Crafty in the Med

I am here to enjoy meeting other bloggers and to share my love of craft ,mostly crochet, my thoughts and my daily happenings here in Alicante,Spain, my adopted country. I belong to a local choir because singing and music makes me happy. Flea markets and book shops are two of my favourite places to be. I read lots......sci´fi/fantasy,buried treasure, and off world adventures. I have a passion for history! I walk and walk and walk for about 10 months per year during the hot months I swim.

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Getting a Buzz

Short and sweet!!!  My post today ........after two weeks of silence....soon,soon,I'll be able to slow down and enjoy getting back to my blog and proper crochet. I might even be able to get back to using my sewing machine.   As the school year draws to an end and preparations for the big fire festival here has already begun, the Alicante City dwellers will be moving out to their beach apartments or villas to spend the summer months near to the sea or up in the mountains. This means my work slacks off and I can breath a little.

I am bone tired ... to the marrow...totally drained! I even think I would have put my crochet hook to one side for awhile (I shudder to think) if I hadn't seen Lucy´s from Attic 24 call out for mandalas to grace a large visual display in Yarndale this year.   As tired as I am I could not resist that!


It has made me feel so good crocheting this mandala which I call Fiery Sun over the Mediterranean. A total balm which has soothed my stressed mind!  It is my own pattern. I just sat down and did it during my restricted spare time and finished it in a week. All my own but greatly influenced by all the beautiful,original and creative crochet I have seen over these nearly three years of blogging. Three wonderful years!!!


My mandala has finally arrived into Lucy at Attic 24 hands and has been displayed here among all the other 275 glorious lovelies ....... a mass of colour and creativity.  It gives me such a buzz to see my mandala there among all the others that have arrived and keep arriving for the Yarndale mural from ALL over the world.


As I said I'm dead beat today but contemplating this ......




 doesn't take away the tiredness but has changed it to a comfy warm feeling that I can handle.





Na night all
....yawn!!!!!

Amanda :-)

Sunday 11 May 2014

I lean too much



google image


"Clocking up thoughts" I find this would be a way to describe it!
I do this and frequently, most particularly where my blog is concerned. I often "clock up"  ideas of what I am going to write about on my blog throughout the day and store them to dig into when I find the time to blog.  I actually know for a fact I had some nice tidy ideas stored away since my last posting which was two weeks!!!

Oh! my,I  didn't realize it was so long since my last post!

However my life has not been my own these last two weeks and at present my mind is so dull and idealess (now that is an invented word for you!!!) that I've been looking at my blog thinking I have nothing to write about!  I just cannot find those ideas I had stored in the deep recesses of this dull dull Sunday afternoon mind!

I know I often harp on about I am so busy,I can't blog as much as I would like and the problems of lack of time and I work too much!   I am sure there are many bloggers out there in blogland who have the same problem and I so sympathize with them!  My work dominates my life and I feel more and more stressed. I try to settle with the idea that this is just the way it has to be at present living in a recession torn country where our life has been turned upside down economically. I am not moaning about this just stating a fact and trying to accept my lot and reminding myself constantly that there are many but many people here in worse circumstances than we are. We manage as long as I work. I am lucky in the fact I do have work and a lot of it. I also have to add I am fortunate in that I really enjoy my job. 

I have, as many of us, mentioned in the past that I turn to crochet as therapy. In fact I am inclined to wonder if I don't lean on it rather heavily to eliminate stress, so much so that these last two weeks which have been really work heavy, I haven't been able to get to my crochet as much as I would like and I've been quite grumpy!
My car breaking down as depicted by the cartoon has been one of the main reasons why it has been a very stressful time and having to rely on buses and my daughter as a taxi driver ( I work in some places where there is no bus!). This really upsets my work routine and the time to get from one job to the other. I don't really want to air here much about my work as my blog is about my other life. However  for those of you who wonder what I do. I am a self-employed and a free-lance ESL/BE teacher,Learning facilitator or Instructor depending on my title where I work. I have been doing this for over 30 years in the Uk and Spain. I work for many different organizations and companies and in fact I really enjoy the variety and it means I get to meet a lot of different types of people and travel around Alicante City and the province.

These are some of the places where I am giving courses at present.

Alicante Port
Hospital MediaMar
Red Cross Alicante

Fundesem Business School

Chamber of Commerce Alicante


Getting back to the use of crochet to unwind,I often wonder about this phenomenon,this use of crochet as therapy and have been reading a little here and there and found the following:

Crochet Saved My Life

By Kathryn Vercillo



Kathryn Vercillo writes “Crochet can serve as a form of meditation,” she writes. “It provides you with a focused task that distracts you from the drama that sometimes takes over the brain and tries to wreak havoc there. And it allows you to feel like you are producing and creating something even when you can’t get out of bed and you can barely open your eyes to notice the passing of one day into another.”






 I so like what Kathryn comments here. Her words seem to confirm to me that it is alright to be addictive to crochet and it is alright to use it as therapy and I am not alone as there are many more people out there who use crafts in this way!
Lets face it some people climb mountains ,I constantly crochet....not a great deal of difference!
It is after all meditation ....yes I like to think I am meditating as I wield my hook!!!!


**********************
Here is my latest make completed after nearly three weeks....three weeks to make a bonnet tch!!!
This one is all my own pattern and should fit an 18 month to 2 year old .


Hook Nยบ 2.50   Nยบ 5 Ofil perle cotton in purple and salmon

This will be sent off tomorrow to a little Devonshire maid who lives in Ellacombe.

I call it a Zinnia Bonnet




Keep smiling!!!!


Amanda :-)