Every winter I choose a creative project to help me slow down and flow into rest – a sort of hibernation project. One year I learnt to knit socks, another I stitched hundreds of tiny multi coloured fabric triangles together to make a quilt top. After 30 years of making quilts for everyone else, this … Continue reading The Menopause Shawl
Side have launched a campaign to #saveside and I have spent the last week trying to think how I could contribute to it. Like so many families in the UK and around the world just now, money is a very real struggle. And so, I have decided to offer you the chance to win one of my handmade patchwork quilts. A quilt for a quid. £1. One single pound sterling.
There was a time, within living memory, when a wooden darning mushroom would be as much an essential household item as a dustpan and brush and reusing old clothes to make new tops for patchwork quilts was just what everyone did. Perhaps you remember a button jar – my Gran’s was a pressed glass biscuit … Continue reading Rebel, Resist, Mend.
In March 1942, the UK Government rationed supplies of coal, gas and electricity as part of wartime efforts to conserve energy. You might remember that from history lessons, or parents’ and grandparents’ wartime stories. In the Autumn of 2022, similar rationing strategies were discussed by the UK Government, though interestingly, they were never implemented. Increasing … Continue reading Cooking up a Storm
Somehow, we are in March already, and the biting winds of winter are giving way to milder weather. The need to stay home and cosy, immersed in recovering my creativity and focusing in on rest, is gently ebbing away, replaced by a rising sap of energy to do, to be, to clear the decks and … Continue reading Revolutionary Rebellion – Restorative Rest for Creative Mothers
After two months of rest, and a week of illness, I am stepping out of the skin I needed to wear to get through it all and finding myself faced with the utter joy of reclaiming my creative life – seeing myself in the mirror again, instead of the tired warrior who needs a good strong cup of tea, and a month of early nights.
The words have been stuck. As though something in the smooth flow of brain to fingers, heart to throat, soul to spoken word, has shattered into irretrievable bits that I couldn't put back together, and the words were all everywhere and nowhere, building up like water against solid rock. What has always come so easy, … Continue reading In a world where everything is breaking, mend whatever you can.
When I was in my early twenties, I went on a date with a man who, as my Gran would say, could have charmed the birds from the trees. He was polite, opened doors for me, did that old fashioned waiting-til-you-sit-down-before-he-does thing. I remember sitting across from him at a Chinese restaurant he had chosen … Continue reading Creative Call : #redflagsproject
I don't think I have ever, in my life, struggled with finding words as much as I have this past 3 months. Lockdown life is bewildering, challenging, tearful, gloriously quiet, restful, heartachingly sad, furiously angry, grief filled, joyful, and all the feelings inbetween. Often all of the feelings all in one go, which is a … Continue reading The Ballad of Lockdown Life
Craft, whether of words or paint, yarn or cloth, has always been the beating heart of my life. The fuel that takes me through each day of my journey in this world. There has never been a time when I have not used creativity as a crutch to hold my head above the stormy waves … Continue reading Crafting Our Way Through Corona
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