Divinely Crafty

Back to the same bad habits it seems.  If not posting to my blog is counted as a bad habit!

I know there are a few of you who stop by in hopes of finding something new, only to leave shaking your head in dissappointment.  I appreciate your loyalty and want you to know that I hear your knocking and I am not ignoring you.  It is just that I get distracted on the way to answer the door.  Countless times a day I think to myself “I should blog about this.”  only to be squashed by the giant killjoy in my head that says “Not now, do it later. And only if you can make it really interesting.  Which it won’t be.  So don’t bother.”  Either that or the trickster will fool me into thinking I am too busy to stop and write.  Because refreshing facebook again to see what my friends’ Top 5 Favorite Pickle Flavors are is top priority, you know.

I don’t really have anything in particular to write about today, but since I have been trying to get my twitter list going and realized that I had linked this site from my twitter that I should either get things going again or consider abandoning it all together.  Not being able to stomach the thought of abandoning it all together I am here now – babbling about nothing.  Hoping that this little babble will turn into more babble and that more babble will be able to silence (or at least babble louder than) the ‘voices’ (don’t worry, they aren’t real.  Not all of them anyway. ;)  )  and maybe even I might start writing for real again.

What I do know is that I will never post a “I’m back” post again because doing so is a guaranteed assurance that I will not actually resume posting.  So let this be my first official “I’m not back” post.  If I prove myself wrong by actually writing then hooray for me and reverse psychology.  If I don’t, well then – I told you so.  I’m not back.

Tags: blogging, facebook, twitter, writing

This time for real.  It’s been a long hard winter that seems to have started last summer.  After a wonderful trip to the Pacific Northwest of the US where there was sun and warmth, coming back to a record wet, gray and cold English summer was a bit of a crash to say the least.  My health and our move in late August turned out to be much harder to recover from than I anticipated.  As the winter took hold I found myself frozen in my body and as a result I never did get back to blogging as I had intended to.

Happily spring appears to be trying to break through and with it I am experiencing a renewal of my own.  I recently started a new medication that while still early days has me feeling optimistic about getting some of my spark back.  I’m not looking for a miracle cure but to have a bit more fire burning in me is a very welcome change.  There have been treatments in the past which have given me a little boost but unfortunately they all seem to be short lived.  Not wanting to count on this boost being a permanent thing I am taking it one day at a time and trying to simply appreciate each day for what it gives me without putting stock in what it may or may not mean for the future.  In the true spirit of zen – living each moment as it comes.

In my hiatus I was not all together a slug.  I did finish the pair of socks I started way back in August and have gotten much love and warming of my feet out of them during the cold days.

Of course with my feet all toasty warm, my hands were feeling a bit left out so I obliged them with this lovely pair of mittens.

Which led to my husband wanting his own knitted warmth, so I obliged with these fingerless gloves. He started working for the Royal Mail in December so he needed something to keep his hands warm but left his fingers free to sort mail as he delivered.

In making these I did my first attempt at knitting on two circulars as opposed to DPN’s and must say that I am a committed convert. The speed at which I knit these was truly amazing and I found the method to be overall much less fiddly than using the DPNs. I have since cast on a pair of socks on two circs, and while they have been sidelined for another project (of which I will write more on another day) I am pleased with the speed and ease. If you haven’t tried the two circs, you should give it a go. There are some great tutorials on you tube to get you started.

And to round it out, and show that I do indeed do other things besides knit – a project that I had been planning to do for ages but never made the time to do. Recovering an old stool that we had in our kitchen. Previously it was a robin’s egg blue which was nice, but the giant hold in the middle with foam sticking out kind of ruined it’s aesthetic. A square of oil cloth, a few minutes of labor and hey ho – a newly covered stool that fits nicely into my slowly becoming retro red kitchen. I really love this stool now.

There have been other projects, but I won’t go into them all. In my flickr you can see some more and if you happen over to Beneath Our Feet and follow it to my family flickr you can see some projects around the house that we have been working on over the winter. I have lots planned for the spring and looking forward to being back and sharing them with you!

Tags: crafty, hand warmers, household, knitting, ktichen, makeover, restyle, socks, stool, upcycle, writing

And I am fine with that.

I admit that I have massive discomfort with feeling angry usually. Not to say I don’t feel anger, quite the opposite. My habitual responses to anger are to either react swiftly and harshly, or to deny it flat out, keeping it stuffed safely from view of others and myself. Not the most forward thinking way of dealing with matters. I know this, but the thing is that in order to access something you know means engaging the brain in thought. Habits don’t hold conference before we fall effortlessly into them. No thinking required. I could do it in my sleep, which is ironic given that lack of sleep also makes habitual behavior all the more likely. Tough nuts to crack, those habits.

