Wednesday, March 18, 2009

A Little Dab'll Do Ya

I'm a dabbler.

I love lots of things. I don't want to necessarily learn how to do them correctly, I just wanna do them.

So I have tons of fabric swatches--sometimes I sew pillows, sometimes purses, sometimes Halloween costumes. Rarely do I use a pattern...I don't need no stinkin' pattern.

I have beads and wire and findings...and all kinds of beads and wire and findings. Sometimes I make things--earings, necklaces, wine thingies. Sometimes they even look good.

But I'm not only a dabbler in "crafts" I'm also a dabbler in knowledge. I don't want to be an expert on anything, I just want to be able to talk about anything. I had a social studies teacher in 11th grade who would give us "cocktail party" facts, little nuggets of obscure knowledge...I would eat those facts up like finger food. I still can spit out a few, even if we are bereft of cocktail parties these days--although Michelle Buonfiglio and I could make any school function a cocktail party, no we didn't carry flasks, we just made it be about chatting and mingling.

But I digress.

I love knowing a little bit about a lot of things, you'd think it would be frustrating, but it's not--it's comforting to know I could, at the very least, interject some little gem into any conversation.

Would you rather be an expert on one thing--or a dabbler about lots of things?

3 comments:

  1. Most certainly a dabbler! I love picking up info about obscure things as well. But then I always think I have to work it into a book. Finally, I was recently able to work in the fact that you can get shot in the skull with an air nailer, pull the nail out, and go back to work as if nothing ever happened.
    Hee. I so wanted to shoot someone in the head with an air nailer. :-)

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  2. Oh that is sooo funny. I always get caught up in these obscure facts and then try and figure out how to work them in too.

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  3. I'm pretty much a dabbler already. My brain stores little bits of info, which is why my husband hates to play Trivial Pursuit with me (unless he's on my team). I don't do as well with the newer cards, probably because I lost the 80's and 90'w while raising kids and working).

    LOL at Hauf's air nailer. I remember going to a workshop by Roxanne St. Claire and she talked about researching a French hotel that had these gorgeous frescoes. Her first scene in that hotel had tons of info on the frescoes, but they weren't pertinent to the plot, so in order to take that dying scene and breathe life into it (that was the workshop title), she had to make a brief reference to the frescoes and let all that knowledge just stay in her head. I remember to this day that sometimes you just have to let some good stuff stay in your notes and not make it into the book.

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