Tag: resolutions

Happy New Year!

The Challenge

I was going to try and catch up with what I’ve been doing since the middle of November, when I last posted, but honestly I don’t really remember! I know there have been two craft fairs (a small one and a big one), and I’m sure Christmas was in there somewhere, amongst a whole lot of germs, but mainly I’ve just been going to work, coming home again, being ill, making hats, and trying to sell them. Not a lot else going on really. I was so poorly over Christmas that my niece doesn’t even have her annual dress yet!

I’m currently panicking like mad about having to go back to work on Monday, and still being a bit ill, and not having actually achieved anything with my time off over Christmas despite having lots of things planned. I’m trying very hard to take a little bit of time to myself, to write my work rota into my diary, get myself organised, and have a good think about what my goals need to be for the year ahead.

Honey and Ollie "One Word" bracelet

I’ve downloaded Susannah Conway’s Unravelling The Year Ahead workshop again (it’s free! go for it!), and have just completed a rather puzzling Oracle reading that I hope will become clearer as the year unfolds. I pulled an extra card to try and find some clarification, and was met with The Challenge… so that didn’t help much. I didn’t buy Leonie Dawson’s workbooks again this year, entirely because I never actually filled them in. The thought of having to make plans and examine my life in detail when all I wanted to do was NOT BE ILL was all a bit too much, to be honest. I may have rather cheekily printed out a clean copy, and am merrily changing all the 2014s into 2015s with a big fat marker pen. Sorry Leonie! Maybe next year…

I have, however, chosen a word that I want to be able to embody this year, and that word is focus. (I’ve also ordered another One Word bracelet from Honey & Ollie, to wear with last year’s.)

Last year I tried to do far too many things, with the net result that I didn’t put as much time and effort as I would have liked into the things I was really enjoying. I spent too long thinking about what might sell rather than what I wanted to make, and that just made me miserable.

This year it’s about three things:

HATS, SHOES and DOLLS.

Hats first, as I have a stand at a local wedding fair in three weeks’ time. Lots of preparation to do for that. But from February onwards, I’m hoping to be able to do some work on the other two.

Mind you, such a lot depends on my health, and of course first and foremost I need to be well enough (and stay well enough) to go to work. Whether I have the energy for HATS, SHOES and DOLLS after that remains to be seen.

If you don’t ask…

Raining again...

…you don’t get. Sometimes you can ask and you still don’t get, but if you don’t do the asking in the first place, you’ll never know.

I’ve always had a hard time asking for things. Always expected other people to somehow magically know what I wanted, which of course led to disappointment when they inevitably didn’t. I thought asking for things was bad. Greedy. Selfish. Needy. Rude. And so I rarely got what I wanted (sometimes, needed), and so I was sad a lot. My husband likes to remind me that he does not in fact have psychic powers, and that if I want him to do something, I actually need to remember to tell him. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I forget. But it’s always better to ask and be told no, than is it not to ask and to never know.

January is always the time of year for Resolutions. I used to be a great resolution-maker, very serious, and then always very cross with myself when things didn’t work out exactly as I’d Resolved. This year, I’m making a change. I’m doing two things: 1) choosing a word that I want to embody this new year, and 2) making a great big list of WANTS instead of Resolutions.

The word part was easy for me this year, and the word is action! 

I spent so much of last year waiting, hibernating, feeling ill, that I just allowed my life to happen around me, for the most part. Clearly that can’t continue – I’ve done far more than my fair share of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and it’s time to move on. I decided to treat myself to Honey & Ollie’s One Word bracelet, which Rain will be making for me with the word action! stamped right across the middle. Any time I feel inclined to moan and feel sorry for myself about things not going the way I want, I can look at the bracelet and be reminded that there’s always something, no matter how small; there will always be an action I can take that will change things.

(Sometimes, yes, the action will be go to the shop and buy a giant bar of chocolate and sit in a nice hot bubble bath whilst eating it, because fibromyalgia sucks and I need a tiny bit of luxury right now. But an action’s an action, no matter how small.)

The other part, the I WANT part, still feels a bit weird, a bit selfish. But the important thing to remember is that just because I WANT something, there is nothing and nobody out there in the universe that is obliged to leap up and simply give that thing to me. If I WANT something, I have to WORK for it. And there will always, always be an action! I can take that will move me one tiny step closer.

So, these are a few of the things that I WANT for 2014.

