The Craft Sessions 2014 Retreat - Part 2!

So more pictures today - but first I wanted to say a big thank you to the wonderful women in the picture above. To our wonderful teachers and my fabulous friends who help me to organise this thing - I couldn't do it without you! xx

Finished beanie from the colour work class. So many students got theirs done!

"25 colours from one natural dyepot" with Jules.

Weaving with Belinda

Colourwork with Jules.

Mel's crochet class on the deck. The weather was glorious!

Melissa's Freedom patchwork.

Camilla.

Georgie in one of her knits.

Night falls.

Belinda's Modern Weaving with Traditional Techniques.

The Craft Sessions 2014 Retreat - Part 1

Wow! I'm writing this 24hours after the end of our 2014 retreat and I'm still smiling. I think I will be smiling for a while yet….. It is tricky to describe with words just what it feels like to be in the company of so many women that share the same passion. I guess the only thing that describes it is that it felt like community. And joy. So much joy!

The weather gods did their magic, the food was fantastic (thanks YVCC), the bush was beautiful, the teachers were encouraging, enthusiastic and generous with their knowledge, and the women….. What an pleasure to spend a weekend with such a joyous and diverse and interesting bunch of women. So lovely to meet you all!

I'm not going to try to describe it any further as there will just be too many adjectives. I'm going to post some pictures today and Friday and hopefully they will chime in the comments to leave their thoughts about it. I think the pictures will give you the vibe much better than my words can.

With a happy heart,

Felicia x

PS. There are so many gorgeous photos I don't even know where to start!! 

The Craft Sessions 2014 Starts today!

Today is the day! The retreat starts at 2pm and we can't wait to meet you all.

Follow us on instagram and Facebook. We will be using the hastag #thecraftsessions.

See you back here on Tuesday with some pictures.

Felicia x

In an atmosphere of growth.

The best source of books we found while travelling was in secondhand bookshops in capital cities. It makes sense – they are places where there are lots of English speaking travellers. A couple of weeks ago while perusing what was on offer, I stumbled across The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. It was published in 2009 and the jist of it is that Gretchen spent a year testing out different theories around how to be happier. Pretty early on in the book she comes up with what she calls her First Splendid Truth. 

“To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”

— The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

That last bit struck me as a really interesting part of why I (and you?) make and create. It’s the learning. The nutting stuff out. The not-understanding that then becomes understanding. Such an all-consuming, sometimes frustrating and ultimately joyful process. 

A lot of the craft that I’ve done while I was away was craft as comfort. Easy, thoughtless, habit based craft. It’s kept me company and helped me stay calm through the chaos, and lately, the queues that have been part of many of our every days. 

But the craft that really made my heart sing was the colourwork jumper. I made mistake after mistake (I’ll show you some of them another day in a post about colourwork) and the finished product is far from perfect. But I learnt things about colourwork technique (which at the start I didn’t know anything about) and about combining colours. The exciting part was not that I achieved perfection (I didn’t) but that I worked it out. As my friend Anna’s friend Gina would say – It was the piece you need to make, so that you can make the piece you really want to make.

Something else I heard in a podcast this week was that "clarity comes from engagement not thought". Such a useful idea. I often spend way too long thinking about projects rather than getting starting. While project planning is really important, it was a great reminder that I can’t always learn what I need to learn, to make what I want to make, just by thinking about a project. I often have to make to learn, and through the making the idea takes shape. There is something about the physical process of working with your hands to make an object from materials, that clarifies an idea in a way that just thinking about it can’t. Even if that means that the thing I really want to make is still one more project away. Practicing in the gap has taken me a step closer.

Growth requires focus and in the focus we find the joy.

Felicia x

PS. There are only three days to go!!

On my way home.

So I'm finally heading home and I wanted to thank you all for being so patient and sticking with me through the stop-and-go-ness that has been life over the last five months. I did miss the odd email (so very sorry!) and sometimes I took a few days longer than was totally acceptable to reply to emails and comments. But for the most part The Craft Sessions is coming out the other side unscathed, with an amazing event that is just about to happen. Eleven days to go!.

When our big potential life change was shaping up last November we had a few stressful chats about whether I was going to be able to plan the event while we did what we had been talking about doing for many many years - travel! In a way it felt incredibly selfish to want to work in the face of our family having time and space for the first time in a long time. But as I was just coming off the joy of our first retreat last October, I couldn't really see cancellation as an option. With the very kind support of my family, I made a choice to take a chance and try to do it in spite of the circumstances. And although I have had to struggle with my nature a little (which sometimes involved chanting "perfect is the enemy of good" like a crazy person) I am so glad I made the choice I did. This year's retreat is shaping up to be amazing. Registration went wonderfully and everyone seems so excited - which is just a total joy fest for me!

Sicily

As so many of you have kindly commented on our trip I thought I'd fill you in on how it went. After we left Australia in April, we travelled from the UK to Denmark by ferry before driving down through Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece. We then took a ferry to Italy and spent a few weeks there before driving quickly back through Switzerland and France two weeks ago. And I'm sitting here about to get on a plane to come home, not knowing how to tell you what it was. 

We didn't take a guide book and we didn't have any plans, which felt incredibly luxurious after years of work and schedules. We travelled slow, much slower than we thought we would, mainly in response to the kids. Many mornings we awoke not knowing where we were staying that evening. We ate simply and locally. We ate a lot of gelato, and it became more of an "everyday" food than a "sometimes" food. Our car Rex and our tent Starlight, truly became our home, with well established systems. Rexy had her windows smashed twice, and we broke down just once (in beautiful Bosnia). We walked and walked and walked and climbed many many stairs. We saw so much everyday beauty. 

Rome

And then we saw showstopping, breathtaking beauty over and over again in places we had never heard of.

Croatia

We skimmed many stones and swam many places. We got used to looking super weird with our rashies and hats among the almost nude Europeans.…. and well I feel like I could go on and on.

We saw over and over again that most people are doing their best to have a happy life. And that most people are good. I feel totally chuffed that my kids really got this. 

They became champion walkers!

I met this lovely woman a few weeks before we left who said to me "Wow - that will totally change you as a family!" and I do believe that is true. It feels like we have had a reset. We have had time to talk about the stuff that we normally only discuss on road trips. About our values, about what we want for our family, about where we are failing and about how we can change, about what makes us feel the joy. So so good.

Anyway this post was me simply trying to say a big thank you for your patience with all that was. It was truly appreciated. 

Felicia x

PS. THANKS to each and every one of you who commented on my last post (with the swearing!) It really did make me laugh and cringe. Which I so needed.

PPS. UPDATE - I've woken up realising that in my late night going-through-pictures rosy-eyed view I forgot to talk about the hard. And the meltdowns. There were so many meltdowns…. me included! ;)