My Orange Scissors

I still have my first pair of scissors. I don't remember when I received them, but it must be before my earliest memories, because I do remember when they were taken away as a punishment for cutting my sister's hair. My parents put them in the top drawer of their tall dresser, much higher than I could reach, and I remember looking up to where they were, desperately wanting them back.

Cutting things, whether it was paper, yarn, or yes, even hair, was an important part of my creative journey. My grandfather, an industrial arts teacher, made sure I knew how to use various tools at an early age, and somewhere there's a photo of me at age 4 proudly holding a child's pair of plastic pliers. My two grandmothers were also crafters: one taught home economics before she married, and the other one made quilts. I like to say I come from a long line of makers, and I can’t imagine who I would be if I didn’t make things.

I went through so many crafting phases: friendship bracelets, beading, and sewing, always with my orange scissors. As I grew older, the scissors rattled around unused as I focused on academic pursuits and my first job. After I graduated from college, I decided to try making a patchwork quilt, inspired by an ad in a Pottery Barn catalog. But oh no, I required different scissors! My mom explained how fabric shears should only be used for fabric, a mandate that I have followed ever since. And then there were the thread scissors, which once again, I only use for that single purpose.

The quilt took me nearly 20 years to finish but finish it I did. The hardest part was the binding, and I let it sit in a basket untouched for nearly a decade before somehow, all of a sudden, I understood how to sew the binding. It’s as if my other creative pursuits gave me the confidence to tackle that one thing that I couldn’t when I was younger.

These days I have a newer pair of orange scissors, a near duplicate of my original pair, that I bought to use for knitting. I keep them on the end table by my sofa where I do most of my knitting, so they’re always within an easy reach. But I also started sewing again, when the world stopped short and I had a lot of time on my hands. I decided to use the New York Times’ pattern for cloth masks and pulled out my fabric and thread scissors to get to work. Cutting fabric that I found in my stash felt just as satisfying as I remembered all those years ago, and I ended up making at least a dozen masks for family and friends.

I still have all of my craft supplies from those childhood phases—the plastic bin full of embroidery floss for friendship bracelets, the dozens of little containers holding different kinds of beads, and a box of fabric and patterns that I bought after buying my sewing machine. I don’t know if I’ll revisit any of these things again, but I also can’t imagine getting rid of them. Craft supplies or stashes of materials, whether it is yarn or beads, scissors or wire cutters, have a certain sentimental value to them. Who you were when you bought them, where you bought them, or even what you dreamed of making with them.

Those original orange scissors take me back to childhood every time I come across them, but I don’t use them anymore. They’re a little bit dirty and sticky, and the blades loosened up over the years. Maybe they’ll live with the rest of my old supplies, waiting for the day when I do more than look at them and remember when. But one thing’s for certain, they’re staying with me for as long as I may live.