Catherine's Crochet Corner

Hello, all.

I realised it’s been a while since I checked in here, and although I have very little in the way of crochet updates for you all, I figured many of you would like to hear that I’m…y’know. Alive. Recovering. Whatever that means, and whatever that looks like!

It’s over three months now since I gave birth to my little boy, and most days I’m okay. I’m making plans and progressing projects around the house and slowly turning back into a real person again.

I’m doing a fair bit of pottering around the garden, weather allowing, though mostly not in any very meaningful way. It’s just good for me to get outside and into the fresh air and sunlight, whenever it’s not raining. I try not to overdo it by sticking on a podcast and aiming to stop when the podcast finishes – or after two at most, if they’re half hour ones. It mostly works. I feel I’ve achieved something but I don’t overdo it. (Note how I saw ‘mostly’. There have indeed been some afternoons when I’ve felt good, kept going, and regretted it after. Such is life with ME).

Still, I managed to prune back the big tree in my garden, which had decided to flop down on top of the chicken run, and I’ve been weeding and deadheading. And digging dandelions out of the lawn for the chickens, for whom it’s like chocolate. I have a rose that my auntie/second mother Eve bought me in Matthews’s memory, actually called Matthew’s Rose, which has already bloomed and is going to bloom again, and it makes me smile. The sunflowers are doing brilliantly this year, too – I planted some in a new bed I created and I have never seen sunflowers grow so exuberantly. I blame the chicken-created compost that I put on the bed 🙂

The chickens and the cats keep me entertained, which is also helpful. One of the chickens was broody for a while, but she’s off brood and laying again. I love being able to look out there and see piles of chickens all trying to dust bathe in the same spot. And the cats supervise me very closely whenever I’m in the garden, just in case a rogue wood pigeon decides to attack me. I presume it’s something along those lines, anyway. Persephone also seems to have decided it’s a personal mission to make sure she lies on top of me whenever I lay down on the sofa for a rest. I’m not complaining.

Crochet-wise, things are getting a little easier. I got into a position of feeling like if I didn’t pick up a hook I risked never doing so again, so I spent a week forcing myself to work on three squares every day, come what may. I’m just doing regular plain granny squares, with join-as-you-go, so I don’t have to think about anything except colour placement, and even that’s fairly easy, because I have nine colours and the squares are single-colour, so there’s a limited amount of combinations. I’m making a curtain. My living room is pretty open-plan into the kitchen-diner, with just a double-width doorway space, and although I love it, I want to create more cosiness in the winter when the nights draw in. Thus, a certain. I have nine colours of Stylecraft Linen Drape, which is a discontinued yarn but I had a whole load of it in my stash. I’m hoping I have enough – otherwise I may be scouring the internet for extra. I think I pretty much have the height of the curtain, anyway, so now it’s just the width to concentrate on. I’m probably over halfway.

So yes, I’ve got over the ‘oh god what if I never want to crochet again’ thing, but I’m not back up to the same sort of speed I was at before. There are days I don’t crochet, but I don’t feel so guilty about that now – I know I’ve not lost it. I’m still doing lots of adult colouring in, because I realised that I started this book the day I was due to be induced, and somehow it’s become part of my grief process. I’m about halfway through the book, and I have to finish it. Then I can put it away with the other remembrances I have – the newspaper I bought the day he was born, and the memory box with his teddy and footprints and things like that.

Inspiration and drive will return to me, I’m sure. I’m just not sure when. Still, it’s early days yet. And some days it still hits me hard, like somebody’s knocked all the air out of me – that I should be pregnant right now, and that my baby is gone. When that happens I don’t get anything at all done. But those days are fewer than they were three months ago as I learn to live with this grief.

Today the sun is shining, the chickens are making little soft noises outside, and I can look at my pictures of Matthew and smile. Today’s a good day.