Skip to main content

Change as Self-Care

For me self-care is turning out to be more than just doing nice things for myself. It's making changes in what I do and how I do it to avoid problems and be realistic as well as kinder to myself.

I was looking through my photo archives and found this pic from last year around this time. I was within eight weeks or so of finishing my calendar mood blanket, and it already covered our king size bed. That was when I realized I'd made it a lot bigger than the original pattern, probably due to my choice to use thrifted worsted weight yarn, the bigger hook I employed, and my hand problems creating bigger rather than smaller stitches.

As I recall I wasn't really upset about it -- stuff happens when you make stuff -- but now I think I need to start actually checking the gauge before I began a crochet project. I've always eyeballed it since, well, forever, and it's time to stop doing that to avoid disappointment.

For a while now I've been forbidding myself to get back into beading (I spent quite a few years drowning myself in beads and beaded quilting.) The fact is that I love beads and I will happily spend hours beading even the smallest project, like this mini-quilt I just made. Yet back then it was taking over my creative life, and my arthritis often made it difficult to manage the very fine work involved, resulting in much frustration, too.

Over the last three or four years I've been pretty strict with myself about beading too much, but this year I don't feel like denying myself any longer. My arthritis is winning, so why not have some fun now and then with the million or so beads I still own while I can still hold a beading needle? Makes me happy.

I've been scheduling my creative time pretty ruthlessly this year, as I've been busy with the day job, my family life, housework, strategically cooking and shopping to stretch our food budget, etc. I only start a project if I know I can work on it (and if my hands are working well enough to manage it.) That's why I haven't begun making my pink-only quilt project, because I'm afraid I won't have the time to give it the proper amount of attention it requires (and deserves.) I'm also afraid that my vision won't translate into fabric.

It's deadline week as I'm writing this, I started my granny ripple stitch throw this week so I could have a mindless project to work on during my breaks. But I think the next project (no matter what!) will be the pink-only quilt. If it doesn't work out, at least I will have tried. That's always better than not trying.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stuff

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.
Post a Comment
Read more

Journal Find

This is a page from my 2010 poetry journal. My handwriting isn't the best, so I'll transcribe it: If my heart survives to tell all the secrets kept inside it will be an abalone shell in which the beauty did reside. But I think I will always be lost to the tides that rage in me . . . humbling and polishing . . . I don't write many self-portrait poems, but this one isn't too embarrassing. A bit overly dramatic, but the girl I was eleven years ago went through some tough times. I'm in a much more peaceful place today.
Post a Comment
Read more

Watchable Farce

The k-drama Undercover High School is a series that brings a handsome spy to play a student at an elite private school where a legend about billions of gold hidden there persists. It's more silly slapstick comedy than anything, but has some surprising romantic and dramatic moments, too. Seo Kang-joon is one of my favorite Korean actors, and this is the first series he's made since finishing up his mandatory military service. He plays Jeong Hae-seong/ Jeong Si-hyun, an NIS agent who infiltrates a snobby elitist school to hunt down the gold. There are four urban legends connected to the treasure that he has to figure out, all under the too-watchful eye of his homeroom teacher, Oh Su-Ah (Jin Ki-joo) whom he eventually discovers was his elementary school love Oh Bong-ja (there's a lot of name changing in this series.) The hunt for the treasure is the highlight of this series, but the romance between the leads is cute, too (and not as taboo as you might think, given that...
Post a Comment
Read more