Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Feels Great To Be Crocheting Again... Or, A Little Mess Is A Good Thing!

I've always thought of crocheting as "pick-up work" – something I can keep beside my favorite chair and pick up whenever the mood strikes. Well, when my leg injuries back in March happened, I had coincidentally made one big change in my environment! At around that same time, I'd just finished doing a big clean-up of my work area (which is a large corner of my living room, at present). I put absolutely everything away where it belonged in the craft room. No more being surrounded by bags of yarn. My crochet hooks all neatly organized in a holder on my desk rather than stuck into various projects in the works. I quickly found myself being hesitant to drag anything out in order to avoid making a mess! So rather than crocheting to distract me from the pain I was going through, I was doing other things... nonproductive ones, like eating junk food and watching a lot of TV! No wonder I kept feeling more and more awful.

A few days ago I managed to get hurt yet again. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and I was out on the back patio "putzing" around in my containers of flowers and veggie plants. I barely bumped into the side of a big container with my leg, and ended up with a 7 X 1 cm. laceration, just half an inch above the topmost prior injury we've been trying to heal up for months. It was, and is, a big setback. It means another 4-6 months before this one will close up and heal. More pain, more frustration... but I'm going to deal with this one differently. I'm going to deal with it the same way I dealt with all my surgeries and everything else I've gone through - I'm going to crochet, design, and write.

A Sunflower For Betty Potholder
I started with my "to-do" list. I belong to a monthly potholder exchange group for fun. I still owed a partner a potholder for May, another for June, and here July is looming with another deadline. I also have some crocheted snowflakes I've promised to folks. I knew my May partner liked sunflowers, so I got my favorite hook out and got to work. The result, a couple of days later, is "A Sunflower For Betty." It can be used made double thickness as I did for a potholder, or it could be used as a round floral motif for something else. I hope she will like it! I'm planning to get it patterned up and published as one of my free patterns after I get the rest of my "to-do's" done. People are waiting, after all!

A Sunflower For Betty Potholder Back Side
I think I will learn to live with just a little mess surrounding me. It's always "how I've rolled" and I need to have pick-up work where I can instantly get to it.

As I write this, I have my idea for the June potholder and have started crocheting on it! I'll come back here and show you when it's done.

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