Why I craft

So many people ask me why I enjoy both cross stitching and knitting and I can very simply say that it helps me stitch my mind back together. That might sound very odd to a lot of people but let me explain what I am trying to say and maybe you will understand it a little better. 

For me finding that time each day to do something that makes me happy and helps me focus on everything that is going on in my life helps a lot. There are times when I can sit and work on a project either cross stitch or knitting and I can figure out the solution that I have trying to figure for quite a while before I sit down and craft. My crafting can help me regain the focus that is needed to resolve an issue that has been something that I have been dealing with for a while.

It has been interesting to see my crafting life through the years and I can say that crafting has helped me through high school, college and every other part of my life because it gives me an escape from the things that are happening in my life. My crafting has been able to bring me join when I wasn’t sure how to be happy especially when going through the exam times of both high school and college. The challenges of those times were difficult but being able to find that little bit of time to sit and craft helped me regain my focus. 

During Covid, so many people turned to crafting as a means of handling being at home all the time but for me crafting was just something that I did because it was a normal part of my life. I might have done more crafting during the time we were required to be at home, but it didn’t seem to be something that I only did when we were in lockdown.

Later in life I have found that crafting has helped me stay grounded when things has seemed to get overwhelming. Being able to focus on my crafting even for a little bit each day has helped me know that I can get through anything that life continues to throw at me. I know there are there are times I am going to need a simpler project, but I normally have one of those ready to go and then there are times that I need a challenging project.

I craft because that is part of my life and that is also what makes me happy and it something that I find helps me relax at the end of a crazy day. Maybe crafting isn’t something that everyone would want to do but we need to understand that crafting may help someone find the peace in their life when life just seems to get out of control.

What makes me happy

I have been thinking about what makes me happy and I can honestly say it depends on the day. For me a lot of the things are very simple, and I guess I could say obvious but now to try and write some of them down.

Spending time with family – being able to spend time with my husband and my sister and her family makes me happy. It is nice when my husband and I can just do-little simple things like going for a drive in the country just to escape the routine of everyday. Even sitting after dinner and just chatting about nothing in general is also what makes me happy.

Sitting on a patio – when the weather is nice, I enjoy being able to sit on a patio and either people watch or watch airplanes if the patio is near an airport. Being able to just enjoy the warm weather while sitting outside is so nice and something we try and do. I love watching airplanes so being able to watch them land or take off is a nice thing for me to do. The patio doesn’t have to be near an airport for me to be happy because there have been times we have just decided to go out and have a coffee and sit on a patio and that has been nice.

Crafting – my crafting makes me happy because I can lose myself in doing something that I enjoy doing. I can do this alone or sitting with others, but my crafting is a means for me to escape and recharge my personal battery. I do enjoy seeing things finished but I enjoy just working on the various projects and when they are close to being done, I am trying to figure out what the next project will be. My happiest place is the actual working on the projects and seeing a finish is secondary to the progress.

Writing – yes this might sound a little different but yes, my writing makes me happy when I can see that I have achieved something, be it a blog, a story or just some fun notes. My writing is what brings me joy a lot of the time.

There are so many little things that make me happy and I know that it depends on each person what makes them happy. For some people it is being among a group of friends and spending time with them and other’s it is just spending time at home and relaxing. It doesn’t matter what you do to make you happy if you realize that some of the simple things may be part of what makes you happy as well.

Crafting for charity

I have been able to use some of my crafting skills to help a few different organizations in the past and have enjoyed most of the experiences.

Here is some of what I have done:

• Lapghans for veterans
• Toques for children started kindergarten
• Preemie hats and booties
• Knit items for children for a low income community Christmas campaign
• Baby hats for a hospital
• Baby afghans for a hospital

Of course each different organization has their different needs and wants. It has been interesting over the last 20 years how the demands have changed. In some cases the demands keep growing and then in other areas the demand seems to disappear. I am looking at some of the items that I did in the past and still think there is a need but there is no outlet for these items.

A toque in progress

Toques for children starting kindergarten was a program in my neighbourhood and I enjoyed doing this at first. The idea was that I would help them by making hats and mittens or even just hats for children that were in the community who may not have that winter hat. It was a lot of fun because I found a pattern that I enjoyed working on and I could make hats easily. The project then became something that I didn’t enjoy when I would get a phone call asking for 30 hats within two weeks. Of course I normally had a few hats finished between the times I dropped them off but trying to get 30 hats done in 14 days or less was a challenge. The other thing about this program was after making hats, and having friends also make hats, we didn’t see any of the hats within the community. Our neighbourhood isn’t very large in size but it is large in population but you think we would have seem a few of the hats. I continued with this program for a while as I wanted to help the children in the community but after getting calls a couple of times for a large number of hats within a short period I decided it was time to find something else that I enjoyed doing.

