Afternoon Adventures at the Library - Crafts for Adults

When you're a homebody like me, sometimes you'll look for any excuse to get out of the house. Sometimes that means working remotely from a nearby coffee shop, or taking the dogs around the block for a quick walk.

But when you don't want to shell out $6 for an orange mocha frappuccino, or get pelted with rain while walking Lassie, what can you do?

Everett's solution: Arts and Crafts for Adults at the Everett Evergreen Library.

Since September of 2015, the Everett Evergreen Library has been hosting a monthly event called Crafts for Adults, which is exactly what it sounds like. Once a month, the staff chooses a different craft project, and they provide all the supplies and instructions to make it.

Oh, did I not mention that? It's free.

This month, I decided to join the fun and try my hand at making bars of soap. Here's what happened:

First, I entered the conference room which was filled with (yup, you guessed it) middle-aged women. The staff assembled two rows of long tables with enough crock pots to fill a church potluck. These were for melting down our bars of neutral soap.

After everyone settled in, librarians Joanna and Elizabeth walked us through a short presentation explaining tips and tricks on how to make our soap bars. These ladies are super planners, thinking of everything we could possibly want/need for the project.

Library staff members Joanna (left) and Elizabeth (right) giving their short how-to presentation.

After they were done giving us instructions, they unleashed the room full of ladies upon a table filled with essential oil scents, color dye, oatmeal, molds, and glitter (because no craft project is complete without glitter).

Since September of 2015, there has been a huge community response to these free arts and craft sessions. So much so, that Elizabeth and Joanna will be making a presentation about them in November at this year's Washington Library Association's WALE conference in Chelan.

Librarians Elizabeth (left) and Joanna (right).

Each month, the sign up sheet fills to the max (about 30 people), but Joanna and Elizabeth still encourage people to come the day-of if they didn't make it on the list.

"We send out reminders to everyone on the list," Elizabeth explained, "but people still forget."

Next month, on Thursday November 3rd at 2 PM, they will be making lip balm and bath salts, perfect for winter weather or as Christmas presents. You can sign up to be on the list by calling the library at 425-257-8250, and bring a friend! All ages 12 and up are welcome to join.

A wise aardvark once told the world, "Having fun isn't hard when you have library card." Well, in this case, you just need to show up.