2018 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2019 (get a cup of tea, this is a long one...)
Happy New Year!
It's that time of year when we all tend to look back at the last twelve months and think of all the things that went right (or wrong) over the year. I know that I have been doing a lot of that since just before the winter solstice.
2018 was a transformative year in my life.
First, I made it through a whole year without having to have surgery! That was a blessing that does not go unnoticed, especially since I have many friends and acquaintances who have faced (and continue to face) some pretty major health challenges this year.
Second, I finally got a promotion in my career that I have been working towards for a couple of years now. I love the new direction that I am heading, but it has been a heavy year for learning that has sapped a lot of my brain power (I'll touch more on that in a bit).
Third, my son moved out just before summer and I became an empty nester. I think that it took me a little while to recognize the effect this had on me. While I always thought that after my kids flew the nest I would have all this time and energy to do all the things I put off doing while they were my focus, what actually happened was that I didn't know what to do. I've always been an introverted person and was used to a quiet life, but I suddenly had no one. Don't get me wrong, I'm close with my kids and with my family, but I had no one at home to talk to or watch a movie with or cook a meal for and it affected me more than I thought it would. It is still affecting me... I'm just more aware of it now.
Along with all of these transformations, I've had to come to term with a few things. The main one being this business, Frosty Brooks Fibre Arts, that I made the "big announcement" about just over a year ago. In the pit of my stomach, as I was announcing it and building my Facebook page, I just knew that it was a mistake. I thought that by going public I was making myself accountable and that would force me into some kind of momentum to get things going, but I knew that I wasn't ready. So I did nothing. In fact, I withdrew from the idea almost completely. Not only did I not do anything to advance this "business" I had just launched, but I practically stopped making anything for myself!
I started out the year pretty good... I had plans, I had focus... I was working on some spinning projects, I was planning for the quilt festival and I had plans for a year of knitting mittens and colourwork. About 2-3 months into the year, it all came to a grinding halt. I didn't finish any quilts in time to get them into the quilt festival, I stopped spinning and I stopped knitting. All those patterns that were coming together in my mind never made it on to paper. I completely lost my creative mojo.
A big part of this was, as I said before, that my brain power was all going into training for my new career, but it was also fear. Fear that I was a failure because I didn't know how to actually start my business and fear that I didn't really WANT to.
If I look back over the year I actually finished:
3 quilts - 2 for charity and 1 that I tried to sell unsuccessfully
4 knitted projects - 1 gift and 3 for myself that I'm not incredibly happy with (also haven't taken pictures of all of them)
1 spinning project - I really liked this one
I also didn't have a very successful year in the garden because I didn't spend the time there that I really needed to. This is a whole other story though...
So, we rolled into December and I started thinking about how unhappy I was with my lack of creativity over the year and started trying to figure out what went wrong. Here is what I realized:
For the past couple of years, I've been putting a lot of restrictions on myself. On the surface, these seem like pretty good restrictions, and I still agree with them in some ways, but I need to look at them a little more closely.
I can't buy any yarn or fabric until I use what I have
I would call my stash in both of these areas moderate. I have bins for my yarn and a cabinet for my fabric that I limit myself from growing out of. This is good, as I have never wanted to be a person with a store-sized stash. However, my taste for the yarn I want to knit with has changed drastically and my stash doesn't contain a lot of yarns that I am drawn to. I may have talked about this in my Flash my Stash post from the beginning of the year, but as a new knitter, I bought a lot of bright colours and single skeins of yarn because they were fun and new. Now, as a more experienced knitter, I want to make bigger projects like sweaters, but if I'm not "allowed" to buy more yarn then I can't knit the things I want to make and so I knit nothing...
This self-imposed rule hasn't affected my quilting as much because I still love 95% of the fabrics that I've accumulated. However...
I can't start any new projects until I finish the ones I already started
I have 10 or 11 quilting UFOs (unfinished objects). The majority of these projects are quite large and they take me a long time. I procrastinate on the quilting part of the making, mostly because I only have a small sewing machine and quilting a queen-size quilt is a LOT of work when you're stuffing it through a tiny machine. I love the piecing of the top and have even learned to love hand sewing on the binding at the end, but all that stuff that has to happen in the middle... it takes a while! BUT... I have all these great ideas that pop into my mind for small projects that wouldn't take me long at all and I'm not "allowed" to do them because of those 10 (or 11) quilts sitting in the to-do pile. So projects that I could finish in a week or two get put into a notebook (if they're lucky) because I have 4 queen-sized quilts that need to get finished first, but I don't WANT to work on those projects and so I quilt nothing...
Noticing a trend here?
Here is what I've decided to change:
I CAN buy new yarn, but ONLY if I'm buying it for a specific project that I plan to cast on within the month. Same goes for quilting fabric - no more buying new fabric just because it's pretty.
I CAN start new quilting projects or try new techniques whenever I want, but I need to keep one old project in the rotation.
I have also made the somewhat controversial decision to do no charity projects in 2019. I love giving to charity, but I also need to be able to make stuff for me and my family. I really dislike the term "selfish knitter" or "selfish quilter", but I do feel like I need to be a little more "selfish" in the coming year.
I have also decided that I am going to take down my business page on Facebook and draw back my plans to launch a business. I don't have the time or, let's be honest, the following to launch something successfully. Instead, in 2019 I want to focus on going deeper. I want to try the new techniques, make the designs, and explore and if a business comes out of that eventually that's great, but for now I want to explore and learn and develop my creative identity (more to come on that in the future, I'm sure.) For now, this blog will keep the same title, but it might change as I move throughout the year. I want to make a real effort to write more this year, but this will probably be more of a lifestyle blog, not just fibre arts related.
So, Happy New Year everyone! May 2019 bring you health and blessings and the creative fire that fits in your life and may we all have a good year!
