Perseverance

My first official blocking project!

These earrings came out fantabulous. Blocking is a lot easier than I thought and I don't know why I was so intimidated by it for so long. I tend to believe things are a lot harder than they actually are. Makes it difficult to actually want to try things, ya know? But, here's the result of taking the risk and jumping into it! Not too shabby =)


Here's Ellie helping out. =) "Oh how cute, she says the baby's helping but she's just sleeping aaaawwww" NO. If you've tried to get anything done while watching a baby, you know. A sleeping child is a HUGE help.

I don't know why she looks so angry here lol.

 

Also I FINALLY listed this necklace I made weeks ago! (Which you can check out at my shop: The Silver Cord)  I love this picture of the Bean and me ^_^ And incidentally my mom got me those earrings in Israel. Love'em.

 

That necklace actually taught me a valuable lesson. I had been trying to figure out how to make the cord from a pattern I found, but it made absolutely no sense. I had been all set to give up when I thought, "If I constantly give up, how am I ever going to accomplish anything? How would anyone accomplish anything without a little effort and thought?" So I kept trying, and it turned out to be so much easier than it looked at first. Not only that, it was exactly what I had been looking for when I went in search of that pattern.

Perseverance has been lacking in my life up till now. When I was younger, I would sit and think about doing things. I would plan things out to great detail in my mind, turning them around and seeing every possible outcome. But when it came to actually doing those things, I failed miserably. It was like I had lead on my legs.

But lately I have...energy. There are still days when I get stuck on facebook and waste hours doing nothing. But those days (which are now becoming hours of the day rather than whole days) are becoming fewer and fewer.  Now when I decide to do something (for the most part), I do it. It's a good feeling.

Block partaaaay

I made myself a blocking board!

 That's the finished product. There are two layers of tape, vertical and horizontal, to create a grid I can use in case I need to size something perfectly. (I can't see myself needing to size something "perfectly," but ya know. Just in case.) It says "block party." I'm not as lame as I seem sometimes, I swear.

Just cardboard and tape. Most of the cardboard in my house these days is from boxes of diapers. It was garbage and now it's crafts. Love it. =) (On a side note, I'd MUCH rather be using cloth diapers. But Boyfriend doesn't want poop in the washing machine. =/ I guess I can't blame him. But I VOW, my kid will not be in Huggies forever!)


This here is the middle layer, out of three. The front is just one flat piece. Since I'm going to be sticking pins into this thing repeatedly, I wanted it to be as thick as possible. I could have done four layers, but I thought that was excessive. Plus, I'm lazy. =D

And that's the back! I put it right side out so I wouldn't have to differentiate between the front and the back. And because, well......come on, that baby is adorable, you know it's true ^_^ And that's Callie the cat! She's chillin.


My first blocking project (well, second, but first on the "official" Board of Blocking Wonders) will be a pair of earrings I finished aaaages ago and just haven't gotten around to blocking on the ironing board. That's fine though because this board needed to get made. I always neglected to block things due to the lack of a suitable surface (and aforementioned laziness). And now I have one! (A surface...not laziness. I already had that.) But seeing as how it's past midnight, the earrings are going to have to get pinned down tomorrow.

It's taking me a long time to get my Etsy shop up and running. (I don't even have anything up there right now. Sigh.) But I feel like I've been taking care of things that will make it easier to keep it stocked in the near future. Boyfriend and are I straightening out our finances, and I'm making things and learning skills that I can carry with me, rather than relying on one-time items that may or may not sell. I thought before I was building the foundation to change the way I think and live my life, but that, I think, was inaccurate. Before, I was digging the hole. Now I'm building the foundation. Small steps, small steps. It's all in the details.

Sorry my pictures suck, by the way. Haven't had the chance to pick up batteries for the camera yet, and I'm still stuck using my crappy ancient phone. Oh well.

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This was one of three side projects I have going at the moment. A few years ago, I would NEVER have had the motivation to complete even one. Or even start them. They would have been mere thoughts. But lately, I've actually stood up and done the things I want to do. It astounds me sometimes how far I've come in the last year and a half. I would question sometimes if I was headed in the right direction, leaving my job, trying to make something of my Etsy shop and whatnot. But then I look around and I see how far I've come. Where would I be if I wasn't doing what I felt guided to do? Not here.

I have to say, I'm proud of myself. I managed to pull myself up from such a bad place, it's literally like night and day. I always considered myself a "dark" person, even though I knew the light I had. Now, it's the light that wins out, every time.

What really gets me though is that that was a choice. I made the decision to change myself, and then I made the effort, horrendously difficult as it was. I truly believe now, anyone can handle any situation they make the choice to handle. Without the choice, you give up your power, being dragged wherever your life takes you without seeing where you're going, and without knowing if you're in the right place or not. But it's possible to choose to be in a certain place, to choose to have a certain frame of mind. But then doesn't it stand to reason that you can make the choice to be in the wrong place? I'd say so. But you're going to have a hell of a time trying to get there.

There are no "weak" people. There are only those who are blind, and those who make the choice to see. Nothing ever got accomplished with closed eyes. Or a closed mind, for that matter.

Now I'm left wondering, what's the difference between the mind and the inner eye? O_o Or, it feels better to say, what's the relationship between the two?