"the secret of getting ahead is getting started...."

"the secret of getting ahead is getting started...." says Mark Twain who after a quick tab hop to good old Wikipedia wrote some pretty famous stuff.


My initial blast back into blogging sadly did not last long. Exams and work took over and I took a little break and just never came back. At the time I put it down to having too much other stuff on but as time went on and I had more time for blogging I just never felt in the mood to sit down and write anything. It became clear over the weeks that something just wasn't right, and there was more to my resistance to blog than just being too busy. I had time to go to the gym, to watch a couple of series of Orange is the New Black, and even a bit of crochet, but not for blogging it seemed. 

I had been so exited to attend the blogging spectacular that is Blogtacular next weekend but last weekend I got in a grump. A massive grump which I just couldn't shake. Whether this was actually down to trying on a zillion dresses for the weekend and none of them 'looking right', or whether it was down to my wobbles about this old blog here I'm not sure (I suspect the latter), I figured out the problem (s):

1. I didn't like the look of my blog. I wanted something cleaner, less fussy, more streamlined. I wanted the font to be bigger on the main body of the posts. I wanted it to look more cohesive. I just didn't like how it was to the point of feeling a bit embarrassed by it. 

2. This blog was primarily a crochet blog. I wanted to provide tutorials and share my foray into the design world. Do I do much crochet? Yes, pretty much on a daily basis but its slow going. Do I design? Not at the moment.

3. I have a full-time job which has nothing to do with my creative side (aside from making santa hats for colleagues at Christmas) and I spend a lot of time on the road at weekends meaning that anything I do creatively has to be squished into a couple of hours in the evening.

So what to do? I don't want to give up on this blog (it turns 3 on 6th July, though until I checked just now I swore it was going to be 4) as once I am in a rhythm I really enjoy the process of putting a post together. I was also really REALLY looking forward to the speakers at Blogtacular (Lisa Congdon AHHHHH) and meeting some of my favourite bloggers (a bit nervous about that one admittedly). Train tickets are now booked so can't back out now :-)

Here is my plan then (cos I love a good plan):

1. The blog layout. I hope you have noticed but I have given it a bit of a makeover to something I'm almost proud of (or happy for others to see!). I have Pete to thank for his huge amount of patience with my whilst I was a bit of a nightmare over the weekend. Please let me know what you think :-)

2. I have been thinking and thinking about the focus of this blog so expect to see a bit of a shift over the next few months. My main creative outlet is still crochet so you will still be lots of that, but I am looking forward to trying out some other crafts and sharing them with you. I have been doing some linocut prints which you may have seen over on Instagram. Following on to my next issue......

3. Life it not easy. Fact. Life it not always pretty. Fact (If you need any more evidence for this you should see the inside of my car after driving 400 miles every weekend. Whilst skittles are great for an energy boost they aren't quite so great when melted into your passenger seat or floor mats). 

I want to use this blog to celebrate the snippets of time you can grab to interject creativity into every day life, whether you have a day, an hour or 10 minutes. I want to show you pretty pictures, and some not so pretty  pictures- taking photos of crochet in the winter months when you are out of the house during all the the limited daylight hours is a bit of an art form. I want to showcase and celebrate the creativity of others by sharing my favourite blog posts, instagram feeds and podcasts. I want to show that even if you do not have much time it is still possible to make something, be it something tangiable or something you gobble up in five minutes. Most of all I want to tell a story, a story of a regular late twenty something who still has a messy bedroom and can quite happily drink tea from the same mug (and sometimes use the same teabag) all day, someone who loves to create, cook, eat, drink beer and still knows the lyrics to all of the Spice Girls. 

So I've started, and I hope you will continue to follow along on my journey.

Now to reward myself with a cuppa (clean cup, second use on the teabag- its peppermint tea so thats definitely ok no?) and a bit of chocolate.

See you after Blogtacular!