Why connection? And some winners!

Around retreat time I end up thinking about the idea of connection a lot, because each year I realise anew that connection is the main reason why people come. Yes, they come for a weekend away, and yes the classes are awesome, and the food fabulous, but that isn't where the magic is. The magic is in what happens when you put a room of people together who have a shared understanding of the joy of making.

Connection is a word I love and a word I use often - it is why I do what I do. And yet, connection is a word that gets thrown around a lot in our culture. It is used to advertise mobile phones and banks and schools and government programs. It's used because connection is something we all look for and crave. We need it to live a good life. As Brene says - we are wired for connection. And yet, while I love it, when I read it in someone's marketing or magazine article, it can feel a little empty. A little marketing-y. Which makes me a little sad, because really, connection is the secret sauce of life.

To me, feeling connected means feeling heard, seen and understood. And feeling those things aboutsomeone else. Every year I am reminded of how real the word connection is in the context of the retreat. It is not just an empty word. The reality of it is palpable; everyone arrives on the Friday with open hearts ready to celebrate this wonderful life giving thing we share. And for that I am truly grateful.

In our everyday lives when we are thrust into a group of people we don't know, we generally look for people who are in our tribe to connect with. We guess that they will share some of our values and passions. We look at the visible markers we can see to tell us something about the person before us. Simple markers like the way someone is dressed, their expressions, their hairstyle, whether they are good at eye contact, their posture, their age group all tell us something about who it is that we are speaking to. However, often those very same markers that draw us to some people can also cause us to make judgements that mean we deny ourselves rich and rewarding relationships with a broader demographic that those people we instantly recognise as "our people".

To make my point I thought I would give you a very simple example of me being a lazy but judgemental arse. - There is a woman I met two years ago who looks crotchety all. the. time. For the first year or so I knew her, I avoided conversations that were deeper than hi because she looked so grumpy. And yet when I was thrown together with her in a room on a project I discovered that she is really really friendly and open and kind. I can hear my grandmother shouting "book" and "cover" and she is right. I should have taken the time a year earlier. It would have involved me investing an extra three minutes of my time in the initial phase of knowing her to figure out who she was.

Moving on from my shortsightedness.

What is amazing about a retreat based around a shared understanding support and joy making give us, is that we know the each and every person there has a common understanding of something fundamental about us, something that is somehow deeply personal and deeply universal. They have felt it too! They understand why we want to make, rather than buy something. They understand how our fingers are connected to our hearts.

It's like a shorthand way of getting to know one another. Knowing something that fundamental about someone, gives us a wonderful base with which to start connecting to them on other levels. This shared understanding means there is a conversation that can be had that is more open and vulnerable than a normal introductory conversation can be; we know a part of what makes that other person tick, regardless of their mode of dress, their age, body language and their possible tribe.

I know I'm being a little repetitive but for that I am truly grateful.

My apologies for the delay in getting the prizes assigned for our giveaway the other day. I've finally read all the wonderful, thoughtful comments on The Craft Sessions At Home post where I asked you about community and craft. I've picked a few to share with you here - but I really wish I had more than five prizes to give away. The comments made my heart sing and I encourage you to go read them with a cup of tea if you have a moment. Thank you so much for playing along.

The comments from the five people who have won prizes are listed below. If you find your quote here then please email me at admin@thecraftsessions.com with your full name and address and I will get them sent out to you. My apologies for not emailing you to let you know. My system has eaten some of your email addresses.

Felicia x

 

Connection Quote 1 - from kiran

I started knitting just a few months ago, and found it a way to soothe myself and "knit up" the unravelledness of my life. But the reaches of its healing keep surprising me. I found myself in the last few days not anxiously averting my eyes from acquaintances I pass, but instead meeting them with a smile. Something about living in my hands a bit more and not just my head, is helping me stand more solidly in my own being. I also find my eyes scanning for knitwear. My desire to talk about it is stronger than my anxiety. I feel the words come to my lips and the urge to speak overpowers my hesitation. "Your scarf is beautiful!" "What a lovely jumper! Is I handmade?" I have found a secret language which, in spite of myself, is breaking the barrier I saw between myself and others. I'm becoming human again. Woven in. Thankyou, fibres and needles. Thankyou, my hands. Thankyou, life, for the spark in me that made me want to knit.

