Clarity

Hey my dudes,

Life has been a little, hectic lately.

The end of January into the start of February is always a tough time of year for me. I have zero energy, I feel lost and I don't want to go anywhere or do anything.

It feels like my creative mind is overwhelmed and nothing is every good enough. That I'm never doing my best and I'm never giving enough.

Designing and creating takes time. Often there's quite a learning process for it myself as I integrate new elements of design or colour into my patterns. There's so many things that I start that never get off the ground. And so many blankets and patterns that are just variations of a simple idea that I never feel are worthy enough of posting here.

The start of the year is always filled with good intentions for me, and then I overwhelm myself. And then the imposter syndrome starts. If anyone is curious about imposter syndrome Amanda Palmer explains it the best, she talks about it often, in her blog, in her book, on her TED talk. Imposter syndrome is when you feel that you're not good enough, you're just faking it and when everyone finds out you'll be exposed for the fool that you are.

And that's Spring for me.

At the end of February, I start to get my groove back a little, I still feel overwhelmed by college and everything else, but I start to gain a little perspective on it and I can pace myself a little better. Doing small projects, working on little things like hats mean that I can get that sense of satisfaction and move onto other bigger things.

I'm currently working on two hat designs, one I was designing with the intention of submitting to a book. Today is the deadline. I'm not submitting it.

You can say imposter syndrome got the better of me.

You can say I overwhelm myself with too much work.

But right now, I need to take a step back from it all. 

I need to remind myself why I'm doing the course that I'm doing. Why I want to be a midwife. Why I enjoy knitting and crochet.

It's a healing experience for me, its soothing and it helps me relax and destress. It also allows me to be creative and open my mind. 

I wouldn't call myself a great artist. I can't draw or paint. But with yarn in my hands and a needle or a hook I can create great beauty. And that's special.

I aim to release patterns here on a monthly basis. AIM being the operative word.

The pattern that I am designing for submission to the book will be the first pattern that I will release for sale in my Ravelry store. 

The second hat will be available here on my blog for free and also available as a free download on Ravelry.

Sometimes you need to stop and smell the roses. Look around see the woods for the trees. Today I am swamped, by deadlines and assignments. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and today I need to just keep swimming.

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That would have been a perfect place to sign off I know, but I hate having blog posts with no pictures so here's a photo of a cross stitch that I recently did. I have too many hobbies.