Like Snowflakes {Listen}

Today I'm linking up with SheLoves Magazine on their monthly theme which for October is "Listen" (Or I would be, but the link-up page seems to be broken. I thought I'd write anyway). Hop over there to see what some excellent writers have to say on the theme. Here's my take:

The 'Life Group' I'm a part of didn't come together like most of the others at our church. We wanted small groups to meet up with that would focus on reaching the area and neighbourhoods that we lived in. Very few people lived on my side of the city, so we thought outside the box. We invited all the local Christians we knew to join in, and a precious cross-congregational fellowship was formed.

Recently we've gained a few new members so this week we decided to each share a little part of our testimony, one or two events that had been turning points or played a part in shaping who we are.

Beautiful.

One by one hearts were opened, and this odd family was welcomed in. As each person shared, others were reminded of events in their own lives that had been further turning points. One shared how they met God all on their own, without another soul talking to them. Another shared how in the vast sea of people at Soul Survivor he had encountered the Holy Spirit for the first time. One shared how faith had just always made sense in life; another shared the long and winding road to discovering who God is. Each story was as valuable as the next; some more familiar than others. But for every one of us, listening to our friends was a reminder of something else God had done, another event that had played a part in moulding us into who we are.


A snowflake is formed by a water particle freezing around a tiny piece of dust, and falling to the earth. The intricate shape of each arm is determined by the atmospheric conditions experienced by the flake as it falls. Every gust of wind; each slight change in temperature or humidity causes the ice crystals to grow in a different way. Because individual snowflakes all follow slightly different paths from the sky to the ground they each encounter different conditions and therefore, each one is unique.

We are like snowflakes, and every experience, every condition, every change of direction determines who we will become. What a privilege to hear those stories and be able to say, 'Thank you for sharing'.

Can you think of events in your life, even seemingly insignificant ones, that have made you who you are today?

Snowflake image credit: Alexey Kljatov

Hop Along

Today I’m joining in with a Blog Hop from over at Serendipitous Stitching. I’ve been paired up with The Alchemyst’s Study and my brief is to have a snoop around her blog and write a post dedicated to her, with something I’ve made that I thought she might like.

Unfortunately I don’t have a huge backlog of cross-stitched crafts to draw on, but I have tried my hand at a good few techniques in my time and it seems like Christine likes to do the same! She has a lovely little online craft store with a whole section dedicated to ‘buttons and braids’ so I thought I’d share my favourite button craft with you.

Growing up, my mum had a collection of buttons in an old milk formula tin and I used to love getting them out and playing with them, just enjoying looking at all the different designs. I’ve started my own miniature collection but it is growing slowly, mostly made up of the spare buttons that come with various items of clothing!

I got the idea for this project from a lovely tea shop we visited one winter on a Christmas walk around Bakewell. The clock was beautiful and I thought, I could make that for my mum next year!

So I did. I had a fun trip to the market where I got to pull out all those tubes of buttons and pick my favourites, then I chose the best arrangement and got stitching. Sewing the clock face onto the backing fabric was quite a challenge, and I wish I could say each blanket stitch represents a second but alas not so technical! I’m also missing photos of my Dad and I on Christmas eve with a drill trying to make a perfect sized hole for the clock mechanism to fit through the back board I’d bought without wobbling.

But here is the finished item:

I like to think the non-uniformity gives it a rugged charm! My mum likes it anyway, it occupies pride of place on the mantelpiece.

Where have you picked up some crazy craft ideas from?

Do go and visit Christine’s blog at The Alchemyst's Study, and find the rest of the blog-hoppers at Serendipitous Stitching. Nice to meet you!

New Toy

Yesterday I defied the advice of people far wiser than I and bought a new toy:

It's teeny weeny, isn't it cute?

Actually, the advice turned out to be well grounded. It only does a straight backstitch so no zigzagging to avoid frays, and it only goes in one direction. Which means to start and finish you have to stitch two, turn the whole piece around and stitch back on yourself, then turn it round again to carry on. Whilst being quite an inconvenience it also gives me 4 extra opportunities to start stitching with the foot still up each time around, eek!

