fufaraw

1. What is the meaning behind your LJ name?
2. What was your favourite childhood book or books?
3. What is your favourite recipe and why? Try to post the recipe if you have time.
4. What are the top 5 things on your wish list & have you done any of them?
5. What do you collect?

No, really, the relevant question would be, what do you *not* collect? I think the human spirit is a magpie--we all collect something, even if it's just phrases that seem to speak our personal belief at the time, and operating on the old decorating maxim that "three things make a collection."

Throughout my life, I've picked up rocks and pebbles wherever I've gone, and every time we went to the beach, we'd bring back a bucket of shells. I had a basket on a living room end table of fist-sized rocks, some mailed from Canadian riverbeds by a friend, more carried through customs by a visitor from England, flint geodes from where she lived, and sea-tumbled ones from the foot of a ruined Scottish castle, all piled together in the basket with river-washed granite chunks from hikes at Linville Falls, Pilot Mountain, and Mt. Mitchell, in NC. There was another basket of broken shells--whelks with their inner curls and spirals exposed, thick clamshells pitted and bleached by long exposure, delicate purple-patterned butterfly scallop shells, olives, shark's eyes, and sand dollars, tumbled into the basket as if by a random wave.

And then there were the baskets, accumulated over decades, all sorts of shapes, of willow and split oak and seagrass, from Romania, China, Guatemala, Appalachia, full of rocks, shells, skeins of colored wool, magazines, cat toys, or lined with a doll quilt as a bed for teddy bears.

My mom kept my childhood dolls, and the clothes she had made for them, and I added a few, even a designer doll, or two. They brought me pleasure, but it wasn't painful to let them go, when a friend offered to sell them and split the profit.

My son bought me a teddy bear with his own money when he was nine. I started casually researching bears, and a decade later, I had a second job to pay for my aquisitions. I collected Steiff and Hermann, Merrythought and Dean's, all new, or secondary market, all made as toys. Steiff edged into the collector market, and I found a few of those irresistable--some of mine were editions limited to 2600, or 2400, or 750. I ordered a couple of small bears from a family-owned toyshop in Wales--they had discontinued one line, but they broke out the pattern and made one just for me. I rescued a few unfortunates, repaired some veterans, learned to clean and restore stuffed animals and cloth dolls, along with the textile repair I was already learning. My family tolerated the vignettes I staged throughout the house with bears and doll furniture and toys, used--and often suggested--the names given to each doll and bear.

Eventually, curating the collection took more time and was more work than was rewarded by the pleasure it gave me, and I culled the collection and gave the ones I wasn't keeping to another friend to sell on ebay, and split the profit. I had little trouble letting go--I only regretted losing two, and she sent those back to me. I have them, still.

I actively resist collecting, these days, it's such a compulsion for me. When I started journaling, I used loose pages and bound them myself, unwilling to spend money on blank books. *That* didn't last long. Before I knew it, I had a whole shelf of blank journals, gorgeously bound books with quality paper that would stand up to fountain pen ink.

Which I have had to stop accumulating, as well, restricting myself these days to sample vials offered by Goulet Pens and other sellers. Somehow I amassed more fountain pens than I could ever keep inked and in use, both new and vintage ones--some that need expensive repair. I am teetering on the edge of selling off at least some of my pens.

And then there are the tarot decks, the bags I made to store them, the boxes I found to keep them in, and the stationery sets that came in some of those boxes.

Resist as I might, I am at heart a magpie, or perhaps a squirrel, driven to collect, even when what I have isn't useful to me, not even as a sense of pleasure in ownership. I fight the impulse, every day.