What constitutes "make your own?"

Since I miss Sarah, I decided to post a cute pic of her here. This is the chocker she's been working on for a rediculously long time because the chain links keep poking and scratching her all up due to the wire gauge she used. Did you know that Darice has discontinued their fabulous non tarnishing 18 gauge wire? We went out and bought more brand-X 18 gauge wire, but the coating kept peeling cracking...hence her use of pokey-ouchy 24 gauge wire.

Anyway, she's freaking busy. Ah grad school. I'm so glad I finished that.



Here's a pic of Monica just cause. Notice she's knitting socks.



*edit* I feel bad for leaving Shizuka out, so here she is:


She's knitting a scarf at lighting speed for her hubby.

Rant:
The other day at Hobby Lobby I saw a booklet that said "FREE PATTERN! Make your won beautifully decorated tulip purse."

Well of course, that peaked my interest. I've crocheted a few bags before, and there were some half-hearted attempts at sewing my own bag via free form guesses in terms of patterns. However, they never came out all that great. The picture in front of me depicted an annoyingly cute black handbang with feathers around the upper rim and I really like the "tulip" shape of the purse (the kind where the base is smaller than the top). I was curious what the flat pattern would be.

I enthusiastically yanked one of the instruction booklets from the hook and was suprised to find that it was only one page. When I looked at the instructions, to my horror, I realized the first line was:

First purchase premade tulip purse from Hobby Lobby...

Okay, somehow the whole "make your bag" part was missing. I looked around for perhaps a companion flier, but no, they honestly printed this thing out to tell you to purchase a pre-made (albeit undecorated) bag.

To make things worse, that dubiously effective line was followed by:

Decorate. Feel free to use any of Hobby Lobby's coordinated kits...

I looked up at the shelf and noticed rows of color-coordinated sequins, beads, feathers and iron-ons in labled bags with stupid whimsical names like "Paris Pink" or "Hawaiian Flowers." Next to that was a pitiful collection of components standing on their alone as if the general population was incapable of coming up with their own stupid themes. I was appauled. Are people really that uncreative?

Does that technically constitute making your own bag, I thought to myself? Aside from using a glue gun and reading instructions in the decorating kit, where was the skill involved? The term shouldn't be making it should be assemble!

If you think I'm kidding, I managed to find a similar set of "instructions" from Hobby Lobby, although this one lets you pick your own feather boa. Oh boy. Look ma. I can measure with a ruler and glue rhine stones into the letter "S." My initial starts with "C" but the instuctions had an "S" on there. heh.

Anyway, I've got an itch to create piece of jewelery and I'm not sure what to create. When I say make...I really mean fabricate from scratch. By the way, I've got an arts and crafts blog now that I'll be putting finished projects in. It is located at adzuki.blogspot.com. Who knows, maybe I'll even include some "how-tos" that don't consist of "buy a premade bag" in the first line of instructions.