Connection Quote 2 - From Sally

The community created by being a maker is cyclical & spans generations I think; with everything we make we are connected to those from whom we have learnt our crafts; we connect with those who are the recipients of what we make & also those who influence, inspire & generally hang out with us while we're making & then there are the connections we make with those to whom we pass our knowledge & skill. I feel this & think about every time I pick up every project I work on & consequently altho I work alone I am never lonely.

Connection Quote 3 - from Ellen

It seems I am not alone in using creative hobbies as a social support in meeting people and making community - I am very shy and introverted, but knitting and spinning provide a common ground to share with others when forming early friendships. I had the privilege of living just blocks from a brand new yarn store a few years back, and the inter-generational community fostered there changed the way I viewed my neighborhood and my friend group. I have also used knitting as a way to connect with and build community as a way to express emotion - I have often sent knitted items to welcome new babies, comfort for those experiencing medical difficulties, or send hugs to those in mourning.

Connection Quote 4 - From Karen B

I started knitting to fill my time and my attention on long hours of airplane travel for work. I find it satisfies my urge to be productive and to create - and unbeknownst to me, I make friends nearly everywhere I go! I have had an unexpected number of seatmates tell me that seeing me knit socks brings back warm memories of their grandmother or mother knitting. I've been told folks had no idea anyone knits anymore! Other knitters have pulled out their project and we have compared favorite yarn shops, yarn manufacturers, tools and patterns. And fellow travelers just like to tease me - "will you finish that (sweater, scarf, socks....) by the time we land?" Knitting has started dialogues with people who would otherwise remain distant and that engages me with community in a precious way.

Connection Quote 5 - From Annett

I feel like there really is no way to craft and not connect. Most of us learn a craft, whether it be knitting or sewing, embroidery etc.pp. from someone, and even if that doesn't happen in person, most of us learn a skill or two online, from all the lovely people here sharing their knowledge. And apart from the connections being made in "real life" through crafting together, or people asking about my knitting (seriously, there have been surprising people that would probably never talk to me if it wasn't for my knitting and vice versa), I feel like this online community has given me so much, blogs, Instagram and Ravelry are just part of my online home, people sharing their makes, me sharing mine, asking each other things, giving advice, encouragement, knitting along with each other, I really could not imagine my live without all the companions I carry around in my iPhone with me. :) So until I make it to events like your amazing Craft Sessions, Camp Workroom Social or the Edinburgh Yarn Festival I'll just cherish the community brough to me through the magic thing that is the Internet. Wishing you the loveliest of times with shiny happy people and awesome projects all the way from Germany! :)

The Truth of the Wedding Dress

Way back at the start of the year I had this idea that maybe one of the glorious and meaningful ways I could participate actively in my own wedding, was to make my dress. I put it out to the world - ie you lot - and the answer came back, a resounding "Hell yeah!". And so I started making plans. Joyously and excitedly, but with room to turn around and change my mind if I found it wasn't working for me.

I also decided at the time to make the small girls flower person frocks (of which there are four as they all thought they could "help" me by being involved), and my small boy shorts and a shirt...... as well as some kind of magnificent getting-married-backdrop. I'm going to fit all that in, right?

I wasn't far into the process before I dipped into my favourite kind of procrastination that is all about perfection, and getting things wrong. I put the dress-making off. Knowing myself as I do, I knew procrastination would be part of the process, so I didn't worry but I definitely avoided it. And I also started avoiding all the other things I wanted to do as I "should" do the wedding dress first - right?

Should isn't a good place to be is it....

The procrastination grew bigger than just the wedding dress. It spread like some kind of insidious alien life force. I started avoiding creative projects in general. Simple knitting yes, but anything more than that.... - well you may have seen my instagram posts have dropped right off as I have been rolling around in my avoidance.

But I really wanted to make the dress. Because getting married after 15 years to someone I really genuinely like being around, is meaningful. And making your wedding dress for such an event is meaningful. Especially as I spend so much of my life making. Making has meaning.

Sewing those stitches I could be thinking about the upcoming event and what it meant. It would be totally lovely. A joy to make.

The lace is for my frock, the dirty pink flower is Nani Iro linen for the girl's frocks and the leather is shoe samples.

I think I thought that making the dress meant that I was consciously participating in doing something that took time and attention in the leadup to the wedding. Which felt important, because the whole getting married thing was about consciousness for me. Getting married was a way to consciously choose to celebrate the most important relationship of my life. Getting married, not for convenience, or legality, or families, but simply for the ritual of saying "I have loved you for years and I will love you for years to come". The good stuff in life is worth celebrating.

