Sometimes love ain’t enough…

No, I am not going all cheesy on you. I just had a mad few days, and spent more time on politics than anything else. I love it. I love being a political animal, and I would like to be involved in decision making one day. However, a lot of aspects in politics are really not me, and I worry that I have to change too much to make this work. So it is stressful, and serious, and I want to laugh, and dance, and knit.

So today is a craft day for me. Sadly, it isn’t warm enough to knit in the garden, but so I am sitting at my desk with coffee, knit and muse about my life, about how I can combine crafting and politics and writing, as well as laughing and dancing. Oh yes, and recycling, too. The latter, however, worked out very nicely.

I had this top which was beautiful - on the hanger! But not on me. No matter how many people told me that I looked nice, it never felt like it. I loved it, I loved the medieval-looking sleeves, I loved the purple colour, but when I was wearing it, I kept tucking on it and twisting in it, and just felt…wrong. I altered it. Still felt wrong. It seemed to give me a strange shape that just wasn’t me, partly too big and partly to short. It just didn't fit. So eventually, I had to make a decision. Charity shop, or cutting it into t-shirt yarn? The fabric and sleeves are gorgeous, but did I want to cut it?

Then I thought, why not use those amazing sleeves…as part of armwarmers! Right now I am very much into combining my knitting with textile art in mittens and armwarmers, so I decided to use the sleeves and make something for me!  Luckily, I found a matching yarn in my stash – beautiful, purple, and handspun by Rachel from lindsaycrafts.  So I cut, turned the sleeves upside down, fitted, knitted and sewed, and here is the result (one done, one more to go)!

  So, now I have something I love and love wearing, too! 

If politics were so easy…but then again, maybe it is?

Thowing down the gauntlet and dancing to Bellowhead!

Crafty Men

While I was threading beads and buttons on cotton thread on Father’s Day today (to be spun into merino fibre), I was musing about the men in my family who were creative, although they might not always considered themselves as such. In fact, there might have been more male then female creatives in my immediate family.

My late father was a brilliant hand sewer. He made some of the tiniest and neatest stitches I ever saw. Dad was the one who altered all our clothes, gave me scrap fabrics to play with, and made me a fabulous Cyndi Lauper skirt from flurescent-coloured net fabric. He was also delighted when I asked him to give me a sewing machine for Christmas when I was 15, less delighted when I broke so many needles and gave up (not after managing to make myself a carneval’s costume though). So he took the machine to continue doing the family’s clothes alterations, but I think he preferred sewing by hand. In that respect I am very like him, I also prefer hand sewing.

My Dad also could draw well. I had totally forgotten that he used to draw animals for us when we were kids before my sister reminded me. He also loved singing Sea Shanties, although he had no connections to the sea or boats. And he used to tell us kids lovely stories in which my sis and I were the main characters!

My Dad’s Da was a farmer, who however was also the tailor in the small village they lived in. According to my Dad, Grandda tailored some beautiful suits and we have a picture of my Dad as a young man wearing a checkered suit (made by his Dad) which must have been the height of fashion then.

I don’t think my Dad or his father ever considered themselves as crafty or creative, but rather perceived sewing as a trade or useful skill.

My mother’s father was a printer, who as a young man wanted to join a circus. As a kid I always regretted that he hadn’t done it, because then I might have grown up to be a trapeze artist! Grandpa also loved doing magic tricks, and entertained the kids in the neighbourhood with his magic skills and spectacular cartwheels. Doing cartwheels is an ability I inherited from him.

Often people assume that craft skills are handed down from mother to daughter, but in my case, my first crafty influence came from my Dad. I could sew, before I ever picked up a knitting needle, and my barbie dolls had the grooviest outfits ever!

Happy Father’s Day!

Your health is your wealth

Jacob wants it to be known that he exercises, too!

 

“Those who don’t make time for exercise will eventually have to make time for illness.”  

(Robin Sharma)

Headed early to the gym this morning. Early means after 10am for me, because as a night owl, I am not one for jumping out of bed at 6am to greet the earth with a sun salute.

So I hopped on my bike on my gym gear and cycled merrily down the road, feeling very diciplined and fit.

It’s been four months since I’ve started going to the gym twice a week. Luckily, the gym I go to is small, has a cheap rate for people on no income, and while it has all the equipment, you don’t feel surrounded by gym bunnies and muscle men in tattoos. It’s more your friendly neighbourhood place, where you hop onto the exercise machines and do your own thing.

I’m certainly not a fitness fanatic or diet lover, but I’ve come to realise that if I don’t exercise more and pay slightly more attention to what I devour, I will have to pay the price pretty soon. As an IT freelancer, crafter and writer, my habitual position is slouching over something, be it the keyboard, the knitting or my desk. Not only do I get regular backpains and muscle cramps, I also have a kind of hunched standing posture, that freaks me out every time I look in a mirror.

There are times when I get up from an intensive computing or knitting session, and I can hardly stand up straight. Sewing is even worse – I try not to sew more than 30 minutes in a row without getting up and shaking that body, because otherwise I am stiffer than Myrtle, my wire mannequin.

So I now cycle and go to the gym…and I am starting to notice the difference. From being just about able to lift the measliest weights, I now can haul a few more, my back doesn’t complain as much, and I am far more flexible. I also realised that my stomach muscles weren’t dead after all…

A gym session also puts me in a good mood, and I no longer crash onto the bed for a two-hour nap! And on one occasion, a good hard gym session was needed to get me over a bout of extreme grumpiness and frustration after some futile phonecalls to a certain office…

The hardest part is still to get myself to the gym, but what helped is the fact that I set the gym times nearly in stone. They are close to sacred, and will only be changed in exceptional circumstances. This is ‘me time’. I am doing this for myself, to feel healthier and fitter, to have more energy, and to be able to dance the night away without having to sit down every five minutes, moaning and groaning about aches and pains and feeling a hundred years old.

The gym is actually one place where I get many creative ideas. The body does its work, while I let my mind wander off to knitting patterns and blog ideas…like this one.