Beyond the raw reaction of my habits, I try to go with the more ‘enlightened’ approach and follow the anger to its source, which is always a fear of something or another. Its helpful and it does have the effect of lessening the furor of my wrath, even reducing the frequency that I even feel such ominous anger, but being willing to look at it closely can be a frightening proposition. Staring into the face of the anger of one’s most formidable of foes – your own self – and not being gripped can mean risking having your world shattered. Not always a bad thing, mind you. But it is the challenge of a lifetime. Maybe even it is the core challenge of this lifetime .

And then there are days on which I am just to pissed off to take a deep breath. And today is one of those days. I see it, I feel it, and I am simply not in the mood to follow it anywhere. The one possible exception being to watch it go from rantings to an audience of dust bunnies and stacks of empty tablet packets here in my tower of exile bedroom, to words on The Internets.

Today I am angry and that is okee-dokee. I am angry that anyone who is ill should have to spend one drop of their precious energy into responding to those who doubt,blame, ridicule and abandon them. We don’t have to look far back in time to see illnesses and conditions that were once unexplainable or misunderstood that we now have evidence of their existence and the ability to treat if not cure them. New discoveries are made every day, but there are still those who refuse to believe that fibromyalgia, ME, CFS, et al exist at all just because they don’t have a range of normal on a blood test to measure us by. And at the same time they are quick to blame us for the existence of our (supposedly non-existent) illness on our choices and lifestyles. Double kick – I don’t believe its there, but its your fault if it is. I am angry I used up several of my precious spoons getting up, showered, dressed and out of the house to have a couple social hours with friends and that I ended up the better part of those social hours fielding questions about my mysterious illness and whether or not it might have karmic significance or energetic stagnation. News flash – it doesn’t matter if you are blaming my illness on some evil deeds of my former incarnations or my failure to clear a glowing plug from my aura. Its still blaming. Its still assigning of fault to someone who is ill. Mind you I believe in karma, past lives, auras and other ideas that get me filed in the wacky bin in many people’s view. But in my dream of it all these are tools for growth and awareness, not instruments of retribution or failure. I am angry that I am certain there was nothing but positive intention when I was asked by a trusted friend if I had considered metaphysical causes of my illness, because I have in truth already looked at that view. I know she only wants to help me find a way to feel better, I know this because that is what I wanted. Its is still all I want. I am angry that I have come to a place in my illness that someone else’s caring can be a spark for such anger. There is hope in blame, the hope that you really might have control and choice is alluring. I am angry that hope and anger go hand in hand.

There are many other things that I was steaming about when I began to write this. They don’t really seem to be getting to me now, so I will let them lie. It wasn’t what I meant to happen, but there it is. The words I have written are telling me to follow them. They are the thread, the fuse leading to the bomb. I see it. Not sure that I have the guts to disarm it today.

Tags: anger, blame, choice, coping, fibromyalgia, words, writing

I’m doing it. I am finally doing it.

For years, regardless of which of my passions I was immersed in, a common bit of feedback has been given to me. They like reading what I write. I’ve been told my work is well thought out, wonderfully expressed, level headed (This one makes me chuckle. If you know me well you know why.), and that I have a ‘unique voice’. Total strangers and greatly respected teachers all have expressed favorable review of the words I placed together. Each time this compliment was received I secretly glowed inside, holding my breath, not daring to breathe a whisper of how deeply I desired to be a writer. Just typing that out now – as I am on my first draft of this post – was with hesitation and a sense of vulnerable exposure. I am making my formal declaration to all who stumble upon this blog. I want to be. I am a writer. Not just as a hobby, but as a professional pursuit. I have been published in an International Magazine in an exchange for a subscription, which is worth a fair amount. But I want more. I have my sights set on cash in my account. I want to have to declare on my taxes this year that my occupation is writer!

Which brings me to the title of this post. My one word for 2008. In my scouring the web in search of guidance on how on earth to begin taking real steps towards my goals, I found The Writer Mama who has a wealth of exactly the type of information and encouragement I was seeking. I immediately added her to my reader subscriptions and look forward to more goodness from her and some guest writer mama authors. Last week she posted about her one word for 2008 and asked of her readers, “What is your word for 2008?” After much thought and debate I finally settled on the word that first came to mind, the word that has been spoken with ever beat of my heart for as long as my soul remembers…. WRITE. This is the year I write. I will write for my life, write for my soul, and write for others to read.

Tags: one word, writing