It's dead easy to set up though, and I've even completed my first project already! I followed this video:

Which was so simple, I think it took me less than an hour all in all to complete! Here's a few photos of my progress:

The finished thing was quite a lot smaller than I had anticipated but just about fit in my Dr Who cross stitching, so I can stitch on the go without keeping everything in a scrappy old plastic wallet.

I hope to add an embellishment or two in time, and replace the hemming tape with ribbon for the drawstrings, but it's not bad for an evening's work and the odds and ends I had in!

What else is easy to make on a sewing machine?

Lead {SheLoves}

Two blog posts in two days, something must be going on! How about a manic month ending with a week off just in time before I’ve completely missed the boat?! September’s SheLoves link up has been on the theme: LEAD. Somehow I’ve really struggled to connect this month. Maybe because I’ve overcommitted on cross-stitching (see previous post) maybe I’ve been a bit under the weather. More likely it’s just a tricky topic for me to relate to openly. Even now, on the last day of September there is so much buzzing around my head about leadership, but nothing that I feel comfortable putting into words. Read some other takes on it here.

Here is the truth: We are all leaders. Every single one of us. Everything we do impacts upon those around us, causes them to live in response to us. Here are some examples:

Last Christmas my car very sadly drove it’s final few miles to the scrap heap. We’ve managed almost a year as a one-car household, and as a consequence I am much fitter as my bicycle frequently carries me to work instead! I have a colleague who recently took advantage of the cycle to work scheme we are offered and over the summer she chose to cycle the 10 miles each way to work and back twice a week, even though she had a fully functional car at home. She’ll openly say she never considered that a possibility until I started to do it.

I have started taking my cross-stitch into work and managing about 10 minutes on it over lunch time, in an attempt to hurry along progress. Now there are two or three craft projects on the go around the dining table.

A friend of mine invited me to an orchestra one time and now I’m a (semi) regular attendee of play days, when previously I hadn’t picked up my violin for 8 years!

Now I am NOT one of those bubbly, always centre-of-attention people. Actually I hate being the centre of attention, that’s why I’ve struggled to write about my “official” leadership positions. But I have changed people’s lifestyles (in these cases, by accident!) But I will happily lead by my life. Just by being myself, I can give others permission to be themselves.

What can / do you do that is a little off-beat, but allows others to be themselves?

Cross Stitching Overload

So… I may have over-committed.

At the end of August so pleased was I with my “30for30crafting” exploits that I decided to take on a cross-stitch for a friend’s baby who had just been born. It was a Dr Who themed affair, quite large but with a good amount of empty space so I figured it was fairly doable.

The weekend after I’d bought the pattern and all of the threads was another friend’s baby’s christening, and we were to become God parents. It may surprise some parents to know that neither of us are from God-parenting church backgrounds, so we were somewhat underprepared for the situation in terms of gifts, and a friend staying with us that weekend persuaded me that another cross-stitch would be the perfect, thoughtful gift, and wouldn’t need to be ready before Christmas. So I scoured the internet and found a ‘Noah’s Ark’ kit (I really wanted to do this Bothy Threads one but it’s MASSIVE and very intricate… I was trying to be sensible!) which arrived shortly afterwards.

Well, this is the volume of Aida I have to fill:

Eek! Noah’s ark is about twice as big as I expected, and I’m losing the plot a little. Godson’s birthday is in March so I think he may have to wait until then. In the meantime (and in the two weeks since I started this post and never managed to finish it) I’ve made some headway with Dr Who. As a consequence I have lots of blue and black ORTS:

Maybe there is hope for me yet! No chance of using the beautiful wool my parents bought me from Scotland when they went last month though. All new projects are frozen until at least one of these is complete!

Isn’t it beautiful? That’s just what colour the sheep are, no dye has been used.

EDIT: Forgot to include the link for the TUSAL. See more jars of thread here!

Totally Useless!!

I have enjoyed getting my craft on over the past month, both with the #30for30crafting challenge (I'm just about still keeping up to it now I'm back at work) and generally enjoying what others get up to and where they squeeze it into their lives. What's lovely is that there are a lot of different communities: 'stitch alongs' where everyone follows the same pattern at a similar pace, and 'swaps' where people from across the world make things for each other (usually along a theme) and send them. It sounds like such fun!

