Tag Archives: motherhood

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Uncharted Paths

A charted path can help us get to where we want to go, and it can provide us a sense of control in a chaotic world. Yet, there is something to be said for occasionally leaving the charted path and bravely taking an unplanned journey into the unknown.

With the completion of my dedicated sewing-crafting room (notwithstanding the need of a fresh coat of wall and ceiling paint), I find myself recognizing a shift has occurred. While I don’t believe the sewing room is the catalyst of this change, I do think it symbolizes the change that has occurred within me.

It is as I begin to really use this dedicated space, a space that brings me joy and comfort, I realize more fully that I have changed.

Change doesn’t usually happen overnight, but sometimes the awakening to the change does feel abrupt. We go to bed one night only to wake up the next morning to realize the journey we’ve been on has led us to our destination. What then, we ask ourselves? Do we meticulously map our a new destination, or do we allow ourselves the freedom of following an uncharted path, even if only for a short while?

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This Week’s English Paper Piecing Block – The Triple Star
25-triple-starDownload

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A Mighty Life Change

Change is unavoidable and sometimes very painful. It can also open us to opportunities we may otherwise never have seen had the change not occurred. However change, especially when it is a mighty life change, can bring on a sense of loss, even a sense of mourning for that which we had or for whom we were before the change occurred.

Mourning a loss is never an easy process, and it is seldom a speedy one. Permitting oneself the time and space to mourn is not merely important, it is vital.

Simple steps each day can help us through both the change and the loss we might feel because of the change, but sometimes even simple steps can feel overwhelming.

Sometimes we need the quiet that solitude provides us. Sometimes we need space – the space to process, to mourn, and to adjust. Other times we need companionship.

While no one can adjust, heal, or live for us, many can give us a helpful hand.

One of life’s greatest lessons is learning how to move each day – physically and mentally move each and every day. When we stop moving, we stop life.

Sometimes, no matter how strong willed we are, we need help moving. Just like when we seek physical therapy after an injury or severe illness has made our body struggle, we may need to seek help when it is our mental or spiritual health that is struggling. Seeking help and acquiring help may also require us to experience more change, but this change might be one of the most valuable aids to helping us through the bigger life change which is causing us so much struggle.

We must find a way to keep on keeping on. To keep on living, and to keep on looking for those opportunities that now might be more clearly seen because of a mighty life change.

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I will vlog again, and probably sooner than later. This is just breathing time.

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What Do We Seek?

What do we seek on this journey or from this experience? Taking time to ask this question of ourselves affords us the opportunity to understand the answer despite any excitement or anxiety we might feel.

Do we hope to learn something? Connect with someone? Are we planning to challenge ourselves, or are we simply hoping to embrace the joy of the experience? Maybe there is a bit of all of this in our plans. However, it is not just the meandering, spur-of-the-moment journey that includes unforeseen excitement or anxiety. We can become frustrated or even lose our way if we have not taken the time to understand what we are seeking.

Origins of This Thought

When this thought first began swirling around my head, I was contemplating the way personal relationships can devolve. A brief conversation with a stranger had left me troubled. The stranger had conveyed how difficult they were struggling now that they were the guardian of their young grandchild. Their struggle was one of lost hope, as much as one of real challenge. Their expectations of this new, full-time relationship was fraught with the dread of knowing life was going to be forever changed, and was going to be quite difficult due to the child’s very specific struggles.

I was troubled by the lack of hope the stranger shared. Many hours later, this thought came to mind.

What do we seek in our personal relationships? What do we hope to learn or experience?

While we may not be able to change the specific elements of human existence that make life hard, sometimes so hard we struggle to see a way forward, we are able to reimagine our expectations. Sometimes this can be achieved by simply identifying what it is we truly seek from the situation or the relationship. Often we are counseled to changed our perspective, but first we might be wise in understanding what it is we seek. From that understanding, our perspective, or in other words, our vantage point might become clear. We might even discover that our frustration is not from the challenges we face in this new journey, but simply from having become lost in the fog before reaching the summit.

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Embrace the Mistakes: Oops Yarn

We’ve all heard the saying “when life’s hands you lemons…” In the world of making yarn, the result of this can-do attitude often results in unique creations. In the case of this particular yarn, a bobbin of “oops” was combined with some left-over “forgot what it was” which produced a “crazily energetic yarn”. Not to be discouraged, I then added some “I think I know what it is” into the mix. The resulting yarn is unique, but it is also quite functional.

Oops Yarn is also a reminder to embrace the mistakes in life’s journey. If we need a good cry, then we should cry. If we need a good laugh, then we should laugh. The thing we shouldn’t do is throw out the mistake or pretend it didn’t happen. Life is full of mistakes, but like the Oops Yarn, there is value to be had if we embrace them rather than toss them away.

In my latest vlog, you can hear all about my Oops Yarn as well as some projects that went as planned.

