It has been far, far too long since I’ve had a chance to update this blog. So where have I been the last few months?

There has been a lot of this…

A bit of this…

But mostly a lot of work.

The last few months have been intense and relentless and, for the first time, I’ve not really felt like making or doing anything creative at all. Any stitching, even on more casual samplers, has been an exercise in frustration and broken threads. I’ve not really had the time to sit down and focus on anything properly.

At first, I felt a bit bad. After all, like most crafters I have a work-in-progress list as long as my arm and enough project ideas to last three lifetimes. After another botched attempt at some stitching though, I realised that it just wasn’t worth getting frustrated over. Crafting is supposed to be a hobby for me, and while I have blogged before about how that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an entirely pain-free process, I was failing to do much beyond savaging some fabric. I definitely wasn’t enjoying it.

So, I gave up. I did small, simple things, like calligraphy drills that I could pick up and put down in a few minutes. I started experimenting with marker pens as an even lower effort approach to practicing. I stuck to small, simple bits of crochet on patterns I knew. (This is the wonderful Fan Bookmark by Crochetroo worked in Olympus Special #40 Cotton with a 1.25 mm hook.) I did a few day courses that I’ll be blogging about in due course, but nothing too strenuous.

What happened for taking a break? Quite literally, absolutely nothing. Pieces are still on frames glaring at me, fibre is still sat in piles waiting to be spun. However, nothing came to any harm, no one died and I haven’t (yet) had an angry phone call from the RSN asking why I am such an awful student. Sadly, the Craft Fairy never turned up to finishing some boring ribbing on my mittens or cut some pieces for a quilt, but everything is exactly as I left it.

As work started to taper off and I started to feel my brain cells could consider anything else, I found myself missing doing more challenging things again. Knowing I had some long flights coming up, I got Aoibhe Ni’s Venus back on the hook having torn it out on a previous trip. I’ve been making good use of my project bags and there may have been a little bit of stash expanding on my travels as well…

I should have a short lull now before things get ridiculously busy again, where I thoroughly intend to be binge crafting as much as I can! Taking a step back was great for some thinking time and finding the time just to do brief bits of dooming probably saved me a bit of sanity. There are a few pieces that I think will be a little difficult to pick up and get back to but I guess I will have to learn a bit of patience.