I've not been brave enough to join in something where I could possibly let another person down: I'm not quite confident in my own abilities yet. But I have come across the "Totally Useless Stitch-Along" which I feel I'm more than qualified for!

It's dead simple: collect up all the scraggly ends of thread as you've been stitching, and store them in a glass jar. The colours are pretty and there's less mess in the house. The jars are called ORTs for Old Ratty Threads. Then take a picture and share!

I think you're probably meant to add a bit more detail as well, about what you've been making. Most of my threads came from my lightning-speed birthday card production, and some crochet-ing (which is nearly finished and I'll broadcast it then). I'm writing as I wait FOREVER for my MND/ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video to upload, so I'm reluctant to use up much more bandwidth just now!

All the other TUSALs this month are here...

How Beautiful

As kids, my brother and I used to love watching a VHS of "Handel's Messiah" being performed. Looking back, that's actually quite odd, but we liked it all the same. My Dad listened to classical music a lot so I guess it came from there. We used to love the affectionately nick-named 'teddy bear man' who played the jubilacious trumpet at the the end.

It makes sense then, that as I have been thinking about the content of this post, a passage from the Messiah has been floating around in my head:

How beautiful upon the mountains
     are the feet of him who brings good news
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
     who publishes salvation,
     who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
          Isaiah 52:7

For me, bringing good news and glad tidings have been increasingly wrapped up with another verse over the past few years:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
     and what does The Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
     and to walk humbly with your God?
          Micah 6:8

My grown-up theology has come from The Message trust and Eden projects in Manchester, from 24-7 Prayer and Shane Claiborne. People who have given up everything to live in community with the broken. That verse from Micah, that is the trendy mandate in those circles.

Bringing good news has meant doing justice and loving kindness. In turn, doing justice and loving kindness has meant going out onto the streets and meeting those whom Jesus came to save; visiting them in their homes; building relationships with families; giving children and young people an opportunity to encounter God and develop a relationship with him for themselves. You should go and explore the work that Kidz Klub and Space do: they have had a massive impact in my city and continue to bring the love of Jesus to many difficult situations.

This year has been tough. That version of bringing good news doesn't pay the bills so add in a full time job, a new marriage and a small social life, and you get one exhausted Becca. After much soul-searching I have taken the decision to step back from Kidz Klub for a while. It's for the sake of my own health, and to enable me to do the things that remain, well. In the crafting world I'm happy to be 'Jack of all trades, master of none' but where I have responsibility for people's lives I don't think that's acceptable.

This summer has been long and beautiful. I've rediscovered my creative side, bought a basket for my bike, had coffee with friends, done babysitting. It's been lovely. I've joined an orchestra. And I've felt terribly middle-class. Baskets and crochet and summer play-days: they aren't the kind of thing I encounter on the estates. The questions have kept me up at night: What if that means my feet aren't beautiful any more? If I'm not living immersed in a council estate, can I really be following God?

Of course I can. I can do justice with my whole life. I can love kindness in everything I do. And I must walk humbly with my God, constantly handing my life over to him and following His agenda; not mine or anyone else's.

Sarah over at SheLoves wrote this month about how she and her sisters are learning to treat 'Lazy' as a four-letter word. That article spoke straight into my soul, as I learn to rest in God and seek him above all else. One more scripture:

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
     the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
          Hosea 6:6

This verse is not an answer. It doesn't tell us to rest; nor does it tell us to do. It tells us to know God, and follow his lead. It is not easy, and there are no one-size-fits-all answers. Here I was facing up to it a couple of weeks ago:

So today I bring you good news: Jesus loves you, and he went to the ends of the earth to save your Spirit and restore friendship between you and God. He has a good and perfect plan for your life, and that does NOT include burning out.

How beautiful...

(PS I still totally love The Message and 24-7 and Shane Claiborne. I have nothing against them, and take full responsibility for my own interpretation of their writing and teachings)

I'm linking up this post with the SheLoves community who are sharing posts on the theme of 'Beautiful' this month. Click here for other takes on the subject