Category Archives: Encouragement

Find Creativity! Play!

Posted on by

ScannedImageIt is funny, how you don’t necessarily get inspiration from your own work. You may get ideas that you build into something else, but things that make you see the world differently, at least for me, comes from the work of others.

ScannedImage-10

A dress I created for my daughter. I won all the yarn in a raffle drawing.

The other day I was with a friend, and they told me that they never have been creative; they only followed the pattern before them. This got me thinking, because I believe everyone has creativity, they may not express it the same but it is in each of us. I think creativity is born from permission to play. I express some of my creativity through fibers, colors, and texture. I only come to envision new possibilities when I challenge myself to see what a particular yarn might do. I enjoy the challenge, which is where my creativity is born.

Sometimes I win yarn in a raffle from my local guild, and I make it a personal challenge to see what I can create with it (especially since I don’t need to add to my stash). I often find that these projects take me out of my comfort zone; the yarn is something I’ve never worked with before, the color leaves something to be desired, or the texture feels like an old rug. But they do offer a challenge, and sometime I have managed to create something fun, something practical, or something that will never see the light of day (I never said all my challenges were a success). But this is my play in process, I enjoy it.

Another factor for successful creativity is self confidence. I don’t mean the confidence level that causes you to take over that world or anything, I mean the level of confidence to know that you understand that concepts of the skill you are using, enough to “break” the rules. Like cooking, you started with a recipe and followed it, but then as you were cooking more, you made alterations, gave it you own flair. This is a confidence in knowing that whatever might happen, everything is going to be okay. You know basic food safety, you don’t break that rule, but you experiment with different spices, and flavor combinations, to come up with something unique. The same is true in other outlets of life, for me it is in crochet. Funny what a little bit of confidence and permission to play can create.

Old Fashion Empowerment

Posted on by

ScannedImageFunny my husband has no complaints about me being “a little old fashion”. He often jokes that if the end of the world comes that he’d be set. Sure I make my own jam from our fruit trees, I make my own bread (which does not help any diet plans), I have a spinning wheel and can spin my own yarn (I just have to dust it off) and I crochet like a crazy. But does that make me “old fashion”?

I like to think it makes me practical. After all I have the fruit trees and should do something with the fruit, besides feed the deer. The bread, well I was given a bread machine several years ago and found that it was cheaper to make my own then to buy it, so that is just me being thrifty ( the fact that the smell of homemade bread from the oven is so delicious is just a perk). I got the spinning wheel after winning spinning lessons from a silent auction…actually this event changed my life…..IMG_5566

Interesting how life changing events turn up when you least expect them, but I can trace back my career in crochet to winning these spinning lessons. I thought that spinning my own yarn would slow me up some; I crochet so much, and so often that I was always in constant need of yarn. So I thought that spinning my own yarn would at least keep me on a project longer, which it did, that isn’t the life changing part. The change came from the people I met. The instructor was an older lady that lived about 30 minutes from me, Jean Franklin. She lived next door to her daughter and was raising little Shetland sheep and was passionate about spinning and weaving. Obviously she was an expert in both, and she kept telling me I needed to join the local fiber guild (as I mentioned in earlier posts, I wasn’t too receptive to “guilds”). Under her instruction I learned more than I ever thought possible about different types of wool, and plying and fiber composition, drafting and basic yarn construction. Finally after about a year I took her up on her invitation to attend a meeting.

At this meeting I learned I wasn’t “old fashion”; I was fashionable. This little group was nearly 100 in membership and all dabbled in various aspects of the fiber industry, some raised the animals with the wool, others processed it for spinning, some dyed it, almost everyone spun it, then there were the weavers, the knitters, the felters, and the crocheters. They all lived in harmony encouraging and promoting each other. Everyone was a teacher (whether they realized it or not), and it is from here that I have gained the confidence to move my craft onward.

There is nothing wrong with being not so tech savvy, and understanding the lifestyle that is a couple generations removed. There was value then, and is value still today in these crafts.  In knowing that with your own two hands you can keep yourself warm and feed is a wonderful feeling.

Old fashion=empowered.

So Now I’m Making Fabric- and Losing Labels

Posted on by

Making fabric sounds like a high tech industrial trade, big machines and fine threads, but really I do it daily. Crochet is simply creating fabric. When I finally made this realization it opened up a world of possibilities. I’ll admit it; I crocheted for nearly 25 years (maybe even 30) before I tackled anything resembling a sweater or garment, it was just too intimidating.

My first afghan

My first afghan

I made afghans galore, many different color combinations, styles and stitch patterns, but to make a sweater or cardigan that just seemed like too much. I had seen knitters following grids and using stitch markers so I assumed that crocheting a sweater would be much the same. But I took the plunge as a challenge to myself to use a gift certificate at a local yarn store, and make something nice for myself.

So I found a cardigan sweater that had a stitch pattern that looked enjoyable, and then I found some really nice yarn. I carefully read through the pattern and then jumped it, it was at this time I heard somewhere that I was making fabric, and it opened my mind to look at this pattern differently. If I was thinking I was making a sweater I felt intimidated, but when I looked at it was making fabric that I was shaping to fit a sewing pattern, it removed the point of intimidation. I could make crochet in any shape. So I concentrated on making these shapes and then put them together.

My first garment.

My first garment.

My first garment made. Crossing this threshold inadvertently caused me to begin designing (even though I didn’t realize it at the time), as I took sewing patterns and crocheted fabric to fit the pieces in stitches that I like and put them together. I have never looked back.  This has taught me that removing the label I place on things and giving them a different name has helped me to look at it in a different light and add something new to my life, this includes my role as a mom, a wife, a friend. I never realized that I had definitions in my words that dictated how and what I did, but changing the view as increased life’s possibilities.

Who would guess that crochet could have taught me that.