Festive Fun

What a month December has been.

Today has been my first chance to stop at home. I have pottered, taken some photos of all my festive creativities and cleaned the grout between every single bathroom tile with a toothbrush. I'm not really sure where to begin here, so I think I will just re-establish the blogging pattern with some follow ups of all the different things I was in the middle of before the Christmas mist descended!

First of all, this is a long-overdue picture:

FINALLY, it is framed and gifted! I had to re-arrange the text a bit as the pattern puts in a length which I didn't know, so I added the time as well. The sparkle in the fabric looks great in the frame and they loved it!

Also already gifted are my snowflakes. I starched and stretched them in batches of 5 and am so pleased with how they look, blocking them made all the difference.  Here is my little blizzard:

 And a surplus one that has made it onto my tree:

 It was a bit of a panic by the end, and for the first couple of days after they were all given out I didn't quite know what to do with my hands any time I had a free moment!

Finally, project number 3. There was no chance of me making the Christmas deadline and I'm already anxious about the March deadline for his first birthday, but here is the current structural state of Noah's Ark:

Getting there, slowly but surely! It would be no good for anybody colour-blind, just a hundred different shades of brown and yellow.

I've plenty more to write, some exciting crafty Christmas presents to show off and my "OneWord" for 2014 to review, but I think this will do for now. Just another long-overdue TUSAL to broadcast!

Totally Useless at keeping up!

Now for all the crafting. I'm beginning to feel the pressure a bit, and last Saturday I took the decision to do some crafting instead of writing about it. I'm also struggling to take pictures because the sun has been MIA for a week or two now so there's never any decent light! But hey ho, we can pretend the grainy, amber hue is some kind of vintage effect.

First things first, the "Old stitches, New tricks" competition! Thank you for the lovely feedback. Unfortunately my little basket was nowhere near the winners in terms of skill, scale or time invested. I did get a special mention on the blog though which I was pleased enough with! I hope you looked at the other entries, they were great.

I'm a week or more late on my TUSAL update, so here is my jar:

You'll see that I did cheat and put the ends from the basket in there as well (well it was kind of cross-stitch...) I can't show you the finished Doctor Who sampler as it's away being framed and I somehow neglected to take a photograph beforehand. Noah's ark is getting there (slowly) though:

That roof was a weekend's work. I'm dreading starting on the boat itself. Not going to make it by Christmas I don't think.

I've also been working on some snowflakes:

They've been quite fun to make and I feel like I'm almost getting to grips with crochet, at long last! I'm making one each for a group of friends so still quite a way to go, but they aren't slow to make. They are quite handy on the train, I can make one in a couple of days' commuting.

Finally, I made some crafty friends last Saturday! Kate of Beak Up Crafts had arranged a get-together in Leeds of people who like to make things. She wrote about it here. It was great fun; I don't think I would have been brave enough to go if it had been any further away but I'm glad I did. Everyone there was from such different backgrounds in the 'day job' but people were very open and we ended up having some quite personal discussions. I'm looking forward to joining them again for some 'crafternoons' in the new year.

On being scared of what you know

Well, hasn’t it been a busy couple of weeks?! The Christmas rush has started early it seems and it’s a long time since my last evening in. I have a TUSAL to catch up with and feedback from the &Stitches competition, but I’ve been itching to get this post out all week so I better do some reflective writing while I feel inspired. Hopefully will get another chance this weekend!

I am an optimist. I love that old non-statistic: “most people spend most of their time worrying about things that will never happen.” I’m also guilty of falling into the ‘most people’ category occasionally.

Sometimes though, I worry about things that I’m certain are just about to happen. What if you know the situation is about to turn bad? What if you’ve been there before? At church this Sunday we were looking at the story where Jesus walks on the water. He’d sent his followers across a lake and said he’d meet them on the other side. His followers were fishermen and knew that lake like the back of their hand. They were used to sailing in the dark. So you better be sure that when they were scared, it wasn’t without good reason!

As I prepare to leave a job I love for another I can only hope to be such a blessing; as I look to the first Christmas I will ever spend away from my parents’ home; I feel like I’m sliding down an old precipice to a dark valley path. It's a path I've walked many times before. My capacity shrinks to that of a tiny Lego man, and the smallest task becomes a mountain. Sometimes it turns to a stream under the volume of tears. 

This week I’ve been following along with the SheReadsTruth ladies as they look at Thankfulness in the Bible (happy Thanksgiving for yesterday!) On Monday we looked at “giving thanks in sorrow”. I can only advise you to read it whether you have a faith or not; the whole thing is so beautiful no snippet can do it justice. This stopped me in my tracks:

You’ve sized up your grief of what was lost, what should be, or what will never be, and felt the sharp pangs of this fallen world. You’ve avoided playing a thanksgiving song because it won’t sound the same as before. But by doing so, you’re withholding one of the most precious tunes the world has ever heard—the tune of Glory.

