How 'bout those Good Intentions?

I cannot believe how much time has passed since I wrote on this here blog about my good intentions.  Surely, you have all given up on me. Still, I thought I’d pop ‘round to tell you a bit of what I’ve been doing, and a bit more about my plans for the future. And about those good intentions, and how those intentions are turning out better than I could ever have hoped and dreamed (well, apart from the ‘blogging regularly’ thing. That bit I still have to work on)(obviously). (I mean, if it’s July (which it is) and your blog header is a picture of a thick woolly blanket on a sled in the snow, then maybe it’s time to reconsider the whole blogging thing) (but more of that later).

It won’t  come as a surprise that I haven’t done any stitching. Well, I still work on the Blue Lady every now and then, but that’s it. What will surprise you, ,though, is that I’ve made a bit of a career change. For nigh-on fourteen years I’ve worked as a translator of children’s books, novels and romance novels (yay for Harlequin!), but I just couldn’t cope anymore. Although Pelle is a dear boy, taking care of him requires an enormous amount of energy. Kathy Lette wrote a book about the care for her autistic son, and she described it perfectly. As the parent of a ‘special needs child’, you need to be specialised in just about everything. You have to fight all day, every day, to get what’s best for your child. And of course, there’s the care for the child itself, which can be a terrible drain, especially when he’s going through a rough time. Anyway, with everything going on, I couldn’t get any sensible words on the page at all, and my heart really hadn’t been in my work for years. In the meantime the good doctors have discovered what syndrom Pelle suffers from (behind every developmental delay is some form of brain damage, after all): it’s the very rare Coffin-Siris syndrom.  I’m relieved to know that it actually has a name, but it’s all still very vague. Pelle lacks a good number of the main characteristics of the syndrom  (and thank goodness for that), but his behavioral  problems are still mostly unexplained. We’ll just have to wait and see how this all develops…

Whilst making decisions and re-arranging my life, I happened upon a blog by Dutch designer Wieke van Keulen. I loved her designs, admired her blog, and one day last year, Wieke mentioned in her blog that she was looking for someone to translate her crochet and knitting patterns into English. ‘Well’, thought I, ‘I haven’t got a chance in hell, but I’m going to reply anyway’. And so I did. And Wieke picked me! Since then, I’ve been very busy translating Wieke’s patterns AND making shop models for the local yarn shop. And now that I’m working for the yarn shop, the owner of said shop has asked me to do any number of little things for her (making blankets and shawls of my own ‘design’ for the shop, showing off the gorgeous yarn they sell there) (although when I say ‘design’ you should take that with a grain or twelve of salt, because really, all I ever do are granny squares or just plain garter stitch knitting, but that’s just my thing. It’s the colours and the yarn I’m mostly interested in. You can do SO MUCH with the right colour. You don’t need a fancy design to make something gorgeous). 

Now that I’m part of the Dutch knitting and crocheting elite (brouhahahahaha) and I meet all these fantastically sweet and gifted people, I’m learning new things every day. Spinning, dyeing, new techniques. And when the new season starts, in September, I will be giving workshops as well. I know it sounds like a lot, and I have the feeling I hardly ever sleep anymore, but I’m bursting with energy and joy, and I haven’t been so happy in quite a while.

And now we come to the part – the only part of this new life that I’m still uncertain about: this blog. I’m going to leave it as it is for now, but I’m starting a new blog in Dutch, which will focus on my extracurricular crafting acticivities, such as crocheting and knitting and making for the shop. If and when I do get the urge to stitch, or actually DO any stitching, you will be the first to know. I’m not saying goodbye to you, because this isn’t goodbye.  Meanwhile, if you’d like to keep up (at least with pictures of Pelle and the terrorist monkeys known as Pantoef and Pipien), go visit ’t Atelier van Tante An.

Much love,

Annemarie.

Good intentions

Ooph, I’ve been away for a bit, haven’t I? Truth is, it took me this long to get over the Christmas hols, and I’m not even kidding. Is it too late to wish you all a happy new year? Well, I’m going to anyway.  I hope 2013 will bring you much joy, health, peacefulness and lots of crafty fun. I always make my new year’s resolutions around the time of my birthday (which is in November) and I tend to stick to them.

Fascinated as I’m sure you would be to read the more personal plans I have for this year, I’m sure you’re even more interested in my stitchy, hooky and knitty plans. Or possibly not, but I’m going to bore you with them anyway. On the stitchy front, my plans are pretty straightforward: just DO it. STITCH something. Anything. Just plain x-es on linen. I’ve done it before, surely I can do it again and get some enjoyment out of it.

On the hooky front, my plans are basically the same as they have been for two years: make blankets and shawls. I’d like to finish two blankets this year. One of them was inspired by the film Nanny McPhee, wherein one of the children has a blanket that just BEGS to be made by me. For Pelle.  A very old-fashioned, very simple but extraordinarily super fantastic granny square blanket. Here it is, on the sled, in all its old-time glory.

The other blanket is just something I shamelessly stole from Kristen at Cozy Things, who promises peacefulness and balance whilst hooking, and as the words peacefulness and balance always lure me into starting anything associated with them, I couldn’t help it:

The colours aren’t particularly restful to the eye, but It’s to be a summer blanket, lined with the flowery fabric you see in the picture. The fabric used to be a curtain for a day and a half, before I decided it looked atrocious next to the petite antique-looking samplers on my walls. So it was either take down the curtain or the samplers. The curtain went. I’m not that far gone yet!

Now my knitty plans fort his year are … ambitious, to say the least. Especially because I’m still, despite my very best efforts, a hooky person more than a knitty person. But I will do it. I will, I will, I will. My plans (which I shall disclose in my next post) require me to learn the two-handed fair isle technique, which looks very meditative and, dare I say, easy when you see someone doing it in those deceptive videos over on YouTube. Of course, as soon as I take knitting needles and yarn in hands, I tense up and cling to the needles as if I’m in mortal peril. I just need to learn to relax when I see a knitting needle. So that is another one of my knitty new year’s resolutions: to relax whilst knitting. And here is the proof that I’m learning.

Yours resolutionary,

Annemarie.