✍️🧶 Creative Works | 2 🎨🧵

Documenting our monthly creations.

I felt defeated at the end of a very long and full December, worn down with overwhelm from holidays, health issues, and caretaking. Throughout the first week of January, my failures rose to the surface like the slick fat layer of a slow bubbling broth that clouded my memory. But coming back to gather last month’s creative works surprised me—beneath that layer of frustration also brewed the rich components meant to warm our hearts and soothe the winter transition. Turns out there was quite a bit of creativity happening among the chaos.

So even if during those days and weeks I was struggling to get through them, taking this time to reflect back on the month is redeeming my December, making me feel much less regret for the things we didn’t manage (like making our traditional pecan cookies for Santa, sending Christmas cards and hand-made photo ornaments to grandparents, and driving around after dark to look at lighted decor beyond our immediate neighborhoods). But my kids still had enough. We were already maxed out on holiday processing and still have some nice memories to look back on.

✍️ Written Works

December marked the first time I published a bit of my memoir-in-progress in This Waffle Iron Gets Me. While it was difficult to put such raw history of my family out there (and not everyone was comfortable with that), connecting with others through shared experiences is how I continue to heal.

When Big (my oldest daughter) was just 2.5 years old, she repeatedly taught me difficult lessons in remaining open and connected with others through a painful season, which ultimately prevented it from manifesting into deep-seated trauma. She taught me how to actually feel and stay present in my pain rather than burying it—because for Pete’s sake, a toddler does not have boundaries around telling a restaurant server, “The baby in Mom’s uterus died,” in the days after she witnessed the ultrasound.

I had a split second to decide how to respond, knowing this moment could shape the way she processes pain and grief. But it wasn’t awkward, because I didn’t make it awkward by hushing her (as if this verbose child could ever be silenced) or implying that it’s inappropriate to talk about life, moments big and small. I simply shrugged at the server with a weary smile, letting a few quiet tears fall inside this tender moment of vulnerability my daughter gifted me while this stranger witnessed some real life over lunch. Sometimes we all need a reminder that it's okay to feel, and it doesn’t have to happen alone.

I’m not here to trap life’s grief and struggles in a vacuum of secrets, burying them in the past where they serve no purpose beyond festering or forgetting. What were they all for? The opportunities I am given to live and grow in their light can serve myself and others when I allow connection to outweigh the urge to isolate myself in their shadows.

December posts in case you missed them

• Creative Works 1 | Documenting our monthly creations.

• This Waffle Iron Gets Me | A lesson on holding space.

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Handicraft Works

🧶 After writing This Waffle Iron Gets Me, I needed a break from writing. I found a pattern for a headband that I thought would be a quick start-and-finish to work out the excess energy that it stirred up. I was excited for my first wearable yarn art, only to be disappointed by how it looked on me when I tried it on (confirmed by Big fighting to keep a straight face). I decided to add a cap to it, converting it into a hat. Never one to strictly follow a recipe or pattern, I also liked that this made it uniquely my own.

The crochet project that was there for me when I needed to offset some emotionally intense writing fatigue.

I love it and am proud of it, but I still don’t like the way it looks on me, and I’m at peace with that. It was there for me when I needed to offset some emotionally intense writing fatigue. It served its purpose of creative healing, and ironically reflects the writing I was working off. Much like that story, it was rewarding work and worth every stitch, even if the end result is a bit ugly. Only looking back on it weeks later did I recognize that connection. So again, I am grateful for this monthly review of our creative works and how they serve us.

🧶 With blind confidence in my practice afghan, I was plugging away at it for some time before re-testing the width (knowing the chevron stitch shrinks as it works up)... I did the math, but at some point I finally laid it out and realized I significantly overshot the width. With her usual quick wit, Big suggested we use it as an area rug instead (it was almost 16 feet wide!). I only had about 18 inches of rows worked up at that point, which was 36 inches worth of work had the width been properly guaged. I laughed until I cried and frogged¹ the whole thing that night! It was a hard lesson to learn about gauge², but I’m glad that it was on the scrap blanket first.