1) I WANT a lovely garden
I have the bones of a lovely garden, but it will take a lot of work to turn it into the garden that’s in my head, and I’m going to need help. Fortunately my Mum loves gardening, and she’s offered to come over with books to help us identify what some of the giant overgrown shrubs are supposed to be. We have one friend who can help us to design and landscape the space, and another who can help me to keep on top of looking after it all. (We’ll pay them for that, of course, as that’s how they earn a living.) For now I’m reading Gardeners World magazine, and doing a bit of pruning when I feel up to it. I can do more when it’s not raining all the time!

2) I WANT to be more healthy
Well, my doctor’s pretty much given up on me with this one (long story, very dull), and acupuncture’s beyond my budget at the moment, even though I know it would help. So, it’s up to me to try and keep the fibromyalgia a little more under control. I’ve started by giving up coffee and caffeinated fizzy drinks. I kind of want to give up caffeine altogether, but I don’t think I could survive without tea! So I’m taking things a step at a time. I’m giving up dairy, because I already know it doesn’t agree with me, which I need to keep reminding myself means NO MILK CHOCOLATE.  I also need to do more exercise. This can be a tricky one with fibromyalgia, because the increased blood flow through the body can make the pain much, much worse, which then makes the fatigue much, much worse, which isn’t terribly helpful! But, I’m walking a mile home from the bus stop most days, and when the weather stops being quite so revolting I want to start catching the bus a little further away from work, so these little bits will all start to add up.

3) I WANT a pair of silver shoes
Yes, that went from very serious to rather frivolous quite quickly, I know! I’ve spent the past couple of years building up my shoe collection, and the only gap left in it is for a pair of silver shoes that I can wear in summer. I have a moneybox which collects all my spare change as I save up for the pair I want… but that rather depends on whether Ren at Fairysteps decides to make any silver shoes this year! If not, then I’ll order a pair from Conker instead. I figure that the weather won’t be nice enough for summer shoes until at least May, so I’ve got a while to save up!

4) I WANT an instant camera
I recently acquired two boxes of Instax Wide film to go with a Fuji 200 or 210 instant camera. I have a friend who thinks she has the right model of camera and is willing to lend it to me, I just need to wait until our paths next cross at work. If my two boxes of film come out well, and I actually do something with the pictures, then I’ll decide whether to buy an instant camera of my own.

5) I WANT to run my own business again 
Well, that part’s easy. On April 6th, the beginning of the new tax year, I’ll set myself up as a Sole Trader again, and start running Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium as a formal business arrangement. The difficult part will be deciding what I want to make, and how to sell it! As I’ve said before, the past year has been spent doing a lot of research, and I’ll be carrying over most things that are currently in the Etsy store. There will also be new things, once my hat blocks arrive, so I’ll just have to wait and see how they’re received.

There’s more, of course, but I think that’s plenty for now!

I have made one Resolution, which is to do something towards the business every single day, no matter how small. As it turns out I’ve been ill for the past few days (since I went back to work!), so the actions have been very small indeed. I’ve sewn some experimental bootlaces, sent out a parcel, re-listed some items on Etsy, and not much else! Once I’m feeling better (stupid tonsils) I can get back to doing more again.

2013 round-up

I am 40!

Well, 2013 has certainly been a very interesting year!

My formal diagnosis with fibromyalgia came right at the tail end of 2012, but it’s coloured the whole of 2013. My health this year has been dreadful – not being able to sleep, not being able to walk, not being able to manage the pain – but I’ve just had to keep going regardless. What else is there to do? Of course I’ve done my fair share of complaining about it, but at the end of the day all I can do is carry on and do my best.

Farming cycle

Things at work have also been interesting… my role changed quite dramatically in March, when I stopped working every weekend and increased my hours to work a job-share rota as Visitor Services Assistant. This year will be even more interesting, as a lot of physical changes are happening to the museum itself (thanks to Heritage Lottery funding), but I have no idea yet how this will impact my role.

First Frost

Our home life has seen perhaps the most interesting change of all, in that we now live in a new house! This was not something that we had been planning, but once the decision was made to look for somewhere new, we’d put in an offer on a bungalow in a matter of days! We then had to wait several months for the sale to go through, and getting to know the new place has not been without its trials (nicotine stains, dog hair, malfunctioning drains, a door that keeps falling off its hinges…), but we’re gradually making it into our own place.

The overall feeling of 2013 has been one of resting, nesting and hibernation. So much of the year was spent waiting for the house move to happen that I feel as though I’ve done hardly anything creative with my time. Looking through my photos reveals that’s not actually true, so here are a few highlights of what I’ve been up to.

