Dec 132011
 

I’m not a crafter at all. Give me craft supplies and the end result will be nothing short of a horrific eyesore, with a trail of blood and tears in its wake.

But when Brandy gave me her Santa Voodoo doll tutorial to post on my blog, I was inspired to make one myself, but I decided to wait for Andrea to come to town to do it for me help me.

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I thought this would be a good way to include Chooch in things, since everything else we did while Andrea was here involved nipple tassels, Mexican cock fights and butterfly knives. He got off to a much better start than me. I just sat there with a long-sleeved shirt spread out before me, not knowing where to start. Meanwhile, Andrea (having only read Brandy’s instructions once) began twisting up a shirt and shaping her Santa’s soon-to-be limbs with wrapped rubber bands.

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Andrea was so sweet and encouraging to Chooch. She kept saying things like, “You’re doing such a great job, Chooch! That looks really good!” and I would start to say, “Nuh-uh, it sucks; mine’s better” but then I would quickly swallow my competitive spirit and mimic her sentiments in a begrudged monotone. Because really, at least he wasn’t being a crybaby bitch about it like I was.

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I was so frustrated. Mine wasn’t looking like Brandy’s and I wanted it to look like Brandy’s! I’m very anal when it comes to following instructions. Once I see what the end result is supposed to look like, I have my blinders on to any deviations. So then I dropped my balled-up shirt in a heap and started whining pretty intensely while Andrea cooed and said soothing things about Saint Rita and Jonny Craig before eventually losing her patience and coming at me with straight pins and the hot glue gun.

Suddenly, it occurred to me to think outside the box (which I almost never do when it comes to crafts because in order to do that, you have to be at least mediocre with crafts to begin with, I’d imagine, and I do not craft enough to be mediocre or even whatever term falls below that). I decided it would be easier for an incompetent fool like me to work with something that had less girth, so I unraveled what I had accomplished (it wasn’t much, I promise you that) and cut off the sleeve, figuring I could just mold my Santa from that and have it be smaller and hopefully much less work. (I’m lazy and always looking for short cuts.)

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Unfortunately, I didn’t know what to do with it once I cut it, so Andrea had to slam down her own Santa, hiss a pissed-off “Jesus Christ” through her clenched teeth, and make snips in the fabric so I could easily visualize where the arms and legs should be, probably wishing she was snipping my flesh instead of the thermal shirt fabric.

I was crying again at this point because I strongly dislike when things don’t go my way (i.e. easily). I had a fleeting image of Brandy whipping up her voodoo Santa with one hand while sipping on a cognac from a vintage rock glass and watching Michael Jackson videos, a homemade batch of cupcakes plumping in the oven and a fleet of freshly-painted DIY Peter Pan collared t-shirts drying on a clothesline. Brandy is a DIY powerhouse and I am not acquiring any of these skills through blog-reading osmosis like I had hoped, but I still keep reading and admiring her, that’s for sure.  Next time, I will probably just pay her to make an extra of whatever project she’s working on.

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Henry came over to smirk and judge, probably calculating a hundred different ways he could have done this better than us. He should just shove his dick inside that “She’s Crafty” bitch and be done with it. To be honest, if Andrea hadn’t been visiting that week, I probably would have just had Henry make one of these for me. At least Andrea encouraged me to try it for myself. (She did give me a hefty pair of proverbial water-wings though, and I noticed she’d watch me from her periphery every time I would grab the scissors.)

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Andrea’s arms turned out all chunky and elephantine compared to the legs so I derived great pleasure in mocking her. She sure showed me by embracing it so fully that she even decided to turn one of the arms into the neck instead, making it purposely ridiculous so every time I would jeer “That’s so stupid” what I really meant was “I’m so jealous of your crafting joie de vivre.”

The whole step where a head is fashioned from a sleeve cuff really had me perplexed. I’m not sure how that part alone wasn’t the catalyst to Andrea’s patience imploding, but she calmly walked me through the step and suddenly, my Santa had a head.

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Chooch gave up around the time the roll of yarn was introduced into the mix, because like me, he wants instant gratification and was kind of like, “Wait, I have to do more work? This yarn isn’t going to wrap itself around Santa’s body? Fuck this noise.” He went in the other room and made up murder games with his toys, which was basically what I was doing with the craft supplies in front of me.

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Thank god I had the foresight to buy two rolls of yarn, otherwise the night could have climaxed with a violence-laden ripoff of the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti scene, no sharing, love or even moderate mutual respect involved in this version. The first step of Santa-wrapping required the end of the yarn to be hot-glued to Santa’s body, and Andrea was quick to do that part for me. “No glue gun for you,” she said, making sure the cord wasn’t long enough to reach my side of the table.

Andrea handled her roll of yarn with panache while I struggled as expected. She had turned her Santa-wrapping into a smooth process, like she was a well-oiled sewing machine, even in spite of my cat Willie attacking her from the floor; meanwhile I was in danger of mummifying myself in the shit. I kept accidentally binding myself in between the yarn and the Santa. It was a fucking mess.

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Andrea, spinning yarns while…spinning yarn. I told her I hated her (and her fucking stupid Santa) every other minute.  It took forever to cover the entire body and my hands felt all arthritic afterward, like I had spent all night doling out hand jobs at a truck stop and desperately needed a bowl of Ben-Gay to soak them in.

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My favorite part was the buttons. I found a package of Christmas buttons at Pat Catan’s and Henry was like, “Those are $5, how about we get these stupid ugly buttons that only cost $1?” Yeah, fuck you. I’ll use the cheap ones when I decorate your asshole.

Andrea conceded and let me finally use the glue gun for the button part and I immediately got hot glue all over the pads of my fingers. “And this is why I wanted to do it for you,” she said.

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It took nearly two hours to achieve the finished product. Spearing the Santas with straight pins was extremely cathartic after waging war with the crafting gods. At first I hated Brandy for making me want to try this.

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But then I sat back and really took a long look at the Santas and was overcome with an almost crippling sense of accomplishment.

“So this is why people like to craft!” I exclaimed, knowingly, as if the spiritual awakening I was supposedly in search of earlier that day at Saint Anthony’s had finally ensconced me.

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It was totally worth it, you guys. Even though everyone is all, “OMG I LOVE THE ONE WITH THE LONG NECK! BEST SANTA EVER!” while jacking off to images of that ginger claymation Kris Kringle. Go check out Brandy’s tutorial and make your own! If you’re not in it to win it like we were, you could probably make tiny ornament-versions from small fabric scraps, which is what I might have Henry do this week after he finds a spell to bring our cat Speck back to life. (Yes, I’ve seen Pet Sematary, but I’ve already spent the last 13 years with Marcy, so it shouldn’t be much scarier.)

The only thing I really remember about the night is cradling my face in my arms and crying a lot, but it was worth it. LOOK HOW CUTE THESE FUCKERS ARE! I dare you to make one. Please show me pictures.

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  6 Responses to “Tuesday Night Craft Plight”

  1. I knew I could turn you to the dark side!

  2. I like yours the best. I think the one with the long neck is a little scary. Brandy is one crafty motherfucker – I can craft but I can’t come up with stuff like this; she’s pure genius. And she’s one of the best cousins this world’s got to offer.

  3. Thanks for your nice words Erin I was honored to contribute and I love the way they turned out.

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