A slow start to September

For me this month is going to be slow and intentional. For pretty much all of my life September has meant back to school/work and a renewed push towards "getting stuff done" before the end of the year.

This year, for the first time I'm not working and I have the luxury of being able to evaluate exactly what I want to do and how I spend my time.

That's a luxury that I really want to slow down and appreciate.

This time next year I'll only have one boy at home as the other will be off to Uni and I guess I'm feeling the need to really appreciate what I have right now, before it all changes again.

I don't want to dive in with a load of "to do's" and lists before I've figured out exactly what I want to achieve in these next few months, or even if I want to actually achieve anything at all?

My need for reflection has been really highlighted with the events of the last few days and the death of the Queen. Whatever your views on monarchy as an institution the Queen has been a solid, tangible presence in all of our lives for a very long time and the transition to having a King is quite an adjustment to the national mindset. For me, along with a great many other people I suspect it has also brought feelings of grief to the fore, memories of losing our own loved ones and for that reason I have been taking a step back from social media - particularly Twitter.

As ever, social media reflects all of societies extremes - both good and bad - and I’m finding it difficult to balance my need for quiet thoughts against the maelstrom of Big Twitter Opinions.

As a pleasant alternative I came across a fabulous hashtag project yesterday (thanks to @sarahrichardssocial on Instagram ). It's called #SlowSeptember and there are a series of daily prompts if you choose to dip in and out of them.

But more than that, it's an invitation to take the foot off the accelerator and pause. To find a little space in your day to do something just for you. To consider something that's important to you.

Or just to sit and do nothing with a brew and a biscuit ☕☕

How are you feeling this September? Full of back to school energy or does Team Slow sound appealing to you too?

A summer timewarp

Finally, we have some cooler weather here after 3 days of blisteringly hot (39/40C heat) and I can’t describe the joy I felt this morning at having a shower and standing in a cool breeze from the open window. Something definitely happens to my brain after 30C and I lose the ability to think rationally or to plan anything. My brain seems to go into hot weather survival mode and thinking about anything beyond immediate needs is just something I can’t do.

Sitting with a cup of coffee, an open laptop and coherent thought for the first time in weeks is a lovely experience but also slightly bewildering. We seem to have catapulted straight into summer holiday season with no warning and zero preparation. A combination of being a Covid house for 10 days followed by the UK’s 40C heatwave has totally thrown out all of my careful plans.

I feel as though I need to regroup, rethink and try to get some sort of a plan in place for the next 6 weeks and all the things that need to happen for the usual family summer stuff - including a much awaited (and repeatedly postponed) trip to Greece that I haven’t even thought about buying/packing for yet.

I was going to start my Summer of Books and Yarn on 22 July - when our schools break up here - but as the end of the week is approaching with terrifying speed I will be moving this back to start on Monday 25 July.

I need time to get my ducks in a row and at present they are drunk and at a party.

I also need to regroup on the knitting front too. During the hot weather I was working on a crochet granny square blanket which I’d like to get finished and then I can turn my thoughts to my next knitting design. I have a few in the pipeline but all seem to have stalled. Hopefully if the cooler weather continues I can drag these out and assess in the cold (cool) light of day.

For now, I think I’ll just sit and enjoy the cool breeze while I put my crochet blanket together.

If you’d like to join my #SummerOfBooksAndYarn there’s a link to sign up for the prompts below - and you’ll also get a discount code for 50% off any of my shawl or cowl patterns.

Fancy joining me for a summer of books and yarn?

Do you long for the days when summer meant a nice, juicy reading challenge from your local library? When you got a sticker chart and a brilliant progress checker, as well as the perfect excuse to curl up in a corner and read to your hearts content?

Well, I can't quite promise the sticker chart (although I'm working on an online equivalent) but how about joining me for a #SummerOfBooksAndYarn?

Starting when schools break up* and running for the six weeks of the summer holidays I thought it would be fun to have a modest reading challenge.

• Six weeks

• Six books

• Six reading prompts (optional)

• A six-week long shawl KAL

Obviously I would love it if your chosen shawl pattern for the KAL was one of mine, but of course WIPs and other projects are very welcome too.

As a little incentive though I'm offering an exclusive 50% discount off any of my shawl or cowl patterns with a special code. To find out more sign up to my newsletter (or check your inbox if you are already a subscriber.

*I know that school holidays are different depending on where you are in the world but for practical reasons I'm going off the English school system where I am located.

On Instagram and borrowed audiences

It’s no secret that life on Instagram is pretty tough at the minute. Tried and tested posting strategies just aren’t working as they used to. And even when you do jump through all the hoops that Instagram seemingly requires of you - hello Reels - you still are left with engagement stats that make a ghost town looks positively vibrant.

There’s no doubt that Instagram is going through a midlife crisis and seems to have forgotten what it wants to be. In it’s quest to be like the other cool platforms it has ended up like someones Dad at a hipster party, slightly awkward and out of place. Desperate to be relevant in a room full of indifference.

Hopefully it will sort itself out soon and until then we just keep plodding on, trying to connect with our audience and to catch up with the people that we have come to enjoy hanging out with there.

I have seen a lot of weeping and wailing though from some quite big accounts. Obviously people’s businesses and incomes are taking a huge hit right now, especially those whose businesses centered largely around selling to their Instagram audience. And a lot of comments along the lines of ‘we’ve earned that audience’ or Instagram owes it to us to sort things out’.

And wow, that’s quite the statement to make. Yes, of course we have worked hard to acquire an audience on Instagram and we’ve certainly put the hours in to generate those likes and comments and sales. But, make no mistake, those people are still Instagram’s audience, not ours. At best we have borrowed them for a while.

