The second Loop Social Circle is coming up this Sunday, April 13th. The Loop is a crafting group, centered in the Metro Detroit area. Top find out more about them, check them out on Myspace @ www.myspace.com/loopdetroit. Once again, the afternoon of crafting, noshing and gabbing will take place at the fabulous Woodward Avenue Brewery in Ferndale, MI.
Last month, I attended the first Social Circle, adorned in my normal paranoia and bedecked in the trappings of my way too wild imagination. I was so freaked by the prospect of putting myself out there; I nearly rationalized (if you can call any of my brains inner workings “rational”) my self out of it. Never mind that I’m basically on a deserted craft island, with only a pincushion named Wilson to joke with as I work merrily along.
Here is an excerpt of the email that I sent off to Stef after emerging on the other side of the afternoon, safe and sound after all:
Okay, I’ll give you the run down, cuz you know I rocked it dork style. I’m a nervous wreck the night before, wake up at 5 am, etc. I’m crazy and hyper all morning. We go down to Lacey’s (note to you dear reader; Lacey is my sister-in-law, she lives in Ferndale also) at noon for her housewarming, Of course I’m all crazy here too, and am unable to accurately describe to the curious family what Ryan and I are going to, which makes me more nervous about it. Every time I try to explain it, it sounds dumber! It IS dumb! I shouldn’t even go! It’s rude to leave a party in the middle! I decide not to go (at least the 12th time I’ve made this decision) at about 1:40, Ryan (hey reader - Ryan is my husband) comes up and is like, “should we go?”(In case you doubted at all, of course I made him go!) And I bite his head off, because the thought of going is threatening to give me nervous gas, maybe even (Gasp) diarrhea! “I don’t want to be super EARLY!” I nearly scream, and make a run for the bathroom.
Anyway, at 2:05, we leave. I’m so paralyzed by nervousness that I can’t breathe or talk in the car. Besides, I’m super busy running scenarios through my head, like all the girls will be Chrissie Hynde style rock and roll girls, or they will be doing, like airbrushing and welding and I will have to hunch in a chair and construct felt cupcake magnets while they continuously roll their eyes and do lewd things to me behind my back. I try to come up with an escape plan that doesn’t make me look weird, and since I can’t, I don’t want to get out of the car. BUT we do go in, of course. I have NO idea what I will say, or if I will just go in and sit down……? Should I introduce myself to someone? I have NOOOOO idea.
What happens is this… (I’m a dork) I walk into the middle of the room and look around at everyone and say “Hi! I don’t know anyone… I’m new….I’m from Flint, there was nothing going on up there, so I thought I would come down here and see what you were doing” it feels like there was a huge silence, but I think immediately everyone started talking to me. The girl right in front of me was from Flint City Handmade, and she gives me a flyer and a bumper sticker. I sit near her, and introduce Ryan, which definitely gives me something to do, and the next 2 and half hours fly past in warp speed. Everyone is dealing with similar dilemmas, (want to craft, but what to make? how much do I charge? how do I sell? where do I sell? am I even good at this?) Some of the girls did initially seem too cool for school, but turned out to be super friendly. Everyone mingled around, checking out everyone else’s stuff and chatting. Plus, duh, beer! Everyone had kind of been checking everyone else out on myspace, so when someone would be like “do you know…”, someone else would at least have an idea about who they were referring to and we spent a good deal of time constructing a crafting family tree of sorts, figuring out who everyone was from the etsy store names and profile names and such.
Anyhow, all in all, it was super fun, and now I feel like that is potentially one of the scariest things I could do, craftwise, so now nothing else is half as scary (for now).
So that’s the way it was, and don’t think for a moment I don’t have crazy crap flying around up there about this next one…because I do. I’m really looking forward to it though, and am so glad I went. If you are anywhere in the area, think about coming. You can work on stuff, gawk at what everyone else is up too, just generally hang with fun and creative peeps in a bar all Sunday afternoon. What’s bad about that?