So it felt/feels big. And the avoidance and procrastination was that I wouldn't be able to create something that said that. Talk about pressure!

So where were we? I was sitting in avoidance and procrastination when things shifted, as they do. I moved through that part of it and finally got to the making.

I had the fabric I purchased way back in March from Tessuti, and finally got brave enough to jump in. Jumping off the diving board into the unknowness of the project. Could I actually make the wedding dress? Would it look like I wanted it to? Would reality match the picture I had in my head?

I got brave, and cut out the muslin. I got brave, and decided that this one evening was the evening I was going to start it. I put the knitting aside, and pulled my sewing machine to the front of my desk.

And then.....I started sewing. I sewed either side of the skirt and either side of the top.... I did a few gathers on the bottom of the bodice....

And I HATED IT!! I hated every moment of it. I didn't like the feel of the fabric, or the pressure I felt, or the way the fabric slid off my desk as I was sewing. I could see that I wasn't going to be able to get the fit right or that to do so was going to require fiddling that was way beyond my patience and tolerance level. I didn't like the fact I had to use pins.

I have no idea if I've ever written about it on the blog before but I practice truth-telling as a lifestyle choice. I won't go into detail about it today, but suffice it to say that the trickiest part about it is actually figuring out what the truth of a situation is. You can't tell the truth unless you are certain of what it is. The truth is often not what we think, and often not what we feel. Because generally those two things, when we really examine them, are not the truth. They can guide us to the truth, but only if we do some searching. Trying to be truthful is not a passive way to live, because often the biggest lies we tell, are to ourselves. And to figure out what the truth actually is, is really hard work.

Anyway, circling back to the wedding dress, I hated it for a good couple of hours before I stood up and got a cup of tea. While staring down at my cup, it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't sitting in my truth. Maybe the truth was that I wasn't going to enjoy making my dress. Maybe the truth was that I didn't want to do it. Maybe the truth was that I wasn't the kind of person who wanted to make my dress, even though I thought I should be.

In this situation, it turns out that I had been making up a whole heap of stories. I felt I should participate in the wedding, in this way, in order to make it meaningful. I thought that this was a way I could convey how special this whole thing was to me. I felt like I should because of my crafty experience and values around making. I thought it would be good for me - help me work through some of my stuff- as it was something I hadn't done before. For god's sake, I run a craft retreat. I talk about the meaning and the joy of craft all the time. It is such a present part of my life, why wouldn't it be part of my wedding. It had to be. I mean it was obvious that I should make it.

But it turns out the truth is, I don't want to. I wasn't going to enjoy it, and I really want to enjoy my wedding, including the leadup.

This post is almost the opposite of the I Wish I Could Surf post. It isn't a thought that I had about myself that was stopping me from doing something, it was a thought that I had about who I thought I should be, that was causing me to do something that I didn't want to do.

As soon as I had made the decision not to make it, with the cup of tea in my hand, I instantly felt totally joyful about the dress. Joyful. Full of light.

And unlike the surfing post where I haven't done anything about it yet, this time I have. I've found the truly lovely Francesca who trained in Milan, had an Italian seamstress mother, and lives in a beautiful spot up in the hills. I'm handing her the fabric this week and my life feels light.

Here's to truth, and freedom of all kinds, but especially freedom from "should"!

Felicia x

Bitch to Knit, Joy to wear.

There is a certain classification of knitting that holds a special place of angst in my heart - Bitch to knit, joy to wear - I think many of you will know exactly what I'm talking about. The knit you really want to make because you know it is a garment you will wear for years, almost every day, and yet the actual knitting of it makes you feel resentful every second stitch. Or even every single stitch.

It's a tactile thing. Horribly unenjoyable knitting can be different things for different people, however it is about the tactility of the process of this particular project, not agreeing with you as a person.

It could be that the yarn doesn't make your hands sing (but blooms wonderfully after blocking, damn you yarn) and the knitting doesn't have it's normal flow. For some projects it might be that the yarn sticks to the needles and others that it slips off them. It could be that the yarn is too heavy or too light to feel good for you, creating wind resistance or drag. It might be that the size of the needles you need to use for the project don't agree with your hands - too big, or too small - and you get aching fingers for no reason at all. Whatever the annoying tactile thing this project has going on it means that knitting it is a total bitch.

