We bend but we don't break

It’s been a hard month. As many of you may know I have been taking a break following the sudden and very unexpected death of my father.

Everything still feels very raw and very strange as you can imagine, but now we have had the funeral I feel as though I can start to dip my toe into the online world again. Even though my brain is strangely scattered and forgetful - just last night I made coffee without boiling the kettle and then wondered why the coffee was cold :)

Everything has changed and yet as I log in here and sit down to write (with a hot cup of coffee this time) everything seems familiar and comforting.

These daffodils made me smile the other day - snapped on one of the many trips north I’ve made over the last few weeks. Just the day before they had been smiling happily in the sunshine before their enthusiasm was dented somewhat by a sharp snow shower. Like us though, they bend but don’t break. Their display might be over for this year but they retreat underground, look after themselves for a bit and then re-emerge triumphant next year.

I’m not sure I’m going to be doing any triumphant emerging any time soon, but we do go on. We change, we adapt and we grieve, but we do go on.

Most of my regular knitting is on hold - due to lack of enthusiasm - but I did pick up an old long-neglected sock WIP - which seems to have caught my interest. And I’ve been finding huge diversion in the new series of Bridgerton - both watching the TV series and reading along with the book. It’s very entertaining - not least because I’m not sure that those who adapted it for the screen had even read the book - I can’t believe how different the two plotlines are.

Still, it all makes for harmless feel-good fun, which right now is just what is needed.

Keep on, keeping on

If we don't need cosy knitwear now then I don't know when. With everything that's happening in the world right now, a to do list that starts with “must write blog post” seems unbelievably trivial but I'm firmly of the opinion that all we can do in the face of such terrible events is to “keep on, keeping on”.

Holding it together, knitting it together - I'm sure there's a great community building metaphor here somewhere but it's beyond my slightly frazzled and overwhelmed brain.

There's so much I can't control right now, but I can make damn sure that I share the love for my new sweater - Reykjavik Soft by Meiju K-P and my absolutely new favourite yarn - Keld Aran from Eden Cottage Yarns. It's a wool/linen blend with amazing sheen and strength but with a hint of crispness. It worked perfectly with this colourwork sweater and even though a few of the rows were 3 colours at a time (a step up in my colourwork skills) it blocked out beautifully.

Full disclosure: I didn't read the pattern properly and ran short of the dark grey so I opted to do the bottom of the sweater plain without any additional colourwork.

I did the 2nd smallest size and used:

4 X 100g main colour Ash

1 X 100g Charcoal (dark grey)

1 X 100g Echinops (light pinky grey)

I’m just so pleased with how it turned out and now planning how many more colourwork sweaters I need in my life - answer: Lots!

It's OK not to share

It’s OK not to share: This seems like a bit of an odd subject for a social media post, but bear with me.

At the start of the year I set up a private Instagram account, just for me. The intention was to deliberately take a photo every day, to document what I’m calling a ‘tiny delight’ - nothing momentous, nothing earth shattering, it might just be a bowl of granola. But it’s a daily record of something I’ve done or seen that day, that made me happy and that I appreciated.

This was inspired, at least in part by the writings of two women:

Laura Pasha - author of Little Stories of Your Life - all about noticing the beauty in the mundane, everyday things.

Jo Dimmock - of @ochreandflax - and her gratitude and journaling practice.

So, if it’s private why am I telling you about it?

Ah - good question - I’m so pleased you asked.

It occurred to me while I was out walking this morning that, in an age where we are encouraged to share so much of ourselves and our thoughts online, that the deliberate choice to keep something back, to hold it just for ourselves is a really bold, assertive thing to do. It feels like a tiny act of rebellion in a world where oversharing is not just accepted but is actively encouraged. 

I wanted a place to share my ‘tiny delights’ in a way that was visual but that wasn’t just on my phone or in my journal. I wanted it to be somewhere separate from all of my other online activities but also somewhere just for me. A place where I can scroll through and see a permanent record of all of my daily ‘tiny delights’ that will hopefully help to perk me up, during those low moments which we all experience.

I’m keeping in mind the image of a determined toddler, with a very set expression on her face, arms crossed, saying calmly but fiercely “no, that’s mine”.

And I’m carrying that energy forwards into a few aspects of my online life this year, most notably with my Twitter usage. Twitter has been for the most part, my favourite online social media platform, the place where I am most free to be myself. Sadly though, for me at least, it’s become an increasingly noisy and hostile place where it’s all too easy to lose yourself amid the outpourings of so many other angry and frightened people.

As an empath, it’s something I have been increasingly aware of and the negative impact of Twitter on my mental health is no longer something that I can ignore.

This isn’t a grand ‘I’m leaving’ statement or anything like that. But simply a gradual realisation that I need to move towards something that serves me better - and 2hrs of daily twitter scrolling does not serve me well - at all.

