Project Visionaries

I fancy myself a project visionary. Sounds grand, doesn’t it?

Project visionaries are people who have more ideas inside their heads, bumping into each other, than they have time to finish them. Being a project visionary requires tools. Being a project visionary means you are never bored or without something to do. Being a project visionary means you have to find ways to separate each project from the other, so that when you stumble upon an unfinished one, you will have enough clues from what’s stored with it to remember the great vision that got it started. Being a project visionary requires dozens of bags and boxes.

My penchant for notions is legendary, but organizing the space around me brings even greater acclaim. I can find something where I left it when my workspace is messy, but I prefer to keep things tucked away in their proper places – notions and threads in little drawers, fabric by color in bigger drawers, stencils in low flat Rubbermaids®, acrylic rulers along a bookcase, and so forth.

When I get one project going, however, I like to keep that all together. If I buy fabric for a quilt, I will prepare it, and then store it in an appropriately-sized box, usually with clear sides, so I will know at a glance what is there. Once the project is started, it will stay in the box, in its various stages of completion, ready for the whim that brings me back to it.

Projects that are on my current to-do radar screen get special treatment. I will look through my assortment of little bags and big bags, and select those that fit the need. It’s fun! Notions go in one little bag, some threads in another, and the larger fabric pieces nestle together with them in the larger, project bag. I usually have three or four project bags sitting in a large basket in my dining room. If I’m on the run, I can grab one and have it along, ready for any free moment during the day.

Hubba has observed this over the years, and he gets it. He appears to have picked up my thready needs by osmosis. What could be interpreted as my quilt-thinking rubbing off on him means, I’ve discovered, that he’s just being thoughtful. He does thoughtful things, devoid of the need to pump up his ego by calling attention to them. If I never notice, he never mentions it, and when I do notice and mention it, he shrugs. I wish I could do that.

For instance, Hubba reads – voraciously. I don’t know how many book clubs he belongs to, but they often send book bags because he’s a member. He donates to the craziest things, too, like Colonial Williamsburg, and he’ll get a bag. Once he ordered some stuff from a website, and he got a bag. These, and other, bags haven’t all come at once, but rather, have appeared over the period of years I’ve been quilting. Funny. We didn’t get so many bags before that.

“I got this in Des Moines. It came with some cologne I got T-Man for Christmas. Can you use it?”

“Yeah! Thanks! It’s perfect!”

We were downtown once, at Ridiculous Days, and Hubba spotted a darling little set of three mesh bags, brightly colored, with zippers. “Could you use these?”

I looked his direction. “Uh, yeah! Are there any more?”

Another time, we were passing a stack of Rubbermaid® boxes. Pointing out a set of typical project-sized container, he asked, “Do these look handy to you?”

“Ohmygosh! I LOVE these!” He put several in the cart, as I speculated on what project would go inside.

Little bags, little boxes. Big bags, big boxes. Notions. Threads. Chatelaines. Knitting needles. Thimbles. Fabric. Clever fabrics, and beads, and buttons, and yarns. Project visionaries need an unlimited supply of places to put their tools, their motivations, their inspirations, their projects, their visions.

Project visionaries can get very full of themselves.

But Hubba is the real visionary, and I know one self-proclaimed project visionary who should recognize that it is love and support freeing up her vision. I wonder, Can I catch that by osmosis?

Thanks for making me your project for thirty years, Hubba. Happy Anniversary, you visionary, you!

Copyright © July 31, 2006 Kari E.O. Burns