The first time I walked that path I thought my world would end. Now I sit it out, knowing that eventually it will pass. The fight is shorter, the nights just as long and the morning a welcome relief when it finally comes.

 My challenge is to keep on identifying those amazing things I have to be thankful for. It is to acknowledge the battles I've been through and sing because of it (not in spite of it). My challenge is to step out of the safety of everything I’ve tried before (that failed) onto the choppy seas of fear, keeping my eyes on Jesus and trusting that he has power to calm the storms.

What do you do when the walls fall in?

Old Stitches, New Tricks

Well… Here it is: My &Stitches “Old Stitches, New Tricks” entry!

I’ve really enjoyed doing it and actually the possibility of a prize has spurred me on to complete a project I intended to do in the summer. 

It all started with this AMAZING bike:

My bike is a multi-purpose tool; as well as transporting me to work and back, and beating the traffic jams into town, it has also taken me on some epic rides down the length of the country and around Stage One of this year's Tour de France. I wanted a basket that would let me take a handbag when meeting friends, but that could be completely removed to lessen the weight for endurance rides up big hills.

I thought something like this might work: 

So I duly bought the appropriate basket. As my bike has a bit of a monochrome theme, I thought I would be clever and use some wire for the thread. But that didn't work out so well, it didn't loop nicely and couldn't really be seen. It would have to be yarn. 

I also struggled to decide on a pattern. I wanted something more meaningful than triangles but struggled to work out how to design onto diamond shapes. I printed some template paper from the web and tried drawing out a round design then simlpifying it into stitches, but that didn't work. I tried copying some tiny embroidered flowers from a bag I own, but that didn't work. I tried translating standard cross stitch patterns into diamond shapes but they were far too intricate.

Finally, I stumbled upon some beading patterns. "Brick stitch" became my saviour!

This is the image that opened up to me google page after page of designs that would work within the mesh, and look pretty to boot. I had initially wanted some flowers, but in the end it was the butterfly that won me over. The pattern I used can be found here; it's the "Purple Butterfly".

And that was that! I used the yarns I had available to me, and the colour scheme was mostly decided by which I had the most of. To thread the yarn through the holes I used a tiny safety pin as a needle:

And then I basically back-stitched the pattern, tying knots at the beginning and end. I experimented with turning them into cross-stitches as in the letter sorter above, but that looked quite messy on this scale (unfortunately my camera couldn't cope with focusing on a mesh at that range, but trust me it wasn't good).

I am so pleased with how the stitching came out:

And a close up of the finished item:

So there we are! I hope you like it as much as me. I've used a whole combination of crafts: yarn, cross-stitch / embroidery and beading (might have to try the real thing soon!) All of the links to the different sites I've gathered inspiration from are on this Pinterest board; that seemed more manageable (and pretty) than a long list here.

Thanks &stitches for inspiring me with such a creative competition!

Plans Plans Plans

So I hinted that I've got a few projects I'd like to get going in the next couple of weeks... I honestly don't know where to start! The Doctor Who sampler is all but finished (will be done by Friday), Noah's ark is on its way and I've got some variety to get stuck into.

First up, I want to enter the "Old Stitches, New Tricks" competition over at &Stitches. I have a bike basket see, and I'm keen to jazz it up a little.

My inspiration has come from Greedy For Colour's incredible bike, and a simple little tutorial I found on cross-stitching onto a letter rack. The original plan was to keep with the monochrome colour scheme of the bike and use some silver wire but that has proved less than successful, so I'm hunting for some cheap tiny balls of wool that might be more effective. Watch this space!

In the light of my recent thoughts about snowflakes, I'd like to crochet some for a group of friends, each one unique. At last count I had 10 different snowflake patterns, and here is my practice run:

 (I've since located some sparkly yarn which will definitely be required for the gifts!)

I also went a bit crazy and bought some clock parts the other day, so I'm considering trying to get some button clocks made up before Christmas in case people wanted to buy them as gifts. They will be much more simple than the one I made for my  mum, but hopefully still as pretty.

Then I have a two more gift ideas to make in the next couple of weeks, more on those when they have been gifted! November will be busy...

Does anyone else have more ideas than time?

What a difference a month makes!

A month seems to go by so fast these days, and it's time for that slightly-odd blog game where I show you how many loose ends I've cut off this month:

I'm getting there! There is LOTS of black from my Dr Who stitching this month, a bit of gold from the Dalek and some grey from the elephants in Noah's Ark. So fairly monochromatic.

