Time and mandalas

I think I'm getting used to say "This week was so busy/crazy/awful", I'm getting used to tell people how tired I am and what crazy things my kids do to drive me insane and turn the house into a complete mess. I'm used to those things so much, that they make my every week look and feel the same and in the end of the week I tend to forget that it was not only busy and awful, but actually it was filled with lots of different things, often - lovely and positive ones. This week was for instance filled with watching "Call the midwife", knitting red socks for my granddad, planning a trip to Latvia, thinking of participating in a craft fair and crocheting bunnies as a result, enjoying colouring books with Michael, who is three and his favourite question at the moment is "What is this?", making paper swans and teaching one year old Mathew how to dance. Not bad, I'd say :)

And this evening, when little people go to bed will be all about mandalas. The case is I made a mandala quite a while ago, before Yarndale 2014 with a plan to send it to Lucy (Attic 24 blog owner). I was imagining it being displayed with lots of other mandalas at Yarndale, but then I discovered that my design was too big for the specific sizes they wanted, so my mandala never got anywhere except my own living room. 

But when I made it it seemed that people like it and wanted a pattern. So now finally it's time to write it down and share with happy hooking community. I already made a chart using my original mandala and a tiny tester I made this week, now it only needs a written pattern for those who can't read charts. Looking forward to it:)

Lost and found

I'm here today to tell you a story. A story about a girl who was lost for quite a while and suddenly found herself again in a box of gouache paint one night. A girl who was doing lots of things she used to like, but could not find any inspiration and joy in them anymore, so all the things she made turned into just a mechanical process for her. She was struggling to find a purpose and happiness in her life and after some time she gave up in trying to identify them and decided to live her life without any. But that was like living in the dark, only the darkness is inside, not around you. You can't live your life in the dark, pretending that you are ok, because you are not. It would be a sad sad story if something wouldn't have happened. And that something was a TV show about artists. May be you think that it is stupid to be influenced by telly, but sometimes answers come from any most unexpected sources and we just need to accept them and let them change us. So that show surprisingly influenced her, and she went and bought a set of gouache colours and a few brushes without even clearly understanding why. She used to paint before, when she was a kid, but it seemed like something from the previous life and she never was really good at painting. All that thoughts made her slow herself down and leave the gouache untouched for a few days until yesterday when feeling lonely and unhappy she finally opened it and made a drawing, letting the brushes fly as they wanted and the colours mix as her soul felt they should. She switched the brain off she told her rational part to shut up and made another drawing. And felt better. The next morning she woke up, looked at her drawings and felt something growing inside. And that something was inspiration - a new light meaning that the time of living in the darkness is over. 

That girl is me.

And here is what I have been drawing.