While trying to decide what is the best decision for a first post, I didn’t know whether to start with a craft or an introduction. I’ve got a lot of projects I’d love to write about, but I can get to that later. I want to add a disclaimer that any patterns or yarn brands that I am using are chosen by me and this is not a tutorial or an pattern which I came up with.
Why am I here?
This week I’ve had the opportunity to visit the beach! I cannot say that my inspiration for this blog is free-time, but I’ve spent enough time trying to explain my modifications, ideas, and challenges when creating new things to friends who don’t fully understand and I can tell they’re zoning out. I think that it might be time for me to find an outlet for this need to describe my challenges.
Honestly, last week I started a really tough project. Now when I say “tough” I mean that I decided to modify a pretty basic pattern based on an image I saw and then bought the wrong yarn for a section of that project. This week when we decided to get away for a bit, I wanted to take a “break”. I left (almost) all the yarn at home and temporarily abandoned doing the math to fix my yarn and pattern issues. I brought a simple project that has been sitting in my closet for a year to work on instead.
The Importance of Taking a Break
Sometimes with my projects I get a little obsessive, working for hours on something and restarting a couple of times before I finally decide to do something more productive or important, because I do have responsibilities. It was hard for me to take a break from my projects with them looming all over my apartment. I wanted to spend most of my time here reading, working, and enjoying the time here.
The project I did bring is a simple Ripple Granny Square patterned blanket using self-striping yarn. I brought it as something to keep my hands busy when listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or TV.
While this might not seem like a break for some, for me, I crochet a lot of more complicated or focused patterns, so this is considered a break. Can anyone relate?
Reading a lot of Books
A small introduction, I have a weird taste in literature, I would say that I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to reading and enjoy books that most people might not. I don’t have any formal knowledge of literature, so I generally just read what peaks my interests and then research reviews and what other readers thought of the books. My reading list for this week, in-part due to lack of crochet/knitting and being outside my own space (and away from the gaming computer) is as follows:
- Finished Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (Recommended by a friend)
- Finished The Vegetarian by Han Kang
- Started and Finished The Secret Talker by Geling Yan
- Started Spiral by Koji Suzuki (Stand-alone sequel to his book Ring)
- Started Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
It’s been really nice to be able to sit with the ocean and read. The winter was rough this year and I have been getting stir crazy.
A Blogger Now
Next post will probably get into some more crafty ideas since I cannot stay away for too long. I’d love to go through some projects that I had a lot of fun with and share images. I usually make things as gifts, I want to make more projects for myself, so hopefully I will be able to share all these ideas and processes with you.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you do to take a break from the day. Do you need breaks from hobbies sometimes too? And I would love recommendations or to hear about what you are reading or opinions on the books I’ve read if you have any. Leave me some comments and I’ll be sure to respond!