Mrs Magpie

The beginning of the year was mostly taken up with building Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium! Our first event in May was at a Steampunk festival in Frome, which was really a test to see how our offerings would be received. We learned a lot from watching people’s reactions to the stall, and it was successful enough that I decided to carry it on as an Etsy store when we came home. This year has been all about the market research, and I’ve learned a lot about how I both do and don’t want to run a business in future!

Airship Fresheners - tealight sample pack

The key to the Emporium has been two things: Diversity and Branding. They might seem mutually exclusive, but (finally) putting my typography degree to good use to create a coherent brand has meant that we can include all sorts of seemingly unrelated things into the Emporium, and they all look as though they belong together. We also discovered that the faux-Victorian theme can work outside the Steampunk community, being well-received at a local charity stall just before Christmas.

Some individual products have worked better than others in terms of popularity and sales, and some have worked better than others for me in terms of what’s required to make them. I’ve learned that I enjoy working in small batches, but don’t like making custom orders. I’ve really enjoyed writing the little blurbs to go on the labels for each piece, but really hated making the Harris Tweed Cufflinks. (They’re beautiful, but I cut my fingers to ribbons as I made them!)

Having taken the time to do this preparation and research, I’m pleased to say that I’ll be formally setting up as a Sole Trader again in April, and running the Emporium as a proper business from then on!

Felted Hat

I’ve done a little bit of more ambitious felting this year, making a hat, a pair of slippers, and a number of small experimental pieces to try and get the hang of felting in three dimensions. There’s something really satisfying about the nothing-into-something aspect of felt making, even more so than with sewing. You’re starting a process completely from scratch, with nothing but a bit of fluff from a sheep’s back, and ending up with a (hopefully) beautiful piece of fabric or a three-dimensional object. I have a huge bag of wool sitting in a cupboard, waiting for me to find a good space in the new house for making a mess with fluff and water and soap. I’ve also ordered a set of hat blocks from Guy Morse-Brown, so watch out for hand-felted cloche hats coming this way!

Tea dyeing

My natural dyeing experiments have been a bit hit and miss, to be honest. Reluctant to experiment with chemical mordants, I restricted myself to working only with substantive dyes to begin with… which basically means tea!  Not having a great deal of use for miles of beige fabric (although I am currently making a smocked dress from the silk shown above), my future dyeing plans are now more long-term. I want to do lots of research into dye plants that will grow in my new garden, and then begin the process of planting and harvesting and dyeing. Realistically it could be two years before I have my first crop of dye plants ready to use, so this will be a continual background project for a while.

My first handspun!

This little ball of goodness is my very first handspun yarn, made on a borrowed drop spindle. I’ve since bought my own spindle, and borrowed the spinning wheel from work, although I haven’t made a great deal of progress with either yet. Spinning brings with it the same sense of satisfaction that I get from felting – of being involved with every step of the process. I had fluff, now I have yarn, soon I can weave or knit or braid and make a whole new thing!

Going back to basics, unburdened by the demands of making things for other people, or without even considering the finished product at all, has been really important for me this year. Being able to immerse myself in a process, learn different techniques, and see where they take me, has been really liberating.

Mostly, I seem to have started a lot of things that I want to carry on with and learn to a much deeper level over the coming months. I’m planning to divide my time away from work between developing the Emporium to keep the sales coming in, and carrying on learning and testing and making things with wool and felt and fabric. I hate to use the word “whimsical”, it having been mocked so soundly by Regretsy, but that’s the direction I want to follow. Felting, spinning, dyeing, embroidery, beading, knitting, sewing… the theme for this year is to take my crafty skills, and turn myself into a Textile Artist.

Quite how this is going to happen I have absolutely no idea at the moment, but I’m guessing that sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a fluffy blanket and scoffing the last of the Christmas chocolates as I poke the computer isn’t going to make me a great deal of Art. Time to get up, and get on with it!

Resolutions for 2013…

13/05/2012

No more alcohol
This one will be easy at least until March, as I can’t drink while I’m taking the Amitriptyline anyway. That should be long enough to get me out of the habit of drinking a bottle of Crabbies on a Sunday night and then feeling like a zombie all of Monday from one drink. Not worth it. I don’t go out terribly often (I stopped going to the pub after choir because I was so tired!) so not buying drinks in pubs is easy enough. Although if I do find myself in one, choosing a non-alcoholic drink that isn’t packed full of sugar and caffeine is a bit more tricky. Mind you, most civilised pubs seem to sell tea these days.