In my latest case of this phenomenon - I've decided to reknit Vitamin D without the flaps as it is my most worn sweater. I know you have seen it a zillion times on instagram. I just saw on Ravelry that I actually made it five years ago and I love it as much now as I did them. Making a second one in a different colour is an intentional thought-out decision based on the ideas I talk about in my post about Slow Fashion.

One needs garments like that in one's wardrobe - workhorses! I adore the shape and I need a cardy that is blue or grey and has that simple versatility to go with the bajillion blue/grey frocks I have. For days when the yellow is too yellow. It will be an everyday till it wears out garment and I can't wait to have it available to me.

The thing is that I'm knitting it in 5ply alpaca because 5ply alpaca is incredibly light and wearable in three seasons in Melbourne. But no matter how much joy I will feel wearing it, I absolutely hate knitting with it. It is terribly slow going which is always a bit demoralising, but as well as that, the alpaca slips on the needles and drags through the air. It is also a bit splitty which means that I have to look at what I'm doing* on the purl side every so often to make sure I'm not ending up knitting half the stitch. The whole process is simply bloody annoying.

Endurance is the name of the game with a project like this, and it's a good test of your determination to see if you can keep your eye on the prize. And even though I'm an incredibly big fan of the process of making, sometimes the process has little to recommend it at all. In this current case, I'm bribing myself with fun sewing as a reward when I get through a section - I just finished the yoke and as a reward made gym singlet from scraps - and then there is the promise that if I get this finished then I can move onto to something totally creative and fun. I'm going to finish the #oldschoolpattern as my big reward.

Sometimes, just sometimes, and definitely not often, the product alone is worth the angst.

Others might call it product knitting but my title feels a bit more in the spirit of the grind. I think you know just what I mean?

How do you deal with it? Strategies?

Felicia x

*Oh the horror.

I wish I could surf.

Over the last few weeks I've had something of a revelation. About surfing, and me not being able to surf, and about why that is. Even though since I was a small person, I've always wanted to try.

So there are reasons why I can't surf. Or so I tell myself. But mainly it's because I've never tried. How funny is that. The thing is that I think I've just understood why.

So let's get back to the reasons I tell myself.

For one, I grew up in the country and noone I knew surfed. We went camping at the beach for a holiday every few years, but our activities were restricted to swimming. Surfing wasn't even on the radar.

I always thought that it looked amazing. I loved the idea of the ocean. I loved the idea of sitting on a board on the ocean. The sun and the sparkle.

Surfing seemed to belong to the realm of what other people did. Other people. Other families. They did surfing. They looked like they belonged by the sea, and on a board. My family weren't what you would identify as sea people. We looked like country people, bush people.

Then there was other stuff. I wasn't a kid that loved sport at school. Always picked last for team sport,  my brothers used to say that when I ran I looked like a psychotic chicken. People that surfed were super fit, right? And strong. And that wasn't me either.

So a country person rather than sea, normal person rather than fit and sporty. And so I didn't really identify myself as being the kind of person who could be a surfer.

I still loved the idea of surfing though. I always thought "I wish I could".

Then I grew up, got a job, went to uni, got a job, went travelling, worked a little more before finally settling down in Melbourne. In that time I had time, and some disposable income, and the space to go and learn to surf, yet for some reason it didn't even cross my mind to make it happen. Whenever I saw surfing I'd think "I'd love to learn to surf. That looks like total joy." But the thought didn't ever go further than that. There was no next step. There was no action.

I've been wondering about why that is. There are many other things I've attempted to learn and understand in that time and I've just got on and done it. I've thought about whether I just didn't want it enough? Maybe I wanted the other things more?? But I don't think that's it. It's like the thought "I'd love surf" didn't actually ever have the "well I should go and learn" attached to it as a possibility and so it kind of just hung there.... in the air so to speak.

These days I live in Melbourne, in the suburbs, with three kids. I'm 42. I have chickens and I knit. I still don't look like a surfer ;). I also still don't do team sport. That said I am strong though. I exercise regularly and try to keep healthy. So I guess that's a step closer to being the kind of person who would surf?

So back to the revelation. A few weeks ago we went on holiday. And one of the things I did right before we left, in a fit of getting-ready-procrastination, was to download and watch a film called How to be Single. I liked it. It was funny. (Tiny mild spoiler alert if you are going to watch it!) Anyhow the central character has some emotional growth and learning, as you do, over the course of the film. At the end of the film, one of her realisations is that she is always talking about doing things without making it happen. She said it at the end of the film, something along the lines of "I talk wanting to do it but I don't actually do it." And then she does it. She takes action. She does.

