Barbecue, vinyl tubing, and the ugly duckling

Yesterday evening I grabbed the mail as I was heading out to pick up barbecue for the family, and guess what was in my mailbox! This book! Sent to me by the awesome Jodi Kahn herself, who is one of the nicest, most talented people I've ever cyber met. I drove down the highway steering with my knees so I could claw off the padded mailer and could hardly keep my eyes on the road with this gorgeous book lying on my lap. Fortunately I made it one piece to the restaurant and bellied up to the bar to wait for my food while I starting flipping through the pages. Oh sweet heaven! Where do I start???


I'll start with my trip to Lowes earlier in the day where I bought 6 feet of vinyl tubing in various diameters. As you know, when you buy vinyl tubing in the plumbing department at Lowes, you have to have an employee cut it to length off the spools for you. And you stand there in dread that the Lowes employee will ask you what sort of bathroom renovation you're working on, and you'll have to explain what you are really doing with the 6 feet of vinyl tubing, which of course has nothing to do with plumbing. And you feel sort of weird.

But then a few hours later, you get this book in the mail, and you see the most phenomenally creative bags in existence, and you see the materials that Jodi uses, like rolls of clear plastic from the hardware store, silver bubble mailers, and astroturf, and you know you are not alone. Somewhere out there, in hardware stores around the country, are people like you. People who see the mundane stuff around us as raw materials just waiting to be whipped into objects of beauty and function and fun. I think it must be how the ugly duckling felt when she first logged onto the internet and started reading craft blogs. You are not an ugly ducking. You are a beautiful swan! And when the Lowes cashier says, "What are you doing with the vinyl tubing?" you can say with pride and dignity, "I'm making a lampshade."