As a child, I am told, my “little fingers were always busy”. I’m an only child that was rarely bored. In part, because my Mum was great at making sure I had lots of friends over to play (and, of course, that was a time in which ‘playing out’ was the norm – the ‘good old days’) but also because I had a craft cupboard for most of my childhood and I could usually find a way to delve into it and entertain myself.
During the friendship bracelet craze, I’d created my own designs whilst my friends were buying theirs in town, I cross stitched, french knitted, dried flowers, created fairy gardens. You name it, I was there. Oh, and there was the time when I accidentally knocked a bottle of ink (remember Quink ink for re-filling your fountain pens?) all over my Mum’s beautiful pine kitchen table in the name of some crafty project or another.
Then I became a young woman, went away to university and left crafting at home in a village in Norfolk. For much of the subsequent 12 years, life’s greatest pleasures revolved around cheap wine, great nights out (some of which are best forgotten) and that hunt my 20 something self would never have admitted to, you know, the one for Mr Right (I found him).
Then, in 2009, life threw me a curveball and I became ill, the vices of the previous years fell by the wayside and I needed something to do to keep my hands busy and my mind on something other than the low-risk chemo that I was undergoing. A friend had recently discovered crochet and I decided to give it a try too. I bought a book and, to this day, I am not sure I understand the diagrams but I very much understand how to crochet thanks to Youtube and lots and lots of practice.
I produced some decidedly ropey pieces six years ago, but it was wonderful therapy. Really wonderful therapy. It still is.
This is Ahren the elf and, goodness me, wasn’t he a challenge in my sleep-deprived state and without the hours and hours of crochet that I have enjoyed since then. One leg is fatter than the other and he isn’t quite the same shape as the elf from the pattern that I used.
Ahren and the mini stockings were something I made for my children without the fear of failure and they led me to be starting this blog which brought me to feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
You see, I had an itch that I just had to scratch. An itch that just wouldn’t go away no matter how much fear I felt so I decided to do it any way – on Friday I opened an Etsy store.
I’m feeling the fear posting this today, I’m feeling the fear about sending out my first orders but I am doing it anyway. I’m doing it because I don’t want to live with the regret of never having tried.
I love to craft, I need to craft, I can’t not craft and now I’m working my socks off in the hope that some folks out there love, need and can’t not have my craft as much as I want them to share in my crafty little obsessions.
Life is too short to live it in regret so, feel the fear and do it anyway.