A Brave New World... and a Mother’s Day card :)

Hey there folks!! :)

Hope you’re all well and had a lovely Easter!! :) Now, don’t worry, I’m not going all literary on you- the brave new world of my title has nothing to do with Aldous Huxley and everything to do with crochet!! ;) I thought as a couple of people were lovely enough to say they wanted to see my first crochet attempts that I should get on here to share before it’s time for my next Dream Valley post at the weekend...

I have been feeling very down and stressed recently as well as struggling with the usual physical symptoms of my M.E. being worse and found even making cards was increasing the stress rather than helping it as it usually would, which is why I have left the paper stash alone for a while and have been trying other things instead... the first of which was crochet :) I have wanted to have a go at it for years but have put it off because I knew I would find it painful on my hands and, well, there are just always so many cards to make and other things (like computers and phones and generally everything!!) to make my hands hurt that I haven’t got round to it... but one night I decided it was the perfect breather from cards and so, armed with two books, a YouTube instruction vid (here) for a simple beginner’s flower on my phone and my mum (to translate all the jargon!!), I had a go :)

To say I can now crochet would be a huge overstatement... but I can now crochet this particular little flower!!lol Took a long time and a lot of patience from my lovely mum but I got there in the end!! :) I did find it hard on my hands but was able to do more than I expected that first evening... the hardest part was actually the counting and remembering the pattern as my concentration and memory are basically shot atm thanks to the M.E.- don’t know how I’d get on with anything more complicated!!lol

I started with some old wool but it’s cheap acrylic and was splitting and fluffing up too much to really see what I was doing (especially when I’d pulled it apart after getting it wrong ten times over!!lol) so I moved on to some old embroidery thread which was much easier :) The nice thing about making these little flowers (only 4cm-ish across) is that they will lend themselves to cardmaking so I haven’t wasted any energy or thread... always a plus!! :)

I then decided to try and make a multi-coloured one (I was running out of long enough bits of thread at this point as I only had a few leftovers from my friendship bracelet- making youth!!lol) and a few days later, I used it to make one of my Mother’s Day cards...

I was all about the simple approach with this one as it should have been in the post already and, frankly, I really wasn’t in the mood for faffing with paper!! :S I used my Blossom Nesties ‘cos a) they’re small so less space to fill and b) they’re pretty enough to look good with little faff :) A bit of paper, a fab WMS stamp set and some pearls later and I had a reasonably nice, very easy card!! :)

The List:

• White card blank
• Blossom Nesties
• Forever Friends Springtime paper pad
• Waltzingmouse Teeny Trees stamps set
• Tea Leaves and Pixie Dust VersaMagic chalk ink pads
• Cat’s Life Press sentiment stamp
• Tiny butterfly punch (from Lakeland years ago)
• Sakura Clear Stardust pen
• Pink Flat-backed pearls
• oh- and 1 small crocheted flower :)

Well, there you have it... my first attempts at crochet :) It was tricky in ways I didn’t expect and, to be honest, the concentration issues may pose more of a barrier to doing more complex things than the pain would so will have to wait and see if I can progress to bigger and better things... but if not/until then, I can make some cute little embellies!!lol At the mo’ I’m knitting a shawl (having not knitted for a couple of years because of pain, either) and I’m hoping I’ll finally have it finished in time to share with you at the weekend!! :)