A small bell rang in a corner of my mind. Hmm I thought. Am I doing that? Talking about doing things I want to do, rather than doing them?

Then we went on holiday to Noosa where the sun was shining, and there is a surf culture.

We were out at a restaurant one evening and I picked up a pretty magazine (as a way to be less involved in the hesaidshesaid going on) while we were waiting for our food. It was a beautiful surf magazine with all these totally stunning images by this Noosa photographer called Andy Staley. His photos of surfing are totally romantic. They have freedom and grace and sparkle. And again I'm sitting at dinner thinking "I wish I could surf."

I flip the page, and started reading the next article - all about women and surfing and why more don't do it. I flip another page and hit another article about this woman and her husband who took up surfing in the 60s or 70s in Noosa when they were in their 50s. She surfed into her 70s.

Again with the hmmm. Why have I never learnt to surf? I've always wanted to. I make stuff happen. Why not me?

Y'know those moments in your life when the universe decides that you need to learn something important. A couple of little things line up and wham. You learn a lesson that you can never unlearn and your world changes forever.

I had this simple thought - maybe who I think I am has held me back more than I realise?

I've been turning this around in my head over the last week and I've come to the conclusion that the ideas I held about the kind of person I was/am has fundamentally affected the choices I've made. In a way it feels like I'm stating the obvious - for example we know we are organised so we choose a job that involves organisation. Knowing things about ourselves is helpful, right?

But what happens if these ideas we have about ourselves are untrue? What happens if they are based on something tiny from when we were small or a random comment from a stranger. Often this stuff is so deeply buried in our subconscious that we may not even be aware of the impact it has on our decision making. What happens if these unconscious limitations we internally put on ourselves about our place in the world affect us in ways we aren't even aware of.

How often do we examine these "truths"? And rewrite our own story when we find mistaken beliefs?

For me, it's been 15 years since I've had the cash and the time to be able to learn to surf - if I had a mind to do it. I haven't though. And I haven't even really been aware that I was making a decision not to. Surfing wasn't even on the table as a possibility. Because I'm not the kind of person who surfs, or am I?

It took reading an article about a 50yr old woman learning to surf before I could identify myself as being someone who could learn to surf. And now it's back on the table.

So then the question becomes what the hell does this have to do with craft? Well. I was thinking about my I'm not creative post and how I truly believed with all my heart that I wasn't a creative person. And I got to wondering whether there were other places in my craft practice where I was hampered by these subconscious ideas of who I am. Whether it was bigger than just my creativity in general. Are there things that I'm not making, techniques I'm not trying, because of what I believe I am?

The answer is yes!

I want to do some improv patchwork piecing but I don't because I believe I'm not good with colour. I'm procrastinating on really getting into the wedding dress making because I believe that I am a bit slapdash and don't pay enough attention to detail. I could go on but you get the idea. In both those cases the things I believe have meant that I haven't even tried.

Geezus. Who knew?

So what do you think? Are you what you believe you are? Or are the things you believe about yourself limiting your life and your potential to make the things you want to make?

As always love to hear your thoughts on this one. I always learn something from you wise women.

Felicia x

Postscript: So late last week I was out to dinner with the lovely Claire when I mentioned not that I wanted to learn to surf but rather that I was going to learn to surf. Her reply - "I've always wanted to learn to surf. We should totally do it!" And so we are. Sometime in the next year or two (busy times ahead) we are going to schedule a week or so and head north. I, for one, can not wait!

When you don't know what you don't know.

After my many years of making things, I still forget about this part of the process. That part of the ongoing learning of craft (and of life) where you realise yet again that you don't know what you don't know.

You thought you knew but you didn't. And you didn't even realise that there was a question you should be asking.

It can happen to you anytime, whether you are at the start of your crafting journey, or way down the track. And just this week it's happened to me.

So I've had a couple of dark-ish weeks. A combination of winter and busy meant that I got a little off-kilter, and when that happens I look for freedom in craft and so go off piste and start making random things without much planning. Sometimes this can lead to amazingness and sometimes it just leads to more of the off-kilter feeling.

This time around, I started a sweater that I was totally sure was going to be the business. I sketched out the colourwork, was super happy with my colours and my improvised pattern, and was hooning through the knitting....until.... it wasn't.

By this time I'd shifted the off-kilter feeling by doing all the things I needed to do. I stopped blogging, I got off social media, I did a bit of exercise, and a small amount of drinking (mainly with friends ;-) ) .... and at the end I was kind of left with a crafting hangover. My colourwork sweater didn't exactly turn out how I thought. I was thinking it would be amazing, but instead it kinda looked a little bleurgh.