Small sweater for a little boy

The knit items for the Christmas campaign was interesting to work on because we could make anything from baby hats to kids sweaters because all of those items were needed. This meant that there was a group of us that worked on this project and we could make what we wanted and there wasn’t a demand for a specific item most of the time. Again this program changed when there was a staffing change where the campaign was managed and they started to want specific items but didn’t provide the list until near the time when the items were needed. Of course, most of us had been working throughout the year to make things we enjoyed making and the charity didn’t want what was available. I then decided it was time to stop helping them as well as it was difficult to meet their needs as well.

Lapghan for veterans

Lapghans for veterans was a project that I took on myself and I did it for a few years. I was working on making some smaller afghans around 36” x 46” which could be used in a wheelchair. This was a project that I really enjoyed because it meant that I was helping some veterans that had helped Canada in the past. I loved this project but my interests changed and I wasn’t able to manage to keep up with the making of lapghans. I may go back to this in the future but it will be a different method of making the lapghans. I was making granny squares for these afghans and it was the joining them together that got something that I wasn’t interested in doing.

Preemie hats and booties was a project that I did through Guardian Drugs as they collected the hats and booties and they were given to various hospitals. Preemies when they were born had a hat and booties to help keep them warm and I loved this program as these items were quick to make. The program disappeared when Guardian Drug was bought out so the outlet was no longer available.

Baby hats ready to go to hospital

The two items that I am still doing are baby hats and baby afghans for a hospital. I have found a hospital that wants and needs both of these and they have given me the freedom with the hats and afghans. I asked them what colours they wanted and they replied “any colour you want to make”. I asked what size hats and afghans and they again replied “whatever you want to make”. Having this freedom of colour and size makes it so much more interesting to work on. I have been having fun with this for around 4 years now and this year will be the first time that I will be taking a bunch of afghans to them. Hats have been delivered thanks to a friend a few times a year to the hospital and I know that they really appreciate what they get and when they get them. With this project I am going to try and find out what there needs are so that maybe I will be able to better help meet their needs in the future.

Baby afghan ready for hospital

Crafting for charity can be very rewarding when you are doing something that you enjoy doing. I enjoy spending some of my evenings crafting and now I have an outlet for some of my projects. My interests may change again and I will then have to figure out another charity what could use what I do. Until then I am going to continue to make the hats and afghans for the hospital and enjoy that as I know people that have received a hat appreciated it.

Crafting

For a lot of people when you say that you craft you will get an interesting look. In some ways it is fun to see the reactions that you get when people realize that you do crafts besides the type of work that you do.

There have been times when people have realized that I craft that I get this very odd look which is hard to explain. Some people say “I don’t like like someone that would craft” and my immediate reaction is “I didn’t think people looked a certain way to craft”. I think what people are trying to say is that considering the type of work that I do they are surprised that I also spend my free time doing something creative. Actually for me being able to write is another means of being creative because it lets me think things through differently so that I can ensure that people will understand what they are reading.

For me, my crafts are a way to relax at the end of the day. It also gives me a chance to do some of the thinking that I need to do. I use my crafting in the evenings as a way of thinking through some of the challenges that I have been dealing with throughout the day. I don’t know how many times that in the middle of crafting that I have come up with the solution to a problem that I have been dealing with earlier in the day. In some cases I have actually put down the crafting and gone back to the task I was dealing with earlier in the day to see if the solution I came up with will really work. If I can’t get back to the task I will at least document the solution that I have thought up so that I can try it out when I am back at the specific task.

Crafting for me is a means of stitching my mind back together at the end of the day. It helps me tie up all the loose ends on the things that I have been dealing with. Crafting is also a means of relaxation for me and it is something that is important. Relaxing helps everyone deal with the rest of life a lot easier so having some time for yourself at the end of the day is important.

Crafting is also a method for me to show a different side of me. I have been able to spend some time even using my crafting as a means of communicating some of who I am. Quite a bit of my crocheting and knitting has been given to charity as these two projects are things that I do while sitting and watching television at the end of the day. Being able to have some results of sitting at the end of the day makes me feel so good. The other thing that I spend some of my relaxing time doing is cross-stitch and I have got into some designing and that has been a means of showing my creative side to people. The cross-stitch that I have been doing have been for enjoyment and I have also been able to show them at a couple of Art Shows which is great. The Art Shows that I have been able to participate in are at Science Fiction conventions and I have enjoyed doing them because it helps me focus on some of the designs.

Crafting is a little different for everyone but finding something that you enjoy doing is a good thing. It maybe colouring in an adult colouring book or playing with modelling clay but it is a means of expressing yourself. Crafting isn’t something that I do all day but it is something that I try to put in my schedule most days. An hour a day doesn’t seem very long but at least it gives me the time to relax and enjoy something a little different than what I do on a daily basis for work.