I wish my life - and ours - would be a little more crochet-y

PS: Not talking about covering toilets with crochet, btw...

No, I don’t mean more crochet-y as in having a house covered in crochet, from cabinets and couches, to toilets and sinks.

What I mean is that crochet, as other handmade crafts, teaches us that it’s ok to try and fail, and try again and maybe fail once again, it teaches us to be graceful with this being human thing and lifeing thing, and it also teaches us that some projects take more time than others, have more setbacks than others, but will eventually come to an end.

Unlike crochet, though, it’s hard or impossible to frog life stuff. Life’s mistakes or mishaps can hardly be undone as easily as with crochet, where all you have to do is pull a thread, sometimes with more difficulty than others, to start over or start anew. All you’ve lost is some time. In life, it’s not that easy. Even giving up on something is not that easy, but is sometimes the best decision. Not everything works out, but the truth is that is not the end of it, of life I mean.

This all came back to me after I’ve read (10 minutes ago)

Elin Petronella

’s piece titled “Things always work out if you allow them to”. Yes. Even if they don’t work out as we planned, we do have to get out of our own way and allow them to work out.

Because if we don’t try; we’ll never know. And if we don’t know we’ll always wonder. And if we wonder, we’ll never arrive to fully flourish and get to chase new dreams to try. I know what I’m choosing… what about you?

Ellin Petronella

The hardest part is getting the people in our life to understand it, live it, embody it, join us in that allowing, when they’re not in on these crochet lessons or don’t have a similar “tangible example” to look at to understand how things - slow, hard things - work and work out. And that makes it hard to live it ourselves. To get them to join us in pushing through, in being patient and hanging on without despair. Even though despair-on-the-brink-of-breakdown does lurk in too often, it seems.

In the end, you’ll either end up with a glorious crocheted piece, or lots of yarn to start over. I wonder…

---

A few PS’s:

• Loved reading Shitty Crafts by

  Caroline Osella
  . Funny, uplifting and on point. Laughed and nodded all through it.

Shitty Crafts

• Came across it thanks to

  Kathryn Vercillo
  ’s beautiful project, Threadstack. If you’re reading me, you’ll love finding about it and discovering a creative community in the making (literally and figuratively).

  Weaving Our Words: Links from the THREADSTACK Community

• And some photos from and notes about my new surroundings:

  

  

  Views when taking Toffee for a walk. The house still needs a lot of work done, but I do have a nice view to take a break from the city, which is 40 minutes away on a bus drive that is immensely less eventful than the hellish one I’ve been taking for the past few years. Portuguese people, or humans in general, have a thing with coastal lines and beaches, so if you want peace and quiet, head to the mountains!

  

  Unfortunately, the bus to Lisbon doesn’t stop here, which is a 10 second walk from my front door. Also unfortunately, this bus stop has been “cleaned” since I took this picture… Buah!

  

  Yes, I have chickens, cats and sheep as my new neighbours, and they have humans too, just like Toffee does. And the chickens eggs are delicious: got some from my neighbour Luísa, perks from living in the countryside.

  PS: This may seem like a luxury choice, but in case you’re not aware of the state of housing here, it’s impossible for a common mortal to buy or rent a decent house in the city or nearby. Besides longing for a life in the country for a long time, this was the most sensible (even if counterintuitive and really challenging) choice: get an about 100 yo abandoned barn/wine cellar and turn it into an uncommon house (possible only because I share my life with an out-of-the-box architect).

  And that’s all the randomness I got for you (for now).

  Keep on keeping on,

  Ana <3