Announcements – The Sick Chick's Constantly Crafty

Huzzah, I am back!

I am back in the land of the writing 🙂

I had some strange health issues this summer, compounded by my insurance company being every bit as obstructionist as I had been warned about. (I really did not miss that while I was out of the US!) On the bright side I had a wonderful visit from my Australian sister-in-law and got to know many of the local Austin craft stores and I will be starting a new website about Austin craftiness soon.

Sadly, I have had to discontinue writing for CraftTestDummies. The reviews were causing me a lot of stress and taking me about 30+ hours each and since they were every other week that was just too much on top of health problems and international guests and settling in to a new life.

I’m very happy to be a member of the Austin Fiber Artists guild and I will be writing about my adventures with them soon. I’ve got my studio almost set up the way I want it, plus a photography area so I can finally show you more of what I have been working on. I’ve been doing a lot of classes on Craftsy and I am signed up for more classes than I can count locally so there will be a ton to talk about very, very soon. But this week I still have to finish up with a number of medical tests that the insurance company has finally (after many weeks of negotiating) approved and finish organizing my studio.

In the meantime, please check out a recent interview with me on Sara Naumann’s blog:

5 Little Questions: Juliann Krute

Long time, no see!

Life has been so incredibly busy that I haven’t even had time to craft, let alone blog about crafting he past few weeks. It’s actually making me mentally itchy and I am jonesing for a bit of knitting, which I hope to get to tonight.

Moving took its toll on my body, as I sort of expected, plus I am struggling with the bipolar again. You’ll hear more about that soon as I have a big project planned that is inspired by this.

But perhaps the most important reason why you haven’t been hearing from me here is that I am now writing and product reviewing for CraftTestDummies.com (reviews take me 10-15 hours to produce!) and I am setting up my writing schedule for a soon-to-launch in the UK magazine called Tré La Creativity. The latter is very near and dear to my heart as it is about using crafting to cope with stress and health challenges. (It will be available in electronic format for people outside the UK.)

Plus things are finally moving ahead for turning my “Crafting for a Cause” into a proper, registered charity. So with all of that there hasn’t been much time to blog here and it may be that way for some time. I’m going to continue to do what I can, though 🙂

Thanks for hanging in here with me!

Movin’ right along

The tumbleweeds are blowing through this blog like the West Texas desert. All is not lost, this time I do sort of have a good excuse and for once it’s not my health.

You may know that for the past two and a half years I have been going back and forth between the USA and Australia as we’ve been waiting for my husband to get his green card and be able to live and work in the US. That time finally came and he moved to the US in January. This past month we’ve been working on packing up all of our belongings and he has found a job already so we’re preparing to move to Austin, TX in the next two weeks or so.

I have been crafting like crazy but I have not really had time to blog. However all of the craft supplies have to be packed up and loaded by Saturday (save some emergency crafting gear!) so I’ll have a bit of time to catch up on blogging and introduce you to the many things I’ve been up to.

I’ve also recently written a guest blog post for a much larger website on a subject very important to me — so important that I thought it needed a bigger platform than my handful of loyal readers.

So now that all of that is done and dusted, regular service on this blog will resume again soon. I have so much to show and tell you all that I almost can’t wait…but unfortunately I must because the movers wait for no woman. I’ll also be starting a small series of blog posts about crafty travel and moving tips on how to find your way around in a new place. I’ll take you with me as I do this yet again for the second time in two years, and I know Austin is bursting with crafty goodness so it should be quite a treat!

Until next time…

Crafty Every Day

I took a bit of time and really thought about what I could offer in a blog. One of the main reasons I have not been blogging lately is because I haven’t been designing and I don’t really feel that just following other people’s patterns and designs is worthy of readers’ attention. I was fine when I was doing really original things but when I started cranking out 25 identical cards or 10 matching dishcloths it wasn’t anything “to write home about”. But I miss being part of the community, I miss contributing, sharing and encouraging others while also feeling like more than just a cheerleader.