It's that time of year when we all tend to look back at the last twelve months and think of all the things that went right (or wrong) over the year. I know that I have been doing a lot of that since just before the winter solstice.
2018 was a transformative year in my life.
First, I made it through a whole year without having to have surgery! That was a blessing that does not go unnoticed, especially since I have many friends and acquaintances who have faced (and continue to face) some pretty major health challenges this year.
Second, I finally got a promotion in my career that I have been working towards for a couple of years now. I love the new direction that I am heading, but it has been a heavy year for learning that has sapped a lot of my brain power (I'll touch more on that in a bit).
Third, my son moved out just before summer and I became an empty nester. I think that it took me a little while to recognize the effect this had on me. While I always thought that after my kids flew the nest I would have all this time and energy to do all the things I put off doing while they were my focus, what actually happened was that I didn't know what to do. I've always been an introverted person and was used to a quiet life, but I suddenly had no one. Don't get me wrong, I'm close with my kids and with my family, but I had no one at home to talk to or watch a movie with or cook a meal for and it affected me more than I thought it would. It is still affecting me... I'm just more aware of it now.
Along with all of these transformations, I've had to come to term with a few things. The main one being this business, Frosty Brooks Fibre Arts, that I made the "big announcement" about just over a year ago. In the pit of my stomach, as I was announcing it and building my Facebook page, I just knew that it was a mistake. I thought that by going public I was making myself accountable and that would force me into some kind of momentum to get things going, but I knew that I wasn't ready. So I did nothing. In fact, I withdrew from the idea almost completely. Not only did I not do anything to advance this "business" I had just launched, but I practically stopped making anything for myself!
I started out the year pretty good... I had plans, I had focus... I was working on some spinning projects, I was planning for the quilt festival and I had plans for a year of knitting mittens and colourwork. About 2-3 months into the year, it all came to a grinding halt. I didn't finish any quilts in time to get them into the quilt festival, I stopped spinning and I stopped knitting. All those patterns that were coming together in my mind never made it on to paper. I completely lost my creative mojo.
A big part of this was, as I said before, that my brain power was all going into training for my new career, but it was also fear. Fear that I was a failure because I didn't know how to actually start my business and fear that I didn't really WANT to.
If I look back over the year I actually finished:
3 quilts - 2 for charity and 1 that I tried to sell unsuccessfully
4 knitted projects - 1 gift and 3 for myself that I'm not incredibly happy with (also haven't taken pictures of all of them)
1 spinning project - I really liked this one
I also didn't have a very successful year in the garden because I didn't spend the time there that I really needed to. This is a whole other story though...
So, we rolled into December and I started thinking about how unhappy I was with my lack of creativity over the year and started trying to figure out what went wrong. Here is what I realized:
For the past couple of years, I've been putting a lot of restrictions on myself. On the surface, these seem like pretty good restrictions, and I still agree with them in some ways, but I need to look at them a little more closely.
I can't buy any yarn or fabric until I use what I have
I would call my stash in both of these areas moderate. I have bins for my yarn and a cabinet for my fabric that I limit myself from growing out of. This is good, as I have never wanted to be a person with a store-sized stash. However, my taste for the yarn I want to knit with has changed drastically and my stash doesn't contain a lot of yarns that I am drawn to. I may have talked about this in my Flash my Stash post from the beginning of the year, but as a new knitter, I bought a lot of bright colours and single skeins of yarn because they were fun and new. Now, as a more experienced knitter, I want to make bigger projects like sweaters, but if I'm not "allowed" to buy more yarn then I can't knit the things I want to make and so I knit nothing...
This self-imposed rule hasn't affected my quilting as much because I still love 95% of the fabrics that I've accumulated. However...
I can't start any new projects until I finish the ones I already started
I have 10 or 11 quilting UFOs (unfinished objects). The majority of these projects are quite large and they take me a long time. I procrastinate on the quilting part of the making, mostly because I only have a small sewing machine and quilting a queen-size quilt is a LOT of work when you're stuffing it through a tiny machine. I love the piecing of the top and have even learned to love hand sewing on the binding at the end, but all that stuff that has to happen in the middle... it takes a while! BUT... I have all these great ideas that pop into my mind for small projects that wouldn't take me long at all and I'm not "allowed" to do them because of those 10 (or 11) quilts sitting in the to-do pile. So projects that I could finish in a week or two get put into a notebook (if they're lucky) because I have 4 queen-sized quilts that need to get finished first, but I don't WANT to work on those projects and so I quilt nothing...
Noticing a trend here?
Here is what I've decided to change:
I CAN buy new yarn, but ONLY if I'm buying it for a specific project that I plan to cast on within the month. Same goes for quilting fabric - no more buying new fabric just because it's pretty.
I CAN start new quilting projects or try new techniques whenever I want, but I need to keep one old project in the rotation.
I have also made the somewhat controversial decision to do no charity projects in 2019. I love giving to charity, but I also need to be able to make stuff for me and my family. I really dislike the term "selfish knitter" or "selfish quilter", but I do feel like I need to be a little more "selfish" in the coming year.
I have also decided that I am going to take down my business page on Facebook and draw back my plans to launch a business. I don't have the time or, let's be honest, the following to launch something successfully. Instead, in 2019 I want to focus on going deeper. I want to try the new techniques, make the designs, and explore and if a business comes out of that eventually that's great, but for now I want to explore and learn and develop my creative identity (more to come on that in the future, I'm sure.) For now, this blog will keep the same title, but it might change as I move throughout the year. I want to make a real effort to write more this year, but this will probably be more of a lifestyle blog, not just fibre arts related.
So, Happy New Year everyone! May 2019 bring you health and blessings and the creative fire that fits in your life and may we all have a good year!
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