Instead I’ve replaced the twitter app on my phone with the Kindle reader app (to supplement my Kindle and the physical books I have) and if I feel a scrolling urge I read a book instead.

I have set myself the target of reading 52 books this year (having read 25 in 2021) and I’ve surprised myself by reading 4 already. It turns out that 2hrs a day can really add up - who knew?

I’ll still be around on Twitter, and indeed I’ve curated a (private) list of knitty friends so that I don’t miss any updates, but I will be much more intentional about the debates and accounts I engage with. Reserving my energy and my attention for that which I can control, not that which I can’t.

I haven’t set any knitting-related goals this year - I’m not quite sure what that says about me - but there’s still time. For now I’m just happy that I have had a bit of a reset and I’m hoping that being more mindful in where I direct my energies will help me to be more present in other areas of my life - including my crafting.

How about you? Do you have any big (or small) goals this year?

If you’d like to find out what I’m reading I’ll be sharing this on my Instagram stories (and saved to my highlights) or I’ll be chatting about it in my bi-weekly newsletter too).

An impromptu break

The joys of a weekend off.

I hadn't planned to take a social media break over the weekend but on Friday I found out that Saturday was #DigitalDetoxDay.

It seemed like a good prompt to pop my phone in a drawer and remove temptation, and to be honest it was such a good feeling that I extended it into Sunday as well.

I used to regularly take social media breaks but at some undefined point I stopped, probably around the time Covid started - convinced that I'd miss some vital nugget of information.

Of course, we all know that it doesn't work like that. You tell yourself that you are keeping up to date with vital information but really you are following gossip, argument and a whole lot of partials informed speculation.

Definitely not good for the mental health.

So, instead I had a lovely, calm weekend. Well, the usual preparing for back to school kerfuffle, but at least my brain was clearer and better able to deal with it.

I read a book - the Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris and started a new sock yarn blanket (because... Why not?)

And more importantly, I felt in a better place to write, journal and set a few new moon intentions for the month ahead. (Today is New Moon in Virgo if you follow that sort of thing)

Now I just need to take that New Moon energy and channel it into some healthy online habits for the week ahead. Starting off the day here, rather than doom scrolling on Twitter sounds like a good start to me.

You are creative - even when following a pattern

I don't think we say this enough. I hear so many people dismiss their own creativity, every day, on the grounds that they are just following a pattern. And yet it's totally untrue.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

As a knitter (or crocheter, or crafter) you are inherently creative. It's what you do. In fact you probably do it without even thinking about it.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Yes, you might be following a pattern but your choices of colour, yarn, needles etc are all coming together to create something totally unique, something created by you. Something that wouldn't exist if it weren't for you.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

You take sticks and string, wave your hands around a lot (OK, a real lot) and actually produce something that wasn't there before.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

And if that isn't the definition of creativity then I don't know what is.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Please share this with someone else who needs to hear this today.

Soulmates - knitting and coffee

Some things just go together, like cheese and wine, or bacon and eggs and for me knitting and coffee is one of those non negotiable pairings. Sitting down with a freshly brewed cup of coffee and some relaxing knitting is just the perfect thing. And one without the other just isn’t the same.

A recent bout of ill health has meant that I’ve been forced to re-evaluate this valuable part of my routine and I think it’s fair to say that I’ve struggled to enjoy my knitting in quite the same way without my hot cup of coffee by my side. Other hot beverages are indeed available - and believe me I’ve tried them all. But it’s just not the same, and my knitting mojo is definitely flagging as a result.

I think it’s partly because I view both of them as synonymous with ‘me time’. When my kids were very small, sitting down with a hot coffee (and the actual time to drink it) was a rare luxury. But I could often grab 5 minutes to knit while they were toddling around. Unlike a hot coffee, they couldn’t do much damage to my knitting, short of knocking it off the coffee table or trying to eat it - and I always tended to use small wooden circulars when they were around to minimise damage (either to them or the knitting).

Over time, my routines evolved and the boys activities moved on to more active pursuits where supervision at a distance was all that was required. For quite a few years, I was the connoisseur of soft-play centres and would put up with any amount of ear-splitting screeching for an (almost) uninterrupted hour of coffee and knitting.

Now, I find myself with a lot more knitting time (and a very bad social media habit which threatens to encroach on knitting more than I care to admit). But it has to be accompanied by something with low acidity and caffeine free. I know that on the scale of first-world problems this is probably up there with Waitrose running out of strawberries, but the lack of coffee has really affected how much I’m knitting, which is never good.

So far rooibos is probably my favourite tummy-friendly beverage but if you have any tried and tested recommendations I’d love to know. Anything to get me enjoying hot drinks again would be gratefully appreciated.