I’m terrible about explaining myself. After all, if I don’t understand me, how do I think anyone else will?? 🙂 But I shall give it a go, just for you…

My name is Juliann and I am chronically ill. I have more diseases than I can count on fingers and toes and you probably don’t want to know all of their names!  (Here’s a few to get you started: the biggies are Hypermobility Syndrome/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (Hypermobility Type), Fibromyalgia, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Migraines, Allergies, Food Intolerances, Asthma, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Irritable Bladder Syndrome, Vulvodynia, Psoriasis, Sebhorreic Dermatitis, Cyclical Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Attacks, Attention Deficit Disorder and many more…) But it’s enough to know that I am in pain every minute and that I struggle with fatigue and mental health problems constantly. Crafting is my way to try to deal with all of this: I *love* acquiring craft supplies, cooing over my collections, and then making new-to-me items out of my stash. Crafting helps with the pain (distraction), fatigue (peps me up when I get excited), and mental health issues (calms anxiety and provides a meditative state to help with depression). So I have made a resolution to craft as much as I possibly can and acquire as large of a stash as I can afford!

I am very inspired by other chronically ill people who are gifted crafters and will feature them on this blog periodically.  I also like to craft for charity – see my Crafting for Causes page.  I know what it is like to be dead broke (I haven’t been able to work in 7 years and can barely afford my medications, that hurts the ol’ wallet!) and to feel isolated so I am happy to do whatever I can to help those who are struggling.

Anyway, the types of crafts that I do include (but are never limited to): Loom Knitting, Beading, Felting (both needle and wet), Papermaking, Soapmaking, Candlemaking, Crochet, Scrapbooking, Stamping, Card Making, historical re-reaction (sewing, embroidering, luceting, lots more) and just about anything else!! I’m always happy to accept donations of unwanted craft supplies, drop me a line if you have something you want to offload or donate to my charity work!

One more thing…I’m an American by birth but I moved to the UK in 1997 and now have dual US and UK citizenship. I am currently in the process of moving from London to Raleigh, North Carolina, USA because my health has deteriorated to the point where my husband now needs extra help in looking after me and my parents have volunteered.  So like a good Gen-X’er, I’m living with my parents while my husband awaits his green card.  He’s Australian by birth and is going to be spending several months with his family (awaiting said green card) because his father is still quite ill and awaiting a kidney transplant. It’s going to be a difficult year for that reason, I don’t like being away from my husband for so long and he doesn’t like being away from me and our kitten!

I love love love to travel but that’s probably going to be on hold for a while since my husband’s not working much while with his family and my dad’s disabled and not working and I am disabled and not working so….my mom gets to support us all but that doesn’t leave a lot of room for pleasure cruises.  But I shall be at various places in spirit this year, such as BlogHer, Rhinebeck, I Knit Weekend, Woolfest and more.  Maybe next year, eh?

If there is anything else you want to know about me, feel free to ask! I’m happy to talk about any aspect of my life, probably *too* keen 😉 But I don’t want to bore you by putting it all here!

Send me some email!  Ask a question if you like and I shall try my best to answer it.

[clean-contact]

9 comments

  1. Xina says:

    Hi, you posted a comment on my blog (xina’s bell jar) and yes, I can share the patterns with you. Just email me and I’ll send them to you.

  2. Lora says:

    Hi Juliann!

    I saw your post on Thing-a-day. I, too, am a ‘sick chick’ lol! I use crafting as a way to cope with depression and pain. I’m looking forward to February and starting our projects! (Of course, I need to clean/organize my craft/bedroom first!).

    Feel free to email me, I’m online ALOT! BTW: I’m from Arizona.

    Lora aka Das Bus

  3. Sarah says:

    Thanks for stopping by my blog 🙂 I have to say, I agree with some of your sentiments I’ve read on here about pain. I myself have chronic pain from a back condition, and I think the niggling every day pain (which I have trouble getting the doctors to acknowledge alleve just doesn’t treat 100%) is extremely exhausting. I rate my pain scales based on my wiggle scale. If I am spending all my time wiggling and stretching and moving trying to get comfortable, my pain is too high.

  4. chibialfa says:

    Hi Juliann,

    After posting a comment in your latest post, I click this and I can’t help but liking you more! You don’t let your sickness gets in your way in enjoying life and I like that a lot 🙂 Keep doing the craft!

  5. LouAnne says:

    Hi Juliann (love your name!) : You left a comment on my Getting to Crazy blog and just wanted to say thank you. I guess I’ve been at this blogging thing long enough now that I’m beginning to get feedback from regular readers. You were the 2nd in as many days to contact me. Somehow knowing that there actually others out there that care about what I do, makes it a little easier to blog. Does StatCounter lie? I guess not, but wonder sometimes about the high numbers they tell me that visit my blog. I’m glad that what I do has inspired you. Crazyquilting is such a free-ing kind of quilting and I love it because it incorporates all the things I learned as a young person. When I realized that I was totally hooked. But, LOL…. you can also see that redwork-type embroidery captures my brain a lot too. It’s very relaxing. I can do it in the silence of a car ride or in front of the tv. Crazyquilting embroidery after a block is pieced is stimulating and “noisy” work that I must sit to table with. Thanks again for being a regular reader!

  6. Melanie says:

    Julianne:
    I also have a laundry list of ailments and I also find making things for others provides needed distraction. Right now I’m replacing the lining in a parka I got at Goodwill and need to dye some silk twill using Colorhue dyes. I found a website that recommended your tutorials for Colorhue but I see your website is down. Would you be willing to email me any mixing info you have? I don’t need the whole tutorial, if you have even a chart I could learn a lot. I need to get to mauve–a dusty, antique, medium mauve (plummy-brown) and I have no idea how to do it.

    Thanks for any help you can offer, and I hope your health isn’t keeping you from crafting.

    Melanie

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