How things change

 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 series or another very late into the night with a crochet hook in my hand making more stock. Trying not to burn the candle at both ends is such a delicate balancing act and during the busy season in the summer I find I don’t always manage it very well.

Since my last blog I have become a Nan and she is such a gorgeous little girl. My heart melts every time I see pics and videos that her parents share with me. I love making things for her and these often are blankets which I have crocheted although I have knitted her some cardigans as well. My latest one is a corner to corner blanket with a band logo on it. I have never done this type of crochet so thought I would really challenge myself. When the post offices are open after the bank holiday it will go in the post and can’t wait to hear how it is received. 

My mental and physical health unfortunately has taken a real bashing since my last blog post and I have been struggling to move forward despite all the amazing things I have achieved. I guess it is all about balance. To get the highs there must be balance with the lows as well. When I had my first breakdown just over 16 years ago now one of the things I found was writing my thoughts and feelings down. I would journal each day and sum up at the end of the week and month. I have completely forgotten how powerful that was. When lockdown hit for the first time during covid I revisited going for walks and found that it helped me just as much then as it did when I was a teenager and trying to make sense of the world around me. Both of these things helped me enormously along with listening to music, especially when I can, live music. 

It seems mad but I have concluded that in order to have peace and to get through the ever expanding list of things to do I need to step back and relax. To stop whatever is pressing and to do something else instead. If I try and force progress it just puts even more pressure on myself and becomes counter productive. Everything that needs to get done and will do but if I don’t look after myself first then nothing will be achieved. To be kind to ourselves first is key. 







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interlocking filet afghan

Image
So having finally found the perfect colour blue and being able to get enough of this and the black yarn to complete it I have been busy the last couple of weeks on making my fourth version of the interlocking filet afghan. It has been a very welcome distraction to be working on this in the times that we are going through at the moment in the world. I have always used craft to help with my mental well being and I feel I have never needed them more than I do at the moment. I have always loved maths ever since I was a small child and I think that is one of the reasons I like to crochet. The structure and patterns along with making sure you get the stitch count correct or else the pattern, particularly with interlocking filet, will go wrong and it will be very obvious. Another reason I like to crochet is that it gives your mind something to focus on which helps shut out all the other things that might be going on in your own world. A time to breathe so to speak. This is the fourth vers
Read more

Tinsel squishies

Image
So Christmas is nearly here and I have whilst looking through my yarn stash lots of “tinsel” yarn. I was really hoping nature what to make with it so I thought that I would keep it simple and just make a sphere. Well that was the first mistake I made right there. There is nothing simple about working with this type of yarn. To start f with I used the classic magic circle and thought I would increase from there every other row until I got the diameter I thought would be the perfect size. The problem is, and anyone else who has used this type of yarn can probably relate to is that it is very tricky to see where on earth the stitches are. The first size hook that I picked up was far too small. This is the size hook that I always use for my amigurumi but it proved to be too tricky so I tried the next size up and this again was too small. I repeated the process until I was happy enough to see the stitches and then I was away. I don’t normally use stitch markers but it was essential as wel
Read more

Floral elegance - a mystery CAL in interlocking filet crochet

Image
So, this time last year I was browsing through social media, as you do in the time between Christmas break and going back to work, and came across this new way of crochet. Interlocking filet. I say new, well it was new to me but not to others. I had only ever done what I would call standard crochet to make a blanket. The usual stitches that are just switched up to create a design. Here was something that used the same stitch throughout the pattern but to make the design it depended on whether or not you created the stitch through the front of the gap or behind. I was intrigued and am always on the lookout for ways to expand my crochet knowledge being self taught (apart from being shown how to do a granny square and the basic couple of stitches when small). When I am first learning anything I need to be shown, either in person or by something like you tube. I was so pleased to see that there was samples to make and a you tube video so that I could “see” how it was done. I was really p
Read more