Big Happy blanket update - February

Just three more blocks of colour have appeared on the Big Happy this month.  Progress has been slow indeed.  But this is a Good Thing. Why? Well...

...progress has been slow because life has been busy, but also because I have been diverted by other crafty projects (to be revealed later!)

It's a good sign.  In the beginning, in the earlier weeks after Phoebe was born, I could couldn't have contemplated doing any kind of project, let alone the many I seem to keep getting stuck into now.  The Big Happy was always supposed to be a great lumbering slow project...

Progress is slow but steady, which as we all know will win the race :)

Big Happy blanket update - January

When we last saw the Big Happy it was a respectable size given it had been in the making a mere six weeks (even if I do say so myself.)  And here it is as of yesterday afternoon...

It hasn't grown massively but it has grown...

I am glad it is moving along slowly, because my recovery is slow, I think it has to be really.  It feels like the blanket is progessing at the appropriate pace for how I am feeling.  After all, slow and steady wins the race :)

I am loving this blanket - I love the colours, the stitches, the ease and rhythm of it, the long-termness of it.  It helps me look forward towards a brighter (and not too distant) future.

The Big Happy

Anyone who reads this blog knows I love crochet.  I dabble in many crafty creative things but over the last year or so crochet has really come to the fore as my craft of choice.

I love doing it, I love seeing other people's pictures of what they are doing, I love learning new patterns and stitches.  I love the old fashioned simplicity of it.  I love that I use my great grandmother's darning needle to sew crochet squares together like she would have done.

So I hatched a plan.  If crochet makes me happy then crochet can help me out of the post-natal depression.  I'm not keen on taking the route of medication right now, especially as I am still desperately persevering with breastfeeding, so anything that can help is worth a try.

The next pattern in the Happy Hooker Backwards project is for an iPod cover. I had been rather looking forward to this as it presented a bit of a challenge, given that iPods have evolved somewhat since the pattern was written, so I would have to modify it and work out my own pattern for covering an iPhone instead.  However in my current baby focused, brain-adled state there is no way I would be able to take this on.  So this is on hold until I regain my mind.

Instead I decided I needed a Big Project.  Something huge yet simple.  Something that will take me a lonnnnnng time to do without taxing me too much.  Something that can be started now in the depths of my depression and finished many months from now by the happy recovered Me of the future.

Introducing the Big Happy...

This is going to be a mahoosive blanket.  It measures 2.7m wide...quite accidentally, I didn't plan it, I just hooked the foundation chain until it seemed long enough, oops.  It is a Granny Stripe blanket, a pattern from the endlessly delightful and colourful Attic24 blog.  Simple rows of double crochet (I work in US terms) clusters, endless rows of the same stitch in different colours.  The colours will be random.  This blanket is all about Not Thinking, just doing, just occupying my hands and creating colourful row upon row of soft and delicious stripes.  Something I can pick up to work on in any free minute I may find.  Until one day, months from now, it will be finished and I will look back on each row and remember the days and weeks and months I worked through to get to the end point. 

It will be my Big Happy blanket.

When it is complete I will be happy, I will be Me again.

Another Christmas

I love Christmas, it is my most favourite time of the year.  From October onwards I am usually planning and looking forward to the big week of festivities, eating, drinking and gift giving.  This year therefore has been rather tough.  I am not used to feeling down during what is usually my happiest time.  Depression, I am discovering, is a bummer.

Christmas day was undoubtedly the toughest.  Trying to engage in the fun, desperately wanting to play with Lillia and all her presents but instead sitting glued to a chair breastfeeding for hours, exhausted beyond description, with a dark sensation pushing down on me the whole time. 

Definitely not a Christmas I want to revisit.  Though I will, over the years, many times I am sure.  I will look back and remember and be grateful that I no longer feel that way, that I never again will feel that way at Christmas again.  This depression will be behind me, I will make sure of it. I've come through a lot in my 33 years, I can get through this.

Lillia had a wonderful Christmas being thoroughly entertained by her (now thoroughly exhausted) aunt and eating far too many pink smarties whilst watching far too much television.  But that's what Christmas is about, a little time out from the usual rules :)

I hope each and every one of you enjoyed wonderful Christmasses, and are still enjoying the Christmas week.  I was lucky enough to receive many new books so as soon as baby Phoebe starts feeding a little more easily I am looking forward to getting some reading done during those long wakeful nights. Amongst others I received A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, read many times years ago and then lost, I am so glad to have a new copy to re-read!  I also got Kirsty Allsopp's Homemade Home book, a couple of novels, two cookbooks and a book on seasonal gardening (is there any other type of gardening..?)  So there's plenty to keep me going should I ever get the chance.

On another note - despite all the doom and gloom and the apparent lack of productivity over here - I have actually been indulging in the odd bit of crochet time.  I have a plan you see, a Big Project.  Something that will play a part in dragging me out of this post-natal depression.  More on this in a day or two...until then, Merry Christmas xx