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In Search of Truth: The Journey

The journey of life can lead us to the certainty of the truths we seek, but only if we avoid the pitfalls that can come due to expectation.

Expectation can often be the biggest roadblock faced on any journey. Expectation can even scuttle a journey before it begins. Remember, expectation is only a belief in something, whereas, it is on the journey that certainty can be found.

Truth is both simple and complex – the greatest of all paradoxes. Truth is more than just a belief, it relies on a preponderance of evidence. Sometimes this evidence has little value or certainty for anyone other than ourselves, but that does not mean the evidence is not valid. It may simply mean that we are seeking a small understanding of something much greater than we are yet ready to perceive.

If we remember that expectation is simply the starting point – the hope, the belief, the dream – and that the journey provides the data, the trial, and the proof, then we should move beyond belief and gain the true knowledge life offers to teach us.

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Giving Handmade Gifts: Holding onto the Joy

Sharing our joy with others helps us find our own inner peace, but we can only find this peace when our hearts and minds remain focused on the sharing and not on the receiving. The moment we fixate on how our handmade gift is received, we have shifted our focus from our act of giving and are now concerned only with the gift we expect in return – the recipient’s gratitude.

Giving a handmade gift to someone we know personally, as opposed to an anonymous donation gift, often leads to concern over how the gift will be received. This concern has the potential of undermining the joy the process of making has given us. Expectation of gratitude is a dangerous path to enter when we are on our handmaking journey. It is fraught with pitfalls which can cause us and the recipient of our handmade item emotional harm.

When we treat all gifts as we treat the anonymous donation gift – in essence, when we simply hope that the item will find itself being loved, even if it must pass through many hands before it finds its home, then we can hold on to the joy that is the byproduct of our making and our giving.

The guiding principle I live by when I give a handmade gift is this:

If I make the gift with love and the intent to give it unreservedly, then the joy that I gain in the making and giving is the only reward I will expect.

Living by this principle is not always easy, and even the best efforts can still allow in feelings of disappointment, but focusing on the joy of making will usually fend off such disruptive feelings.

Our desire to share our creativity, our time, and our talents with others is a worthy desire. When we make a gift for someone, and we make it with love, the joy we get from the making is the greatest reward. It is the process of doing, of making, of giving, of serving – it is this process that blesses our lives with joy and helps us find the inner peace we need.  

My daughter thinks I may be a bit more eloquent in the last section of today’s video.

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Saith Me… Leadership

Leadership should be from the front, even when it is behind the scenes.

 

Leading the way means to take the first steps and chart the course that others will do well to follow. This can be done behind the scenes as is the case with most organizations that rely on volunteers. While the volunteer army goes forth to accomplish the goal, their success heavily relies upon the plan and focus designed by the leadership who may very well not be with them on the battlefield.

Or in other words, a good farmer does not need to directly harvest the crop if he has a harvest plan that can successfully be followed by his field hands.

Leadership

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Daily Creativity Challenge

After spinning and vlogging every day for nearly a month, I was fairly worn out. However, I also felt mentally energized. It seems the daily challenge of getting at least one creative task in before slumber helped me combat the fatigue the state of world affairs seems to generate.

I have long known this to be a truth – creativity combats mental fatigue. Finding the way to fit creative pursuits in daily is not always an easy thing. Demands of life can disrupt even the fiercest determination. Setting a goal or focusing on a gift for someone else can help keep one on course. With this in mind, I have embarked on another creative challenge.

The Christmas Countdown Collection. It would be more aptly be called the Holiday or New Year’s Day Countdown Collection, but I liked all the Cs. To be completely honest here, I was only going to do a Christmas Countdown Collection but I had too much fun dyeing fiber. Yes, I admit, I just couldn’t stop until the rainbow was well covered.

So what is the Christmas Countdown Collection? Well it is nearly 10 pounds of dyed wool roving that I now must spin into nearly 40 skeins of yarn. Each skein will be divided into two sections. Each section will be wrapped in festive paper. Each package will be unwrapped one at a time beginning on Thanksgiving Eve and going through until New Year’s Day.  Due to the need to send one set of squishy packages overseas, all of this must be done as quickly as possible. Yes, it occurs to me that I should have stuck to 25 braids of roving, but the joy of dyeing overcame rational thought.

As my daughter pointed out to me, if I spin one braid a day, and ply multiple skeins every few days, I should have plenty of time to finish this spinning challenge by the end of Tour de Fleece 2.0 (or in non-spinning terms – the end of September).

So let the challenge begin (okay, so it actually already began, but I am just now getting a video posted).

 

Oh, and for inquiring minds – the yarn is going to be used by my kiddos to crochet Granny Square afghans.

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Saith… The Daughter

Oh the wonderful things my daughter says. We were having a very intense (pleasant, not contentious) discussion on a topic both confounding and current, when she summed up the situation in fabulous fiber artist form.

“It may be called a Cashmere Rabbit, but that doesn’t make it cashmere.”