Orange Cat Craft Camp

Hell is other people, but so is heaven. TW: Dying Dad mention

I am 28 years old, and for the first time this past summer, I went to summer camp. A few months prior, my friends and I (all Art Education Majors) decided that we were craving a getaway to just focus on creation. 

The concept was, we would each teach each other an artistic skill that we knew, for five days, up at E’s house in Michigan. We would go to an art market, take turns making cocktails, and create nonstop for the entire time we were together. Each person brought an empty sketchbook with the goal of filling it throughout the week. 

We created a Pinterest board, an itinerary, and a long list of crafting ideas. I designed a T-Shirt logo for us (because every camp needs a camp shirt). We decided to call the camp Orange Cat Craft Camp, named lovingly for the three orange cats that ran E’s house with an iron paw. I packed up all my printmaking supplies and made the drive from Maryland to Michigan, swinging by Pennsylvania along the way to pick up my friends T and S. 

I was really convinced that we weren’t going to make anything at all -- because I know us. We are long distance friends who see each other once a year, maybe twice if we’re lucky. Although we try to facetime and text on the reg, it’s hard to do that when everyone is working, and going back to school, and are overall consumed with the not-long distance relationships that they’re fostering. I knew we were going to have a great time, but I figured we would spend 20% of the time crafting, and the other 80% of the time catching up. We had lived a whole year without each other, there would have to be time to reintroduce ourselves as the people we had become. 

The concept of catching up with each other made me feel nauseous. The past few months, a hard, aching thing had been growing inside me. During this time, my father was very sick, and very quickly losing his grip on reality. As his power of attorney, I was struggling to keep up. 

There is something primal about grief, and in those months there was a part of me that was walking the earth as a feral, broken thing. I was worried that everyone could see it on me, as though MY DAD IS DYING was written on my forehead in Sharpie. The only thing I craved was the comfort in not being treated differently. I explicitly avoided telling friends about what I was enduring, because I needed people in my life who thought my life was the same bullshit it always was (too many crafts, probably adopting a 5th cat, yadda yadda). But, my inner circle knew what was going on, and I knew that if any of them looked at me with the sad, wet, “sorry your dad is dying” eyes, my heart would break on the spot.

E had dyed her hair pink a few months previously, and pink streaks flew in front of my face as we hugged in her parking lot. We were all screams and hugs and “I missed you so much” in the driveway. T, S, and I had driven for 11 hours, and I would do it a hundred times over for the feeling of standing in the middle of suburban Michigan, embracing my friends.

The house was fully loaded with shiny streamers, decorations, stickers, and margaritas. E had embroidered us matching pink bandanas with our names embroidered in script. We clinked our glasses together in a cheers for creativity. We pet E’s three cats (my nephews). Then, we made art. 

1. Sketchbooks

Everyone had a blank sketchbook, and the prompt was simple: you have 5 days to fill the entire thing. Stickers, washi tape, glue dots, and magazine scraps littered the table. We tested out Kwick Sticks, Caran d’Ache, and Posca pens. Instax Polaroid photos littered our scrapped, sticky pages. 

When you don’t care about what your creation looks like, creation becomes easy. My sketches began as intentional artworks, but as the days shifted and became more unhinged, artwork arrived as our conversations did. Hours of inside jokes lead to objectively shitty doodles, scribbles, and garbled text. The works inside my sketchbook are an archive of us delirious at 2 am and drinking coffee in the morning. 

2. Printmaking

Block printing is one of my all time favorite ways to make art. I think it’s primarily because I’m full of myself, because I think the possibility of having a million copies of a work of art I’m proud of is pretty much the best thing ever. I know that some snobby art critic out there will scoff at the idea of mass producing artwork (and thus, lowering the value, gasp). But I love my art, I want a million of it and I want everyone else to have it too. 

3. Crochet

I said “don’t piss me off” approximately one hundred times while I tried to count stitches. E responded by playing YouTube videos of people singing Chappell Roan’s Femininominon as though they were Toad from the Mario-verse (at top volume). I made a possum and I hate (read: love) my fuckass friends. 

4. Felting

Felting should be offered at anger management classes. If you’re unfamiliar, you’re given a ball of loose felt, a sharp-ass needle, and a piece of foam. You simply stab the felt until it becomes the thing you want it to be. It’s also a great way to accidentally stab yourself after saying “I won’t stab myself” to the friend who is offering you a thimble. 

5. Embroidery 

By the time we were starting embroidery, my eyes were burning and my hand was killing me from the absolute craft explosion. Our sketchbook table was littered with crafty remains of the crafts that came before it. I think I disassociated the entire time, but my T-Shirt is cute as a boot. Blah blah blah, speech about persisting despite feeling like crap, blah blah. 

Hell is other people, but heaven is being in a room with the ones that make you feel whole. There is a sweetness in the bubble of being together, although temporarily. When you have 5 uninterrupted days with some of the best people you know the world (and not working during that time, I hate you capitalism) seems to be more vibrant, inspiration flows ravenously. I operated that week with the overwhelming feeling of you belong here, you should be doing this. 

T, S, and I left with a lot more shit then we came with (who needs to see out the back of the car, anyway?). S was the first to be dropped off, then T, and then I was alone for the last leg of the trek back to Maryland. Although I was grateful to go home to my husband and my cats, knowing that I had left the summer camp bubble was a catastrophically huge bummer. Soon, we would resume the regular routine of our lives without each other, and camp would just be a memory.

Literally, like, 3 days after we got back, we whined that we missed each other incredibly. Orange Cat Craft Camp 2025 dates were set in stone (or, well, set in a Google Calendar). If waiting makes the heart grow fonder, my heart will be bursting out of my chest the next time I run out to the driveway in Michigan.

 Maybe E will have blue hair by then, who knows, that bitch is chaotic.