Some projects take on a life of their own. This project is SO in that category. It’s finally up on my wall, and I love it, but it took a long and twisted path to get to completion.
A few years ago, while living in our previous house, we had house numbers made by a traveling blacksmith who came to our local fair. We had this done for the house prior and the numbers were amazing and added a unique personal touch that we were hoping to duplicate on our then new home. We had a wonderful day at the fair while the blacksmith worked on our numbers, and by the time we made it back to the booth to pick up the numbers he had left for the day. We were greatly disappointed to see that our 4 looked most decidedly like a 9! What to do?!?! We lived about an hour away from the fair grounds. We weren’t keen on having to pay the entrance fee again to come back and talk with the blacksmith and see about having another 4 made. And honestly, being very newly pregnant with my third, packing our second baby in the Ergo, and with a somewhat grumpy and tired 5 year old in tow, I was in no mood to think about options. The numbers, most of them beautiful, went into a drawer at home, and I tried not to think about it… BUT it really all worked out for the best, because we found out a little bit after having the numbers made that the HOA founded after we had moved in would not have “grandfathered” the numbers in like we had been told by the property sales manager.
A few years later we moved yet again, to the home we are in now, and our hopes of using these hibernating house numbers came alive again when we found a home with a house number that is SO close to the previous number. We made our annual trek to the fair and communicated very clearly (and kindly) that we needed a 3 and 4…and about what had happened last time. This time the numbers were beautiful!! I was elated! And now, what to do with the extra 1!? (And the 4 that looks like a 9 or a b when turned upside down…but that will be another project at some point). You just can’t throw away a lovely wrought iron 1! I thought about tacking it up on the wall, but the sweet little thing was only 5 inches tall. Hardly the thing to make an impact on its own. I was afraid it’d get a little lost all by itself. So, I let it sit in the drawer while my mental wheels turned.
Now to backtrack a bit further…We have a fair bit of elevens in our family with birth dates and such. And I’ve always thought it was fun to notice number patterns in different places like on a clock: 11:11AM, or a street sign, etc.. In the past couple of years 11:11 and 1:11 have become times that I’d stop what I was doing, take deep breaths for a minute and thank God for things that came to mind. With three little boys at home it’s good to take a moment and breathe, it seems those moments don’t just come on their own. Then soon the boys would come and stand with me. Now, this addition made this minute not quite so quiet, but it was an opportunity for me to explain that we all need a moment sometimes to take a deep breath and thank God for things. They started calling them God moments. I loved it!
I started thinking about that 1 again and how cool it would be to have an art piece with 1s that I could look at whenever I wanted. Each of my boys is so different, and I thought it would be a perfect representation of the combination of individuality and community to have 1s made from different materials. I bought a bag of leather scraps and used them to cut 1s of leather and suede. My husband designed and printed a 1 on our 3-D printer. I ordered a wood 1 from Etsy for my boy who wants to be a woodworker. Since I love knitting, I knit 2 1s, one in a lovely blue color way as a Roman numeral and one as a green, another son’s favorite color, digital 1. I ended up with seven 1s of different materials and colors that highlighted the interests of each member of my family. Together I think we make a pretty awesome group, and together I think all of these 1s make a uniquely awesome craft!
