crutch,” is a personal favorite of mine, in case you were wondering.

(Annnnd cue the haters who don’t mind when I use a fucktillion other swear words, but if I “use the Lord’s name in vain,” they shoot righteous rockets of indignation out of their soul-parts at me, even though they probably said, “Oh my God,” seventeen times today already, and isn’t that using the Lord’s name in vain, too?)

Another twenty or thirty minutes to fold and tuck all the end pieces… and then I realized I should have done the same with the long strips on the inside of the basket, but it was too late because I’d already glued down the ends.

All of my art projects in elementary school turned out such that comments I received were along the lines of, “Oh, bless your heart,” and, “Well isn’t that… special?” I knew what it meant, and I knew my projects were not beautiful, despite an adult never actually telling me they were butt-ugly.

This one actually turned out passable, as long as you don’t look on the inside of the basket. Might not even earn me a comment like, “I can see how hard you worked on that,” (which is a total copout way to tell someone their thing sucks).

I didn’t have any strawberries to put in it, though, so I put my penis cookie cutters in there. Dick in a box. Get it? (Thought I’d leave you with a good old penis joke as an apology for discussions of psychological neuroses and theology in this post. Sorry dudes.)