I think I am going to take this blog in a slightly different direction. Instead of being project-oriented I am going to make it more about the crafting life. In 2009, when my father was seriously ill and in hospital long-term, I discovered that if I don’t do something relating to art or crafts every single day I go nuts. That “something” may be reading, watching videos, chatting with crafters on Twitter about crafty topics, shopping or just pondering new projects. However I think that as creators we all need to engage in these activities; we need to feed our minds so we can make our ideas come to life. So I am going to talk a lot more about what goes into my head and be less worried about the stuff coming out being “worthy” of a blog-reader’s time.

I hope that this will be useful to you. If you think I am taking things in the wrong direction, please let me know. I don’t want to put energy into something that no one will find useful. But I do hope that crafting and founding a craft-related charity as a person who moves around the globe often and deals with the limitations of chronic illnesses daily might bring insights and perspectives you may not find elsewhere.

I do something crafty every day. So for 2012 I am going to do my best to share it with you. I don’t think I can manage to post every day but I will try to keep a running log of as many creative activities in my life as I can remember and post them frequently. Don’t worry, there will be projects, too! But also discussions of products, media, events, stores, tweet chats, email lists, workshops — everything that is part of my crafting life.

Welcome to The Sick Chick’s Constantly Crafty. I hope you enjoy your stay and I look forward to talking to you soon.

My tuxedo cat, Pixiebelle, sits atop a stack of fat quarters (fabric). She's not moving for anything. — Pixiebelle says "Fat Quarters are for Fat Cats!"

Absent like whoa!

I am decidedly embarrassed that it has been almost a year since I last posted. A great deal has happened, then unhappened, then new things happened. I know that makes no sense but I doubt you really want a play-by-play of my year! The important thing is that I am *almost* at my final destination — January 24 my husband moves from Australia to the USA (remember how I was moving there instead? Didn’t work out for a variety of reasons although I did live there for a big chunk of 2011), and then when he finds a job we’ll be settling down for a good, lonnnnng time.

This means that the Sword of Damocles is almost gone above my head. I know what is going to be happening in my life, more than in the past two and a half years of trying to get a country we are both allowed to be in but which has better weather for my health than the UK. Now I can breathe again, and start taking my life off of the HOLD it’s been on for too long.

I’m going to start with this blog. Obviously, I don’t expect you to believe me, as I was saying the same thing almost a year ago. But I am posting this for myself. I’ve been crafting up a storm lately and have many things I am willing to show you. I’m going to start photographing again by the end of the week.

If you have hung in with me this long and want a holiday card, I’m getting ready to send them out. It’s my first foray in digital card making and I had a lot of help from a digi kit but I hope it may still make some people smile. Just send me your address using the contact form and I shall send you a card. If I run out of the digital prints I may even make some by hand! (I did make 25 for my mother, just need to photograph the leftovers I still have on hand.)

Thanks for everyone’s support over the past year and a big shootout to my Twitter peeps who have kept me mostly sane.

Obligatory photo: While in Australia, I started teaching my nieces how to crochet and loom knit. And looked silly in the process.

Me looking at a crochet hook while three little girls look adorable holding yarn

ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Ooof, it’s been a busy time here in The Sick Chick Land. I’ve temporarily moved back to the US to save up money and wait with my cat til we can go back to Australia in a few months (she has to wait as per quarantine rules).

In the meantime, I decided to upgrade this blog, kickstart my charity, redo my podcasts and a lot more. So…

THIS BLOG IS IN CHAOS! Sorry!

At the moment the pictures are broken. I’ll have to go through and re-upload them all or maybe just go back to using Flickr in the first place. Please bear with me in this process.

Also, if you are using a feed reader (reading this via the RSS), that feed may have changed address. Let me know if you have trouble subscribing with the new one.

Plus my widgety things are not installed properly. Another thing I must fix ASAP!

A *lot* of new posts should be showing up soon, I just couldn’t wait for the blog to be looking all pretty before writing. I’ve got the itch to post and I just can’t let a few little things like total chaos stop me 😉

If all goes well things should be back to “normal” in a day or two. Thanks so much for your patience. I’m very excited to be able to bring you so many things that have been percolating for such a long time, I hope it all excuses the temporary confusion around here!