I am not a one-craft specialist. I am a everything-ist, and as such I only learn about something like colourwork when I am actually making something that includes colourwork. When I do learn about it I don't get totally obsessive* and study every book ever written on a subject. I learn what I need to through the lens of the specific projects I want to tackle.

I thought this colourwork project was no big stretch for me. I've done quite a bit of colourwork - many things over many years. I've made some things I totally love from scratch. My thinking was "I've got this". I believed I knew what I needed to know to make it spectacular.

Turns out not so much. This yoke did not work. And the reason why it didn't work was not even on my radar.

In the planning of the sweater I had studied yoked sweaters to see what I liked. My post why all crafters need a visual diary talks about this. I did what I suggested in that post and studied the ones I had saved in my favourites on Ravelry to look for similarities. I knew that I didn't like it when white was a main background colour. It tends to make the yoke too stripey for me. I want a more integrated looking non-stripey yoke. I also knew that I liked a fairly limited palette with only 4/5 colours.

So I sketched out a plan. I used one of my favourite motifs and combined it with another simple stitch pattern. I like simple. My plan was simple. All good so far. I had colours I liked, a stitch pattern I liked and I was off.

A spot of freestyle knitting.

However, what I didn't know was that my past adventures in colourwork didn't prepare me for this type of yoke. Changing the background colour of a sweater is a tricky proposition. And my past adventures into colourwork have either

1. involved tweedy yarns which blur your colour changes so blocky stripes are less of an issue OR
2. they have involved sparse colourwork on a plain background which means you are only essentially working with one colour not two.

This yoke involved plain yarns (no tweed) and a changing background. The skills you need to make it work are different.

For example you need to really understand value and how visible your colour changes will be. You need to think about whether the pattern is sparse or blocky. You need to think about how to integrate your colour changes so that it doesn't look stripey - if stripey is not what you want. To get it to sing you need to get how this stuff all works. Not something I have done before.

What I sketched didn't work. It looked fine when I mocked it up in Excel but not in real life. The grey had the same effect the white background would have had and made it stripey because there wasn't another colour change for the foreground going on at the same time as the background. I realise this is a long complicated tangled explaination but the important bit is that I can see where I went wrong. I learnt something big.

My second major error was the inclusion of two strikingly different patterns. One was sparse - the VVV - and the other pattern was more solid blocks of colour. They simply looked odd together. And the sparser pattern didn't work really at all with a change in background. When I've used it in the past - and loved it - it has been a simple sweater with that single pattern and no background changes at all. Again I learnt something big.

So I ripped our the yoke without pain or grief or even a glass of wine. It was wrong and then it didn't exist.

There was a small bit of twitchiness around the fact that I had got it so wrong, while feeling that I had it so right. Because that is where the rub is, isn't it. When we are learning something new - especially when we don't realise we have something new to learn -  it's humbling. Even believing that mistakes are how you learn I think I have this feeling that one day if I keep practising that I will know it ALL. That this won't happen anymore. OR maybe I hold onto the idea that if I could just find the right book or website that I would hold all the knowledge there is.

But we can't. Because learning doesn't work like that. And that is where the true joy of an ongoing practice of making comes in. There will always be more to learn, more to understand. There will always be things we haven't thought of and new mistakes to make. That is part of the magic. We can never know exactly how a particular material will respond to a being shaped into a particular pattern. We guess, we plan, but really sometimes it's only in the making itself where we can see if our idea works.

We can only learn things slowly. We can't hurry the process. We can't gulp knowledge down and this is especially true as we practice the art of craft.

Bit by bit we inhale the learning like oxygen, one breath at a time. We need to breathe out before we can take the next bit in. The breathing out is the important part as it creates the space within our lungs to take the next breath. And it gives our body time to make use of the the oxygen it received; for that last breath to become part of our cells, changing us in some unseen way one tiny molecule at a time.

We are constantly learning as we make. That learning is changing us and how we look at the world. Slowly, and without us knowing it, it becomes part of us. And that is a wondrous thing.

To move forward I chose to go with a pattern I know would work from someone who already understands such things - Riddari. The result is clearly much much better. As for me - I'll try to chart out something for another sweater with my newfound knowledge on another day.

Happy crafting.

Felicia x

*don't laugh Tine, Jenn and Claire!