Hooking along ...

I’m having a fairly quiet weekend this one. I didn’t go to a writing group I am sort of part of yesterday, because I’ve let the writing endeavour fall by the wayside lately and would have felt farcical turning up with nothing to discuss, so I really only have bookclub fun then church today. In the meantime I have been hooking away on finishing this crochet dress for my niece. It’s so much work!

I don’t think I do crochet for quite these therapeutic reasons, having never been in depression. But, doing crochet definitely has benefits during times when I’m feeling a little anxious or disturbed. For instance, over the long weekend I went to stay with my Aunt and Uncle and was quite agitated over something (not to do with them), and I found myself crocheting quite feverishly while I was internally churning (I’ve blogged about crochet as a ‘centering pursuit’ before here). This also arose because my Aunt was knitting a cardigan while I was there, so the two of us could sit about chatting and working on our projects, and she, the Queen of all crafting pursuits, was spurring me on to finish mine. Often if I’m somewhere that involves an amount of sitting about, but requires you to be at least semi-sociable (so you can’t be reading for example!), I like having crochet to do. It also makes good occupation for a quiet weekend.

It was over the long weekend that I actually made enough progress on this dress, finishing the front and back, to feel like there was even an achievable end in sight. Even so, I seem to have spent hours on it since, weaving in ends, sewing it together, making sleeves ... and I’m still not done! It was a silly idea to begin it, but the light is now at the end of the tunnel.

So, I’m just blogging this partly as an incentive. It’s a trap of blog world to fall into doing things for the sake of blogging them, but every now and then (though certainly not always) I feel that if I write that I am undertaking something here, it gives me an extra reason to get on with it. So, now you and me both (I’m sure that applies primarily to me) can anticipate photos of the finished product. (And, of course, I've only shared this here because I now have reasonable confidence that it will, in fact, come to pass!) There’s even going to be craft happening over book club this afternoon (we discovered we all like various crafting endeavours) so I have set my goals!