Love Your Blog - Gratitude

The final prompt in the Love Your Blog challenge from A Playful Day is Gratitude.

Ah, this I can do with a positive spin - I am grateful for SO many things!!

My absolutely AMAZING husband who I love so damn much, who has been my rock since I was 18 and STILL puts up with my crap!!

Our fabulous children who both delight and frustrate me on a daily basis with their bottomless enthusiasm and stubbornness independence.

My dad and sister, who whilst I am only just reconnecting with  (had a fabulous night out in Stoke for my granddad's 79th birthday a couple of weeks a go and LOVED catching up!) are a huge constant in my life - always believing in me and supporting me.

Best friends who are there for me regardless of what or why for - who I can spend the afternoon just knitting, chatting and browsing our iPhones with (occasionally with the odd gin thrown in!)  Who gets the knitting/spinning/yarn/weaving thing as much as I do...and is always there to enable/be enabled!

I'm grateful for anyone that takes the time to read the blog, the likes on IG and Rav and the tremendous wealth of knowledge, inspiration and support at the end of my fingertips from the knitting community.

And yarn....I am SO grateful for yarn hehe!!  It's my drug of choice, my therapy...and damn gorgeous to boot!!

Sunny Days

The sunshine has been winning me over this week and I love grabbing half an hour or so out on the patio with my knitting.  Sadly it's not uninterrupted so I don't seem to be getting a huge amount done, especially with the 429 stitch rows (which will shortly increase to 667 stitches!) That said I only have 3 and a half stripes and the red lace edging to go...

Love Your Blog - Ugly

I have been putting off even attempting to write this weeks Love Your Blog challenge from A Playful Day as the theme "Ugly" was one that had me totally stumped.  Or rather, it didn't. In reality, the one thing I instantly thought of was....myself.  And that in itself stopped me in my tracks.

I have struggled with body image for as long as I can remember despite growing up with a family who were/are amazingly supportive.  My inner demons have always deemed that I am not quite good enough, too different, too curvy...a whole lot of "not quite" and "too much".

It took me a long time to learn to love myself and it's a journey I often take huge, huge steps backwards in...obviously!  The realisation that just because I do not fit a societal norm - whether that be a clothes size, how I parent, my interests - does not make me ugly.  I am surrounded by people that see me as beautiful.  Sadly, the person who has been harshest to me for all these years is myself.  And quite frankly, I should stop!

Learning to be kind to myself is reflected in my blog.  On the whole I try not to blog about negative themes.  Whilst life is very much not all roses and cupcakes, I try not to dwell on the unhappier topics, much preferring to blog about things that make me smile.  Often something as simple as a new skein of yarn can be the small amount of beautiful needed to turn an otherwise ugly day around!

  

Love Your Blog - Beginnings

The second week of the Love Your Blog challenge from A Playful Day is upon us (or rather almost gone - how is it Thursday already!) and the focus this week is Beginnings. 

I originally started blogging exactly 5 years ago this week!  Back then I had completely different hopes for what direction my blog would take.  It was entitled "Then there was me" and it was very much a sounding board for my feelings - I was about to turn 30 and was having a brief life wobble and used blogging as a life journal (and dieting journal it seems, reading back!).  I was trying to claw my way out of depression and it was around the time my life began to veer away from communities that had thus far defined me (despite the fact I still babywear, cloth nappy etc even now) My knitting still featured and although I was very much in my early stages as a knitter it was the start of me finding my feet in something that really has become my lifeline.

A year after I started blogging and 4 years ago yesterday, we moved house to where we live now and my life changed immeasurably.   With the help of fabulous friends I kicked my agoraphobia and was SO much happier :)  I blogged much less, as I had so much less time between running the shop, starting a babywearing consultancy business, play dates, canal walks, cake club.  I got pregnant again (oops!) and decided to start blogging again, changing the blog name to "Then there were six".  I had aspirations to refocus on our home education and have one of those amazingly inspirational blogs...

And then our lives pretty much fell apart.  From DH being made redundant to the death of my mum, it was a complete catalogue of disasters.  I turned to blogging once again in an attempt to improve my mental health and in the realisation that I'm really not going to blog about unschooling for a huge variety of reasons (not least that the kids don't want to be blogged about!) changed the blog title and domain over to "Coffee and Yarn Cakes" and here we are! 

Whilst I may still neglect blogging from time to time, I do love my ickle corner of t'interweb.  Coffee and Yarn Cakes is my little haven.  It's quite ironic that 5 years on, a week a way from my 35th birthday, I feel like I am once again beginning a journey to a new happier me.  Older, wiser, with much more yarn!  Beginnings may be scary but they can be incredibly good for the soul.