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How do you cope?

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 Every day seems like a new challenge to me. I wake up and try and work out what challenges I may face as I have realised that I struggle with change unless change is the norm. That sounds like such a strange thing to say but if I know that things can change at any minute, that there’s consistency in inconsistency then I am able to face the day. I guess that is why I feel comfort in patterns and regularity over the chaos of everyday life.  There are particular crafts that I find tap into this ethos and I find calm my mind. Crochet, knitting and cross stitch are but a few that spring to mind. All have patterns and counting in common unless of course you go off piste and just see where the creativity takes you. Shape and colour are things I enjoy too. To work out how things will be perceived and to strive for the perfection that is within me. They may not be important to anyone else but to me they are paramount.  When working on a new design there are many steps that I go through. I have
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How things change

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 I haven’t written a blog in what seems like forever. I used to love writing them as I found it calmed my brain away from the hecticness of everyday life. Now I feel is the time to get back to it. So much has changed since my last blog, some good, some amazing and some not so good.  So let’s start with the good. My little business is continuing to grow and adapt to the challenges around it. I have met some amazing people on the way who support me unconditionally. They see the things in what I make and produce that I may not and show me how I have adapted to the demands, wants and needs of the customers who seek me out. I honestly could not run this little business without those people in my corner. My brain gets overwhelmed at times with all the things that I want to make and I have to remind myself that I am limited in the time that I can dedicate to the making process. I work part time and also have family commitments to try and fit in as well. You can often find me watching some ser
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Hand painted pots

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 My little pots that I use for my crochet cacti have gone through a few developments since I first started using them. I originally started painting them using a bronze metallic acrylic paint which I sealed using a yacht varnish. Although I really liked the result i didn’t like the amount of time it took for the paint and varnish to dry. It needed a couple of layers (at least) and there needed to be a few hours in between as otherwise the paint wanted to try and peel back off again. The varnish as well would take at least a day before it was really dry.  To do that method back then I really needed to have multiple pots on the go so that by the time the last one was painted it was time to start on the first one again. However, back then I wasn’t making the number of cacti that I am now. I wanted to experiment with different colours of pots, especially as my cacti themselves were starting to be made in different colours themselves. I then discovered paint pens. As most of my pots are qui
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Pastel rainbows

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 The last year has seen so many changes to the world around us. When I look back at what I was doing twelve months ago and compare it to what I am doing today I realise just how far I have come, and how the path I am on s a very different one.  I have always loved the colours that are found in a rainbow and as a child I remember being mesmerised see shafts of pretty lights in a prism that we had at home. Last year, when I would go out for exercise, I remember seeing rainbows starting to show up in peoples windows. Often these were drawn by the children that were living there, with added messages of hope and thanks. These rainbows again would catch my eye. There are still rainbows in windows to be seen whilst out walking and it inspired me to develop my current painted terracotta pots using a rainbow theme. Rather than using the bright range of yarns I decided that I would use my pastel shades. To create a set of pastel rainbow cacti. Because these shades are subtle I did not want to us
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#marchmeetthemaker on Instagram

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 So this year I decided to take part in the monthly challenge on Instagram that is the brainchild of Joanne Hawker. If you have never done one before it is really simple to follow and there are lots of different ones to take part in. For this one there was a prompt for each weekday and the weekends were set as free.  I had tried to do it last year but then I ended up giving up as mine and everyone else’s lives took a dramatic turn and I just couldn’t face trying to fit it into my “new normal”. Because of this I was determined to get further this year and it was easier where the weekends were left up to the poster to decide what they wanted to post about. I didn’t manage to get every prompt done but I did manage to do the majority which I am really pleased about. I also managed to look at and follow a whole host of new pages and seen some amazing makes that people do. Each day Instagram showed me different pages in my feed that had either the #marchmeetthemaker hashtag or the hashtag of
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Lockdown - How crafting was, and is, so important to me

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 I was busy looking through my social media today and saw several posts pop up from friends who had shared their “memories” from this time last year. How the world was about to change as we entered lockdown. If only we knew then what a year we were going to have!  Working from home for me and so many others became the new normal and finding a way to adjust to this was so important. I remember my mental health really taking a hit and I knew that I was struggling like so many others. I had to take charge. There was lots of advice around especially when it became clear that it was not going to be over in a couple of weeks. For me I found that I needed to make sure that I was in a routine, after all when at work under normal circumstances every minute of my day was planned out so I needed to make sure that every day was planned out too, not just the ones when I was working from home. Groups sprang up that were trying to help and support and I got involved with making ear savers for the NHS
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Crochet pencil cases

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 This week I have been working on a completely new idea. As much as I love working on my cacti and bringing different characters to “life” I enjoy setting myself new challenges. I had an idea to see if I could work out how to make a simple lined pencil case that was crocheted. I knew I wanted it to just use double crochet stitches but to have a bit of interest as well.  The first thing I thought I would try and work out was whether to do the lining or to do the crochet piece first. Both ways I thought could work and would have advantages but would give there own set of challenges as well. I decided that I would go with doing the lining first and then attached the crochet on with possible crocheting directly from the zip. Lining fabric picked along with a zip it was time to get the sewing machine out which I must admit felt a little strange having not used it for a few months. It did feel a little strange not adding an outer layer of fabric as I would normally have done in the past and
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