🧶 I was stuck in limbo between no more practice-afghan (too scorned to start another) and waiting for the chosen yarns to be delivered for Little’s blanket—eager to start it now with plenty of practice and hurdles to avoid. Crochet had become a crucial part of my self-care, and oddly enough, my writing routine. A few days without it and I was yearning for yarn, especially in those later days of December when I really needed mindless productivity to ease my mind and channel stress before bed.

On my dresser sat a skein of old yarn—I’m talking 13+ years old—from when I first taught myself to knit (the unfinished scarf dangling barely four inches of progress). But for some reason, I haven’t found knitting to resonate with me as deeply as crochet. I still love the color palette of this yarn and for ages intended to pick it up and re-teach myself to knit—which is why it is on my dresser instead of hiding in my nightstand where it hibernated for years. But in my typical overzealous fashion, I didn’t just start a simple knit scarf those many years ago B.K.³, I dove in and learned all kinds of stitches, then designed a complex pattern in a graph-paper notebook that has been missing since we bought this house 11 years ago… So this skein of yarn sat and sat, it’s umbilical cord tied to a lifeless project on circular bamboo needles that just didn’t speak to me anymore, save for the whispers of defeat and shame every time I passed by my dresser.

This scarf was also stuck in limbo. But after the recent practice-afghan fiasco, I gained the courage to scrap a project that just didn’t fit right. It dawned on me—I could start anew and birth this skein into something with more purpose than haunting my inner creative. I eagerly frogged the ancient scarf that would never be so I can transform it into something that fits who and where I am in my present life. As I pulled stitches, the permanently crimped strand unraveled feelings of failure for not finishing something I started, and shame for not mastering knitting (though I didn’t exactly give myself a fair chance with the intricacies of that pattern). I started working it into a new shawl (a la Claire Fraser) so I can wrap myself in the triumph of this comeback skein and our history together—two limbos merging to generate progress.

After 13+ years, this neglected knitting project is reborn as a crocheted shawl when I needed a project to get me through the holiday chaos.

On the Workbench

• 💘 Hand-outs for our homeschool Valentine’s gathering will likely be bookmarks.

• 🔌 I have yet to re-wire that floor lamp...

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Kid Creations

Our homeschool is rooted in arts and creativity (shocker, right?); random acts of art are always blooming! Keeping all the art supplies at the kids’ disposal makes for a hot mess, but cool creations.

• ❄️ The beaded snowflake ornaments kit was a fun project to leave out for them to keep coming back to.

• ✂️ This was our first homemade wreath and we look forward to making one every year going forward!

• 🕯 The beeswax candle-making kit was fun for all of us and another new tradition we will do every year for Solstice. We spent a couple hours on these and were really impressed with how long they burned. Even Little’s doll-sized candle burned well!

Beaded snowflake ornaments, homemade wreath, custom wings and horn, shelter building, Big learning to crochet.

Paper crafts for pen pal, pop-up Hanukkah card, beeswax candles for solstice, latkes, brownie muffins (DF, SF, GF, CF), deviled eggs.

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What did you create last month? What are you working on now?

Share your projects and resources in the comments!

𝐅𝐓𝐂 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫 | All products mentioned were purchased by me for personal use. If products were sent to me for review or if I partner with a company as an affiliate, it is disclosed in the text. Amazon affiliate links are provided for your convenience; your purchases on Amazon may contribute a small amount to my publication with no additional cost to you. All information and experiences I share are genuinely my own.

1. Frog: In yarn arts, to tear it out or start over, “rip it, rip it.”

2. Gauge: The measurement of a specific number of stitches per row, and rows per inch using a specific stitch, yarn and hook.

3. B.K.: “Before Kids,” when I had more capacity for e-v-e-r-y-thing.