Tea

No more coffee
I really like coffee, but it doesn’t like me. I stopped buying takeaway/cafe coffee ages ago, as that amount of milk really disagrees with me (and they cost a fortune!), but I do occasionally succumb to coffee at work. Which is awful, because it’s cheap nasty granules, and the decaf’s even worse. In fact, switching to decaf doesn’t help because it still upsets my stomach and gives me headaches. I already have a box of peppermint and a box of chai teabags on my desk, so I really have no excuse for ever drinking coffee at work. At home, the jar of instant that we buy whenever my parents come over really needs throwing out anyway. I might replace it with a small pack of fairtrade filter coffee (and buy a couple of in-cup filters or a cafetiere) so that guests can have nice coffee that I won’t be bothered to make for myself. (And when it inevitably goes off, undrunk, in the back of the fridge, I can use it to dye fabric with!) And it’s not as though I have a shortage of other things to drink…

Tea dyed fabrics

Never waste a tea bag!
I started saving my herbal tea bags and freezing them, so that I could dye fabric with them when I had enough. Except that at some point I forgot about that, and we’ve just been chucking them out. I need to make up a bunch of freezer bags, each labelled with a particular kind of tea, so that it’s really easy to take the bag out of the mug and chuck it in the freezer. I’ve also just had a slightly mad idea about carrying around little organic cotton squares with me, so that if I have a cup of tea when I’m out and about, I can pop the teabag onto the fabric when I take it out of my tea, and at the end of the tea-drinking I can ditch the teabag but keep the little square of partially dyed fabric. (Which will be damp. In my handbag. Lovely.) I have an idea about making a “my year in tea” quilt with the pieces, but I’m absolutely certain that will never ever happen!

Walk in the woods

Walk home
At least to begin with, I’m not going to be well enough to walk to work, do the work, then walk home again. But I can probably catch the bus, do the work, and then walk home. This gives me time outside, boosts the vitamin D (weather permitting!), and helps me to get fit again. From town it’s about an hour and a quarter, from work about an hour, and from campus about 45 minutes. (All uphill.) And if I forget my waterproofs and get soaked, then at least I’ll be at home and can get changed, instead of dripping my way through work all day. The most difficult thing with this one will be motivation, especially while it’s still so dark and wet. Much easier to get the bus. But Dr Chan recommended gentle exercise, such as normal walking. And if I can’t do every day to begin with, that’s fine. I’ll do what I can.

TM Lewin Shirts

Don’t Buy Stuff
If it’s not handmade, organic, ethically produced or second-hand, don’t buy it. If I don’t look in high street shops, and don’t look on TM Lewin’s website, I won’t know what’s out there, so I can’t waste time coveting it. I can set up searches on Ebay for things I really want (like the gorgeous Monsoon jumper with a tree on it that my sister was wearing over Christmas and is sold out in every size and colour), and make the majority of things for myself.
Note to self: this includes fabric and dress patterns. Knitting yarn is negotiable, as I can’t afford a jumper’s worth of handmade!

Lush Henna...

Walk the talk
Stop just collecting ancient almost-empty deodorant tubes and fossilised bits of soap, and actually get around to recycling them. Make tutorials, blog about it, show how easy it can be. When the current pots of Lush hand cream and moisturiser run out, make some. Share recipes. Also, throw out any old half-used tubes of stuff that are probably full of bacteria and yuck by now. (Save any useful jars though!) Go through the ever-increasing collection of aromatherapy, natural remedy and herbalism books, and actually read them! Or give them back to Oxfam. There probably isn’t a prize for owning the most copies of Culpeper. (Especially when they’re all cheap editions from the 1980s.)

Recap from 2012…
I think the only resolution I’ve actually managed to keep from last year has been stop messing with my hair. Well, for a certain value of “messing with”, anyway. I have cut in a fringe and shaved an undercut… but I haven’t bleached it or dyed it a funny colour, and I’ve let the top layer grow. My intention is to continue not messing with it, except for henna if I can be bothered, and one decent haircut to get rid of the last remaining inch of bleach damage.

Most of these resolutions are things I’ve been thinking about, or doing a bit half-heartedly, for ages anyway. Hopefully the beginning of a New Year will encourage me to actually make the effort!

How many is too many?

TM Lewin Shirts

Oh dear, I might have had a little shopping accident, during which I broke my resolution to Stop Buying More Things. I went into TK Maxx to look for some foam mats for blocking my knitting, but they didn’t have them. (Curse of TK Maxx – if you leave something behind, you’ll never see it again.) What they did have was quite a large selection of TM Lewin shirts. So I bought three. (Top right, middle left, bottom centre.) They cost £12.99 each – something of a bargain compared to the RRP, which is usually around £70. I can’t afford to pay £70 for a shirt, but I can usually afford £12.99, so thank you TK Maxx.

