Moments of Stillness

Writing a blog post has taken more than a back seat this week.  I have had a full head of things to think about and I am not able to focus on writing when life gets like that.  It is what it is.  Writing does not come easy to me, I have to focus hard to get the words in a coherent order and to get right what I am trying to say.  I love it though and know that writing in this space has given me the skills to find my voice, my early posts are testament to how far I have come.  

I have intentionally not written much this past week.  We make space in our lives for the things that are important to us and that nourish us wherever life is at at a given moment.  Even when we don't think we are doing this intentionally, I am willing to bet that this is what is going on.  When we tell ourselves that we don't have time for something is that what we really truly mean?  Some of the time I am sure that is true, but I also believe that we, on occasions, don't want to make time for things, particularly the hard things, or new things or those things we tell ourselves we can't do, but we haven't tried, yet.  

When my head is full, and writing is not possible I turn to things that are, for me, nourishing.  Other creative projects.  In those treasured moments of stillness I have been reaching for my knitting.  The rows are slow on this complicated pattern, I am knitting it instinctively, looking at my knitting to work out the stitches needed in each row.  A pattern as complex as this would have had me looking at the written details every few stitches, I do love it when you can see for yourself what you have learnt.  Although this requires concentration it is not so much that I cannot do it whilst chatting or watching something, I also love that I see any mistakes instantly which I don't always do when I am following the written pattern.  A lesson learned for me on how I pay close attention,  I look and see my knitting in a different way when I am in charge of the pattern rather than referring to the written instructions all the time, I wonder if this is the same for you, if you are a knitter?

In those moments when the knitting was too much concentration, Alice and I have been needle felting.  We are organising a fundraising day on Easter Saturday, we needed some craft items to sell and wanted it to be a quick to make, simple and sellable project.  We decided on heart garlands, three needle felted hearts on a thread.  We have made about 40 hearts so far and will keep going until we run out of felting wool.  We have a wee bag with some wool roving, felting needles and our needle felting brush which we take with us when we are out and about and have a spare five minutes to whip one up.

We started meeting up with some friends more regularly and intentionally last year.  We spend some of our time together creating and crafting.  We made the window star one week, it took all four of us to work out the instructions between us, each of us bringing a particular skill which helps us to make sense of it.  Our paper was a little smaller than that suggested in the instructions so maths was required to work out what size we needed, we ended up with a slightly different shaped star to the one in the picture on the instructions but we loved how these turned out.  They do look rather lovely on a grey gloomy winter day.

The embroidery is also from this wee gathering.  We each designed what we were going to sew, mine is the primroses above, Alice's design is mushrooms, we drew onto the fabric and have been slowly stitching these as we meet each week.  I have loved the close attention you need to pay to the colours and shading.  I want to add something around the flowers once I have completed the leaves, I haven't decided yet what that will be.  The last embroidery I completed I made into a bag, I think I will make something with my primroses too, probably another bag, you can never have too many.

If I haven't already I will be coming a visiting your blog soon, I am sorry I have been a little absent this week.  I hope you have all had a good week.

Creating a story sack

In my last post I mentioned that I had recently made a story sack.  I have made a few of these in the past and shared some of them on here.  When my children were small they loved to bring these home from the library Alice, in particular, was always really disappointed that we could only borrow one at a time.  

A story sack is such a clever way of getting more out of a book than just reading.  Now that Alice is older I can see why these sacks were so appealing to her,  she has really struggled with learning to read, letters and words were a mystery to her for a long time.  Story sacks are a bag of books, props and sometimes a game on a theme, a thread from the main book in the sack.  The props are toys that enhance the main book.  

In this story sack is just one book, I didn't have time to find a second one, it is part of a series that my children loved when they were smaller, and a few props that Alice and I made.  Percy the Park Keeper looks after a park and spends lots of his time with his friends the animals who live in the park.  Percy and the animals are often to be found having fun together.  In this story they are playing hide and seek, one of the animals choses a hiding place that has unexpected results.

Percy and his animal friends are all needle felted.  Alice made Percy, and between us we made the other animals.  I made a small bag to keep them all in.

I am lucky enough to have an independent bookshop in my local town.  Some of the story sacks I have made have been based on a particular book, more usually I browse through the children's books to find a story that lends itself to be made into a sack.  I love this type of project and am glad that my nephew loves his first story sack, as I am sure that I will be making him more in the future.