BUT... *drum roll* ... I have finished the design on the Dr Who sampler! Just the words and framing to go, it is VERY exciting. Here's where I was up to by last night:

I am really quite proud of myself, to be on track for finishing an entire project within 2 months. We are house-watching for Josh and his parents this week so I'm considering whether I can get it done and framed before they get back, as a welcome home gift. Anybody got any advice on framing? This is what size the aida was that I bought so there's not much space all the way around, I think I might have to take it to a professional for it to look acceptable.

You'll also notice I've bought a needle minder- it's amazing what it turns out you can't manage without when you get into a hobby! This beautiful wooden button came from planetvonnychops on etsy. So cute!

Once the Dr Who Sampler is done I'll have time to start some new projects. Maybe I'll blog some of my ideas in the next week, now I'm off to get buying materials!


Have a look at other people's TUSAL odds and ends over here.

Unique {We are the Other}

I’m going to step into slightly unknown territory today and talk a little bit about my work. I’m linking up with the SheLoves Magazine Synchroblog on the theme “We are the other”: raising the profile of the people who are marginalised in the world. There are a lot of themes I could have picked up but I think many of them will be more than fairly represented amongst the other blog posts so the “other” people group I’m championing today is those with Learning Disabilities (that’s British terminology; I believe the accepted term stateside is Intellectual Disabilities).

I’m so aware that in writing about a group of people to which I don’t belong, I run the risk of setting them apart as “Others” even in my good intentions. So there will be as many links as possible scattered throughout, and I really encourage you to read them. Start with this lady. She speaks much more eloquently and with more authority than I ever could. Seriously, read it before going any further here. 

“He’s Unique.” I need say no more. (But I will, else there’s not much point in this post)

I listened to this discussion with Jean Vanier yesterday. Jean set up L’Arche, French for ‘The Ark’, when he invited two men with learning disabilities who had been living in an asylum, to come and live with him and share his life. There are now communities in more than 40 countries sharing that same vision of sharing life between people with and without learning disabilities.

One of the key things he talks about in the interview is the difference between admiring people and loving them. Admiring people sets them on a pedestal (He’s so brave); loving people stands alongside them. It allows them to get under your skin. One of the most empowering acts we can give to any person we normally keep behind the “Other” barrier is to let them drive you mad, make you angry.

I work in a school and residential setting for children and adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities. Many of those people also have very complex health needs. They need a lot of help with a lot of aspects of life; but they are always to be the ones in control. Sometimes that’s really inconvenient if I need to look in a person’s bag for their equipment and they say ‘no’, or I’ve asked for advice about what I should buy from the tuck shop and they recommend my least favourite item. But that in a small way is redressing the power balance that this world thrives on.

During the Summer I went to meet the leader of the L’Arche community in Manchester. I had gone because I wanted to find ways of making Christianity more accessible to people with learning disabilities; I wanted them to have the same opportunities to meet God as the rest of us. My vision was for special meetings, designed with various needs in mind, to welcome those with all kinds of additional needs.

But Kevin’s vision was something completely different. His vision is to see that people with learning disabilities are seen as no different from those without. His team’s proudest venture is the disco night they run once a month for local families, where people of all walks and ages come and some of them have learning disabilities. Nobody comes out of pity, they come because they have a good time, every one of them.

~*~

I don’t quite know how to finish today. This is something of a journey that I am still on; this is a people group that is such fun to work with and yet opens up such deep questions about the meaning and value of life. Perhaps I’ll end with this:

L'Arche is based on body and on suffering bodies. And so they are seen as useless, and so we welcome those who apparently are useless. And it's a suffering body which brings us together. And it's attention to the body. You see, when somebody comes to our community and is quite severely handicapped, what is important is to see that the body is well. Bathing, helping people dress, to eat. It's to communicate to them through the body. And then, as the body can become comfortable, then the spirit can rise up. There's a recognition. There's a contact. There's a relationship. 

We see this with some of our people, like Françoise. Françoise came to our community in 1978, very severely handicap. She couldn't speak, she could walk a bit, she couldn't dress herself, she was incontinent, and she couldn't eat by herself. And today, she is nearly 30 years older. She has become blind and a beautiful person. 

There was somebody who came to our community not too long ago who was, saw Françoise and the reaction was, 'Oh, what is the point of keeping Françoise alive?' And the leader of the little house said, 'But madam, I love her." I mean, it's as if you come in to a home and grandma is in the home and she has Alzheimer's and you say, 'What is — but she's my grandmother.' I mean, so it's based on the body, and then from the body, relationship grows. 

                                                              -Jean Vanier, OnBeing.org

EVERY life is unique. EVERY life has value.