I'm feeling a bit stressed, which is odd. Now, I know a lot of people are stressed this time of year, but that's people how try to juggle work, gift shopping for the kids, Christmas dinner preparations and more at the same time. I don't have a job, I live in a family that don't do a lot of gift giving and julbordet is mainly my mom's task. So why do I feel stressed and restless on and off these days?
I guess a large portion of it is "residue stress" from ordering things online, making choices of what to buy and what not to buy, hoping they'll make it in time for Christmas and part is that I want certain things done before the new year. And then there's the daily advent calendar contests and giveaways I don't want to miss. Or maybe it's just a late reaction on the whole turning 30 thing. "I'm getting old, time's precious and shouldn't be spent in front of the computer", "what am I doing with my life", "everyone my age's got man, babies, home of their own and careers" "I'm tired of people seeing me as a failure, but am lost for what to do" sort of. Or maybe I'm picking up other people's Christmas stress?
So -- whatever the real cause may be -- while I should have more free time than most people right now, I've felt slightly stressed out and been really bad at reading all the blogs I enjoy and just generally being even more hopeless at the social interaction thing than usual. Not sure if it's Christmas or a late reaction to turning 30. Anyway, I've ordered everything I need for Christmas and gotten it, will do the last food shopping tomorrow and have written my last blog post for the year at Maneki's Pärlblogg so now I'll try to unwind. Pick up my beads -- and my new embroidery floss. Because this is what I got the other day in the mail, my Christmas gift to myself.
Above you can see two skeins of Dansk blomstergarn, Danish Flower Thread (the original). I really like the soft colours and recently they added new colours to their range. So what more? Because you know I couldn't stop there...
I also got some hand-dyed multi-coloured flower thread by german Tentakulum, Klippans lingarn (Swedish linen thread), DMC linen thread and Raj Mahal art silk (viscose). There's also some dyed heavy linen thread by Stef Francis in the background. That skein is from a previous purchase.
The package also included soie de gobelins from Tentakulum. It looks like a mess -- and that's how it looked in the cellophane bag -- but it really isn't. Soie = silk.
And as I'm so childish sometimes I of cause had to get the DMC glow-in-the-dark polyester floss. I've got GITD glass beads and Fimo too. Just missing GITD seed beads.
As usual, you can see that I tend to gravitate towards certain colours. This time, I consciously tried to include teal and blueish hues and I also bought some flower thread in red-peach (not in the pics). As usual, I bought these without any ideas of what to do with the threads. I'm a collector, I collect colours and materials rather than buy a thread.
Talking about threads I don't know what to do with, here's some Stef Francis hand-dyed silk from a previous shopping spree. It's just so soft and pretty, but what to do with it? Especially the spun silk with flames is hard to plan for: I want to use it in a way that really brings out the texture and colours in this variegated thread. "Flames" means it's thinner in some places and heavier in others. Beautiful in a skein, but I worry about ending up doing an embroidery where this variation is lost in the stitches and patterns.
I'm not giving up beading and jewellery-making, of cause not. But I like the idea of rekindling my love for embroidery -- and finding a way to combine beading and embroidery as well as make embroidered/needlework jewellery. This is something I'll be working on these coming months. Will try to have some computer-free days so I can really focus and then hopefully I'll have something nice to show here on the blog next year.
PS! If you like flowers, don't miss my blog posts on yarn, More yarn!, for more pics. There's some space-dyed perle cotton too. And I've got a Pinterest board with nothing but ribbon, yarn and threads as well.
I love the colors, you and I gravitate towards the same ones :-) You could do some Kumi cords - they would be gorgeous with that floss.
ReplyDeleteHurray for embroidery floss! I'm also an embroiderer/jewelry maker, and I love the idea of combining the two.
ReplyDeleteThe end of the year really is a time for taking stock of our lives, isn't it? One thing that helps me is keeping a list of all the things, big and small, that I've accomplished. It's gotten to be a long one! I read it whenever I feel insecure, and I make myself add to the bottom of it so I have to re-read it all the time.
Maybe that would work for you? I haven't been following you for long, but you seem like a bright, talented, creative person, and I bet you'd have an impressive list.
Cheers, and happy holidays!
Thanks for your comments!
ReplyDeleteKim: Great idea! I haven't done kumihimo for ages it feels like, but it's fun to do so I should give it a go again.
Saturday sequins: Thanks for you words! It's a very good advice that, making lists of accomplishments. It's so easy to see what we can't/don't know and what we haven't done, making us ignore or down-play the things we actually have accomplished.
Reminds me of something our teachers/professors at uni told us when we were leaving. It's so easy to not see everything we learn, the knowledge becomes so natural to us it's easy to feel like we aren't the experts we really are. But look back to the first day you came to the uni, they said, and compare what you know now with what you knew then. And that made us all feel more confident, going out into the real world [well, I didn't do that as I spent the next two years at another uni, studying human geography.]