dottie and daughter ...

truth be told the past 10 days have past in a blur of being Florence Nightingale. 

my cogs are all foggy and i cannot string a sentence together without forgetting mid sentence what i am on about nor my reason for beginning such a sentence in the first place.

before Our Meg had surgery, we dabbled together on our first collaborative piece. 

she wove most magically, i stitched a woolly tattoo and then together we twiddled and fiddled until we said "enough, there will be no more twiddling and fiddling" 

i am beyond happy to have worked with her... 

i am hopeful this will be the start of something but only time will tell for we have a pond between us. for now i will work on enjoying this moment when our two crafty souls became one and not spend my time wishing for more. 

so much easier said then done.

florence and the meg ...

 at the moment i am florence nightingale, 

i rustled around in the kitchen drawer for my bonnet and it is pinned quite precariously upon my bonce for the foreseeable future. Our #1 had surgery yesterday and is now home recovering, however we managed to squeeze in a few days of crafting before the op. 

it was muchly lovely to pottle together talking yarny things and then coming home to sit side by side whilst Our Meg happily wove on her homemade loom and i woolly tattoo~ed.

for now though, i will pottle on my own... 

little short pottles around the shed whilst paying close attention to my girl and working on future makes. i am also working on other thrilling nitty gritty things which may cause me to be a little quieter than my usual quiet self here. 

what, what ...

Our #1 comes home to play today ~ for a whole live long month! 

Little Olive has found something to live for ~ kibble in homemade bone broth appears to be the miracle cure for a broken little doggie's heart

i blinged a pair of handknit 'small being' mitts i bought from a maker in december ~ they are destined for my 'someday a granny' trousseau 

woolly tassels and woolly tattoos are where my crafty cogs are at ~ if this is to be the path which has opened up for me, i am more than happy to take a pottle

in March i am going on my holidays ~ aside from Old Blighty i will be visiting Latvia and Estonia. i am besides myself with anticipation of the creativity i will find on my travels

i have decided to knit a sweater ~ having knit a cardigan, i am thinking a sweater will be a doddle, due to going around and around rather than back and forth. where fools rush in ...

for those who may have read my previous post on letting go and now fretting about no dottie angel frock pattern ~ please do not fret, it will be published in June, i cannot say who with or how until May, then with permission i will spill the beans. dottie angel frocks are still very much a part of who i am and where i am going, alongside of woolly tattoos and teaching again. 

i needed to make space in my head and my heart and my shed, for when i do that, magical things happen such as woolly tattoos. who knew i would be doing such a thing but because i made a small space for calm and contemplation when all around me and inside of me was chaos, woolly tattooing happened. it was for me a magical happening and for me to water it, sing to it, and nourish it, i needed to let a lot of dottie angel's past go. 

letting go ...

this past weekend i continued upon my path of magical tidying up forever and ever. i am quite sure some folks and dearies are thinking "ummm, have you noted Tif's magical tidying up forever and ever is actually taking her forever and ever?" and yes, on some days i am thinking the same thing. however let us be fair, i did take off two months due to clan and holiday interruptions in-between starting my magical tidying up forever and ever and then picking up where i had left off to continue upon my merry magical tidying up forever and ever path.

this weekend was a big, 'terribly big biggy bit' of magical tidying up forever and ever, for i was magically tidying up dottie angel. i have been working up to it for a while now, tip toeing around her, creating gigantic piles in one space and then closing the door to the point eventually no door could be closed and no room could be got into. last weekend, (not this past weekend) i went into said room and i sorted, i sorted like i had never sorted before and after 2 full days things were tidy, in organized chaos, but not magically tidied up forever and ever. i thought this would be enough. i told myself this would be enough but over the coming days my heart and my head told me otherwise

and thus, this weekend i went back into the room which held eight years of dottie angel and i set to with magically tidying up forever and ever. for i knew i had reached a point for me to move forward, i had to let go, and can i tell you, this was not a thing i decided upon a whim, this has been inside of me for a long time. i have been working up to it without even knowing it, but i know it now and awareness can be a magical thing. with the help of my man offering to take things away without questions asked, i let the past 8 years of dottie angel go. i kept very few creations which still give me joy when i see them, that connect me to a time which makes me happy, however the rest my man piled high into the back of the car and took to Goodwill. i felt it quite apt and surely most fitting dottie angel wares and other handmade goodness i have crafted over the years for our home should end up on the shelves of despair, to bring a little joy to another thrifty hunter going about their secondhand hunting day. a chance to be loved again, to find a bit of happy out in the world.

i would be telling a gigantic fib if i said it was an easy thing to do, for it was not, it took all my snoopy courage and some more. at one point i sat on the stairs with tears rolling down my cheeks, having my hand held from across the pond via text and Our #1. so many good peachy times, so many bad pants times from the past 8 years with dottie angel came flooding through as each and every creation, stitched from my heart was held in my hand for one last time. but can i also tell you dearest reader, never in all my days of dottie angel have i been so sure and i am positively beaming inside as i tippity tap this, for i have made space in my crafty cogs and my crafty heart ... i can see clearly again, no longer weighed down from the past. 

today i awoke, dottie angel still by my side. i noted, both of us a little wiser and both of us quite a bit lighter. 

when i let go of what i am, i become what i might by ~ Lao Tzu