Scrapping: a different kind of book...

Forgive my absenteeism, dear readers.  I've been doin' other stuff!

Yes, I am writing a book.  One that will never be published.

You know, some people see all the lovely books on my shelves at home and remark, "Wouldn't you rather have a Nook or a Kindle?"  Why, no.  They see me knitting sweaters, socks, hats, scarves, and ask, "Isn't that difficult?  Doesn't it take you a very long time?"  Why yes, it does.  People puzzle over my love of scrapbooking.  "Wouldn't it be easier and faster to just do Shutterfly albums?" Why yes, it would.

These three activities have a lot in common.  They are TANGIBLE.  They take TIME.  And in the case of knitting and scrapbooking, the end result is artful and one-of-a-kind.  But they aren't so much about "product" as "process."

The parlor at the Eagle Mountain House -
a step back in time, no?

The weekend before Thanksgiving I went away with girlfriends to a bi-annual "Scrapbooking Getaway."  The woman who organizes it nearly always holds it at the Eagle Mountain House in Jackson, New Hampshire.  It's like stepping back in time.  Built in 1879, it's on the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  The view is breathtaking.  The food is amazing at their restaurant.  And it's fun to go away with girlfriends.

I REALLY LOVE the process of actually cutting and pasting printed photos and fancy paper, using stickers, special pens, stamps, and all the other doodads and geegaws of scrapbooking.  (Yeah, that's real "cut and paste," not Control+C, Control+V.  BTW, there's no Control+Z.) And I especially love to scrapbook WITH someone else, especially my friend Beth.  A "crop" is fun because we chit-chat non-stop, and we share ideas, gadgets, supplies, Cricut cartridges, and a few glasses of wine in the process.  Reading is solitary, knitting is mostly solitary, but scrapbooking is very social, at least for me.



One of the 14 pages I made at
my most recent getaway.



Want to know something very strange?  The part I find the most difficult is the "journaling," the seemingly-simple business of writing a few sentences on each page about who is in the photo, what's going on, etc.  If you've ever looked at a vintage photo album, not knowing who you're looking at, what year it was taking, why this moment is special - you know why journaling matters.  And so that big blue square in the lower right corner of the scrapbook page you can see there?  Yep, that's waiting for my journaling.  I take too long thinking of EXACTLY the right thing to say, when the right thing to say is to just say SOMETHING.

Similarly, with the holidays nigh, it gets a little more challenging for me to get over here and say SOMETHING on Blogger.  Oh, but I'm still reading.  That never goes away!