Hello, and happy weekend!
Yesterday, I returned home from a week away with my lovely mum. But this was no ordinary holiday. No...
In the last two years, for one week in spring, my mum and I have packed up our mess (yes, mum has her own craft room too – it runs in the family!); and transported a large portion of it to a cottage in the countryside for a whole week of unadulterated making.
It sounds silly. To spend a few hundred pounds on hiring a cottage in the British countryside; only to spend the whole time indoors indulging in our respective crafts. Why not just stay home, take the annual leave and save the money? We have been asked this many times by friends and family alike. Let me explain...
Anyone who has a hobby like ours will almost certainly agree: it’s an addiction. An obsession that threatens to take over your life – there are times when almost every waking minute is spent mentally designing something, picking colours, thinking about newly-learned techniques and forming shopping lists for new and exciting materials and tools. To anyone else, that sounds a little extreme. But those of you who have a craft...you know what I’m talking about.
The thing about that is...life gets in the way. You have to go to work. You have housework to do. You have other people in your life who are rightfully deserving of your time and attention. The addiction is pushed aside much of the time, awaiting those glorious yet fleeting pockets of ‘me-time’.
The unspoken agreement between myself and mum during our week away is simple: let the addiction take over. Become completely and utterly immersed. Have no distractions.
Our respective crafts become the first thing we think about when we wake up. It’s OK to get up and go straight to the craft table (which, by the way, hasn’t been tidied up the night before: it’s just been left in all its messy glory).It’s OK to forget to eat, or not get dressed until lunchtime because you just can’t tear yourself away. It’s OK to stay up until 2am just to get something finished.
It’s wonderful.
And, frankly, the daily deluge of torrential rain makes us feel a whole lot less guilty about ‘wasting’ the
countryside and staying indoors.
Yesterday, I returned home from a week away with my lovely mum. But this was no ordinary holiday. No...
In the last two years, for one week in spring, my mum and I have packed up our mess (yes, mum has her own craft room too – it runs in the family!); and transported a large portion of it to a cottage in the countryside for a whole week of unadulterated making.
It sounds silly. To spend a few hundred pounds on hiring a cottage in the British countryside; only to spend the whole time indoors indulging in our respective crafts. Why not just stay home, take the annual leave and save the money? We have been asked this many times by friends and family alike. Let me explain...
Anyone who has a hobby like ours will almost certainly agree: it’s an addiction. An obsession that threatens to take over your life – there are times when almost every waking minute is spent mentally designing something, picking colours, thinking about newly-learned techniques and forming shopping lists for new and exciting materials and tools. To anyone else, that sounds a little extreme. But those of you who have a craft...you know what I’m talking about.
The thing about that is...life gets in the way. You have to go to work. You have housework to do. You have other people in your life who are rightfully deserving of your time and attention. The addiction is pushed aside much of the time, awaiting those glorious yet fleeting pockets of ‘me-time’.
The unspoken agreement between myself and mum during our week away is simple: let the addiction take over. Become completely and utterly immersed. Have no distractions.
Our respective crafts become the first thing we think about when we wake up. It’s OK to get up and go straight to the craft table (which, by the way, hasn’t been tidied up the night before: it’s just been left in all its messy glory).It’s OK to forget to eat, or not get dressed until lunchtime because you just can’t tear yourself away. It’s OK to stay up until 2am just to get something finished.
It’s wonderful.
And, frankly, the daily deluge of torrential rain makes us feel a whole lot less guilty about ‘wasting’ the
countryside and staying indoors.
The biggest problem we face on these breaks is the dilemma of what to take. Or, more specifically, what to leave behind. Mum’s Nissan Juke, by no means a small car, can nonetheless only hold so much. The weeks leading up to the holiday become a blur of projects planned, lists written, ticked off and re-written, and materials, tools and essentials being hastily thrown into boxes, taken out in favour of something that seems more important before being desperately stuffed back in again.
The result: one seriously packed car; stuffed to the gills with things we almost certainly won’t need. But they go in anyway. Just in case. And we make no apologies for it. No regrets. That’s the beauty of it.
By the end of the 2-3 hour drive to Gloucestershire, my knees are aching from being stuffed into the tiniest possible amount of legroom; made necessary by the need to take as much crafty
stuff with us as possible. But it’s a happy kind of ache.
It’s the beginning of a beautiful week... ;-)
By the end of the 2-3 hour drive to Gloucestershire, my knees are aching from being stuffed into the tiniest possible amount of legroom; made necessary by the need to take as much crafty
stuff with us as possible. But it’s a happy kind of ache.
It’s the beginning of a beautiful week... ;-)