Could 2020 be the year you get your craft on?
This is a collaborative post but all thoughts and opinions are my own
When my children were little I didn’t ever really get completely into doing crafts with them, though I hate to admit that. Yes, we did cutting and pasting, and turning pasta into necklaces but I never really progressed with sewing, knitting or crocheting. I did try, in my defence. My granny would often patiently try and teach me how to sew or to crochet but I never really got the hang of it. Proof it were needed that these things are not genetic since she used to make a living from sewing curtains for people, knitted and crocheted a stack of clothes for me as a small child and could knock up a new skirt in the ad breaks of Coronation Street. I inherited her love of cooking, not crochet sadly.
But with our first grandchild now here it felt like the right time for me to properly learn how to get crafting beyond pasta and Pritt stick.
Now more than ever is definitely the time for me to learn how to crochet, how to knit, or how to do a more specific stitch and learn to do embroidery. Hell I might even get that patchwork quilt finished that I started when my eldest was born (yes, really, 26 years ago!).
I am going to do my research and make sure I have the right tools for the job, and I am going to have a rummage for some really easy embroidery fonts so I can make a sampler for my grandchild’s nursery. And then I might try and be brave and crochet a blanket.
I am going to pace myself though because I know what I am like, I go in all guns blazing, mess it up (obviously) and then declare myself useless and that I can’t do it.
I am telling myself the following:
- Don’t start when you are tired. Seems like a no brainer, right, but how often do we start to do things in the evening when the light is rubbish, and we are tired? When starting anything new, do it in the morning when you aren’t tired, and when the natural light is best.
- Take breaks, don’t sit for hours trying to learn, there is a reason why school lessons are typically only 45 minutes. That is the average concentration span before which we start going off track and our mind wanders.
- Keep the ball of wool in your lap, or beside you. Don’t have it down not the floor where you will feel you need to “pull it” up towards you.
- Don’t be hard on yourself if you get it wrong (and you will get it wrong). It doesn’t mean you can’t do it, or shouldn’t. It just means you have gone slightly wrong temporarily.
- Tell other people you are learning. For instance, there is a huge crochet community on social media. If you tell people you are learning to crochet you will be inundated with help and support. And quickly making new friends! Ditto knitting, felting, embroidery or any other craft.