Interestingly, although I browse the TM Lewin website quite regularly, and visit the local store whenever I pass it, I almost never see these patterned shirts. That’s the main reason I jumped on these as soon as I saw them. I often see plain or striped shirts that I leave behind because the colours don’t grab me, but I can’t resist an unusual print.

I am now renewing my No Clothes Shopping resolution (which also had a little accident in the fabric shop at the weekend, but that’s another post) by adding to it Don’t Go Into TK Maxx. If I don’t go there in the first place, I can’t see the lovely shirts and be tempted to buy them.

Perhaps my next project needs to be knitting up a few waistcoats or tank tops to go with them. No shopping required for that – I have stash yarn in a multitude of colours (okay, black and various shades of pink) that would go with most of these shirts perfectly.

Resolutions for 2012…

Christmas Drinks

Happy New Year!

Very much a work in progress at the moment, but there are a few things that I want to resolve for the New Year:
 
1) Stop Messing With My Hair
As you can see, at the beginning of last month I shaved off all my hair down to a grade 8, which is about an inch long. The sides are still a little bit shorter than that, owing to a disastrous haircut I’d had a couple of days earlier. I’d basically bleached and dyed my hair into such a terrible state that the only possible course of action was to get rid of it and start again. I’ve given away my remaining pink dye and bleach, so that I can’t be tempted to do it again. I really want to grow my hair long again, and find out what colour it is.

Exceptions: Non-damaging colours such as henna. (If I can be bothered.) Going to see my one and only trusted hairdresser, Mel, for proper haircuts if necessary. Otherwise, LEAVE WELL ALONE, and perhaps make some pretty hairclips or knit some pretty hats for the inevitable growing-out frustrations.
 
 
2) Stop Buying New Clothes
When I started my new job in September, I bought a lot of new clothes to go with it. Now I have those clothes, I don’t need to buy any more. I may want more TM Lewin shirts, and they may be a bargain in TK Maxx (although not as much of a bargain as the one I bought in a charity shop the other day for £4!), but I don’t actually need any more. Ditto Jeffery~West shoes, funny-coloured Doc Martens, John Rocha trousers. If I do need new-to-me clothes, I can make things, and look in charity shops or on Ebay, and alter things I have already.

Exceptions: I genuinely need a pair of smart black leather shoes. This can wait until the weather’s nice enough that I’m not wearing boots all the time, but (assuming I don’t switch straight from boots to Birkenstocks) I’ll need shoes for work, come the spring. I’m saving up for Fairysteps, Conker, or Doc Martens For Life.
 
 
3) Stop Going to the Corner Shop
Far too often, when I’m at home on my own, I find myself wandering down to the corner shop. It’s a habit left over from when I used to go to the Post Office a lot. But now I just end up buying crisps and chocolate and fizzy drinks, which are bad for my health and cost me money. I don’t need to eat those things, and I can’t afford to waste the money, so I basically need to break the habit and just stop doing it. The same applies to popping across the road to M&S on a Friday, and grabbing a sandwich to eat at work. Even worse when I’ve actually taken food with me, but just don’t fancy eating it. It’s lazy, and it’s expensive. Much easier to take soup to work, or bread for toast.

Exceptions: None. I just need to stop doing it. Unless I genuinely need something from the corner shop, like milk, or Lemsip.
 
 
4) Walk Outside Every Day
I tried hard to do this last year, and I genuinely felt better for it. But then “go outside” became conflated with “go to corner shop”, which isn’t even a particularly nice walk. This year I want to work on the garden, which is still a disaster area, so that should help. And it’s only just over half a mile to walk all the way around the lake, so if I can go for a walk with my camera, that would be lovely too. I don’t even have an excuse on the days I’m at work, because the museum has an acre of garden that I could happily sit in to eat my lunch, or walk around between toddler sessions to clear my head.

Exceptions: Weather. Although I do have boots and coats and a brolly. And even in yesterday’s horrific wind and rain, there must have been half an hour when I could have gone out without getting disastrously wet.

I want to add cycling to this one at some stage too, but I need to keep things manageable to begin with. Given that last January I paid £120 to have my bike serviced, and in the past year I’ve ridden it precisely once (home from the bike shop!) I don’t want to get too carried away.
 
 
I do have some other Resolutions in mind, to do with Making Clothes and Taking Photos and Making Art, and Living Well. Those are the ones that still need thinking about. But the ones above seem like things I could start to work on straight away, and without too much complicated effort. I’m a bit too busy for complicated effort just at the moment.