It is very literally a case of building a platform on someone else’s land. Unless you have moved those people across onto your email list or other platform - that you own - then they aren’t your audience.

As attractive and photogenic as that Instagram basket is, it’s a good idea to move some of your eggs out of it. At least until Instagram gives it’s head a wobble and gets back in the game.

An email list is one way of doing that, another is through the use of Facebook Groups. Yes, I know it’s another Meta-platform and yes, I know that you still don’t own that either. But an active, engaged Facebook Group is still a really good way, right now to connect to your people. Whilst there is undoubtedly a demographic that prefers to be Facebook-free, over 70% of Facebook users say they visit the site at least once a day. An active Facebook Group with dynamic and new content is a great way to be visible and to show up on people’s social media, in a way that Instagram at the minute just can’t do.

I recently dusted off my 20k-strong Facebook Group - the Everyday Knitter group. I archived it in 2020 in a mid-pandemic state of overwhelm, back when everything just felt too much. But I missed it. I missed the daily connection with people, with friends. And I missed that feeling of belonging to a community. So I resurrected it and I’m thrilled with how it has just picked up where it left off. Sure, we lost a few members along the way and I had some dormant accounts to clear out, but of 20k members, 11.5k are classed as active in the group (according to Facebook’s metrics) and we have lots of chatty and engaged members in there on a daily basis.

Facebook Groups are something that I feel really passionate about, I really do think they can help small businesses connect to their customers in a meaningful way and that’s why I have written the Grow With Groups course.

If you have had ‘start a Facebook Group’ on your to-do list for ever, but have always been reluctant to give it a try, or you don’t know where to start then this is the course for you.

Why not take a look and see what you think? We start on Monday 4 July though, so don’t wait too long.

My best business tool

Photo credit: Dave Goudreau via Unsplash

I must have spent £100s, possibly even £1000s over the years on productivity and business apps and software. Show me a course on productivity or a snazzy new app that promises to revolutionise my working day or streamline my content creation and I’m all over it.

Nothing sparkles with more promise than the ultimate hardcopy business planner complete with freshly sharpened pencils and a vat of coffee in my favourite coffee shop.

But lately I’ve come to realise that my best business tool, by a country mile is my beaten up pair of trainers. 

Recently I was stuck on something. Nothing as complex as algebra or bringing about world peace but it was something I’d been mulling over for days and I felt as though I couldn’t move on with my other work until I’d solved it. All day I’d sat at my desk, as well as in the aforementioned coffee shop but the words just wouldn’t come.

The odd idea swam into my head and then floated off before I could even try to journal on it. Put simply, I was stuck and frustrated.

Back at home and with dinner in the oven I shoved on my trainers and went for a walk with my husband. Walking in companionable silence, each mulling over our day the idea suddenly came to me.

It was a perfect, brilliant light bulb moment and suddenly I knew exactly what I needed to do, as though someone had laid out a yellow brick road right in front of me. I didn’t even need to stop and make a note on my phone for fear I would forget it. The idea was so clear and perfectly formed it was as though it already existed.

Thinking back, this is definitely part of a pattern and there’s definitely something that works for me in the simple repetitive soothing motion of walking. Something that calms my frazzled brain and helps me to make sense of the world around me. It’s no coincidence that during the Covid lockdowns our daily walks were the one thing that kept me functioning.

I can’t meditate to save my life. Just the thought of sitting still and deep breathing makes me want to twitch but simple, slow, mindful walking works for me every time. And I’m not alone. I found this wonderful article recently which sums it up far more eloquently than I could. It seems there is some solid science to explain the link between a good long walk and creative ideas.

I’m not ready to ditch the laptop and the coffee shop just yet, but I might just shove my trainers in the boot of the car for a pre-work walk around the block first.

Sometimes it's good to go back

“Never say never” was one of my Nana’s well-used sayings and, as so often, she has proven to be right. When I closed the doors to the Everyday Knitter Facebook group, almost 2 years ago, the phrase “never again” may have crossed my lips. It was an action largely borne of frustration and pandemic-induced overwhelm. Everything felt too big, too loud, just too much.

The much smaller Mighty Network group in comparison felt a whole lot more achievable, calmer. In short I felt more in control of it. And back then, control over external things was very much in short supply.

Obviously a lot has changed in 2 years - for all of us - and that’s definitely a blog post for another day. But one things that has changed is the set-up of Facebook groups - specifically the moderating tools that are now available and a number of automated systems designed to reduce the need for admin interventions.

I used to be a member of an official Facebook Admin group, and it looks as though a lot of the things we were crying out for back then have actually been implemented - which makes a refreshing change.

In addition to this I think it would be fair to say that I have experienced a few issues with the Mighty Network group in terms of it’s set-up and relative inflexibility in some areas. For a small group it works well, and for a larger group with integral courses and multiple teams it probably also works well, I’ve certainly seen it working well for others. But for me, for the size of my group and my team (ie me - solo) it doesn’t seem to work as well. And I’m not convinced that spending time, and money, in trying to make it so would necessarily be the best use of my time.

That’s not to say that the Mighty Network group is going away. There is a definite place for those amongst use who prefer a Facebook-free environment, and the group will continue in it’s present form, but I just won’t be developing any new things there for the foreseeable future

So, here we are. It seems as though I’ve gone full circle. I’ve now opened up the doors of the Everyday Knitter Facebook group and am once again standing on the doorstep, ready to welcome you with coffee, cake and a bit of knitting chat.

I hope you’ll decide to pop back in - we have a lot of catching up to do.