Last night was the monthly craft night. I packed up the sweater I’m knitting and joined a rather noisy crowd at the house of the woman who has been teaching me to knit. Since she is also the one who is currently fostering a set of kittens, it also became my chance to get a quick kitten fix!

There were lots of children last night, but we designated the dining room an adult’s only room, and for the most part all the kids respected that distinction. After all, they had plenty of toys (the hostess is a well-prepared grandmother) and kittens to play with (at least until we adults snagged the sleepy kittens and took them into the no-children zone – heh heh).

I fully intended to get a lot done on the sweater. However, the minute one of the newer members of craft night brought out her project, that flew out the window. Suddenly it became “learn a new craft!” night and the dining room table sprouted great piles of pastel card stock, pretty decorated papers, double-sided tape and spools of fabric ribbon. We were all making the neatest little photo albums!

It’s one of those projects that when it’s all done it looks so incredibly pretty and crafty that the artistic-deficient (like myself) figure we cannot possibly ever get it right. But it turned out to be fairly simple. You put three squares of card stock in a row, corner to corner, folded horizontally and diagonally, and you muck about with double-sided tape until you can reliably get it off the roll and onto the paper without also getting it stuck to your fingers, your hair, your clothes, or the kittens on your lap. My only worrisome moment was when it came time to pick some of the pretty papers for the contrasts. But even color-matching idiots like me can usually do a pretty good job if we just stick to a basic theme. I used mostly purples and greens, but got daring enough to toss in just a little pale blue. Cut out two squares of thick cardboard for the covers and wrap them in pretty paper; sandwich those and the album with some fabric ribbon, and suddenly it looked pretty good.

I still have a little bit left to do to finish it up (namely find some cardboard for the front cover, since I only got the back cover attached). And I don’t see this as something I’ll be making lots of to use myself. However, it’s pretty enough to fill with pictures and give to someone as a gift. Plus I’m thinking that when my little sister comes down to visit in a few weeks, this would be a fun thing for my sisters and my mom and I to make together. They can all fill theirs with pictures of their kids. And perhaps I’ll just have to fill mine with something else. After all, there are always the cats.