I’ve gone to the land down under….

Several people have been poking me wondering what has happened to this blog. If you don’t care, avert your eyes now 😉

I actually was posting through May of 2010 when I went to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. A good, sweaty time was had by all, but then I needed to crash for a while. Silly illnesses! Unfortunately, when I came up for air, this website’s database had taken a nosedive. It took my poor husband a while to figure out how to restore it but alas, our backup system wasn’t working and I lost everything back to January.

Then, just as all seemed right with the world, I found out on fairly short notice that I was moving to Australia in September! Oh my! So much headless chickenage abounded, trying to get ready. This trek I am just here for a few months — we got ourselves an apartment and t (the husband) is settled into his new job and loves it. I’m headed back to the US soon to pack up our things and have them shipped, and also to wait out the months of pre-quarantine needed to bring our kitty over. So once again t and I will be living in separate continents, but this time it’s finite 🙂 Come April or May I will relocate permanently.

So from a car accident totaling the vehicle in January to moving abroad again by December, 2010 was a crazy year! There was much crafting, although there wasn’t much taking of photos. But I have a few things to show you, so this blog can live again!

Obligatory Australia photo:

Me sunning it up and turning 36 — Whale watching on my 36th birthday. Alas, humpbacks seem to *always* hide from me so once again failed to see any.

And before anyone says it, it’s not “so exciting!!” to be moving to Australia. I am not all that keen on the idea, actually, but t’s job is worth it and we’re desperate to live on the same continent again. But I’m not particularly excited by Sydney, as I don’t surf and am not one of the beautiful people who line the beaches 😛 Take away the beaches and it’s just like moving to Chicago…only I am so over Chicago after my parents lived near there for 13 years 🙁

Livin’ on Tulsa Time (for a week or so)

OK I had meant to do another post before this trip but I’ve been sleeping my life away (what is it with the Country music in my head right now?? I usually listen to New Age & Baroque 😛 ). Oh well. Oklahoma road trip news it is…

Tomorrow I leave to drive to Tulsa/Sand Springs for the weekend and then to my adored free hospital where I have a bajillion doctors appointments in Talihina for the week. I also hope to pop over to Durant to see Gail & Jim of Ozark Carding whom I met at SAFF. I know of the fabulous yarn shop Loops and the Bead Merchant, both in Tulsa. I also know Hobby Lobby is based in Tulsa and OKC but in my experience the stores are the same as everywhere else. I hope to be able to meet @ZenSuriAlpacas — if anyone else around there wants to meet up let me know!

So my dear readers, any other suggestions of crafty places to go in any of those towns? Most of the shops listed on the net are out of business so it’s hard to find out which places are still thriving! Please let me know ASAP if you have any suggestions.

Meanwhile, I don’t know if I will have much net access until the end of the month. I have my ipod Touch for checking email in cafes but I don’t like lugging out the laptop in public so I don’t know if I will be able to post or not. (I’m staying at the hospital’s hospitality suite and dunno if they have internet!) But I will try to take pictures and do a write-up when I get back, especially of Ozark Carding. I hope to be allowed to take video, I’ve never been to a professional carding mill before, I am so excited! 🙂

Can you give me a hand?

A "missing" hand — I really need a hand...

I’m struggling. My health has been worse than usual this past year and although I don’t talk about it much it has been very hard. The depression is coming back after having been at bay for a long time and I’m spiralling downward into malaise. I want desperately to get Healing Arts (formerly The Sick Chick Crafts for Causes) up, running and fully legal (and thus tax-deductible!) but it’s a lot more work than I had initially imagined. It will be very worth it, but…like the people I want to help, I’m in a bad place right now and could really use a little lift.

Can you give me a hand?

I mean that literally! I’m asking you and anyone, everyone, young and old to send me a cutout of a hand, decorated any way you please and made from whatever materials suit your fancy. I’ll use these hands to cheer myself on by affixing them to the bare walls in my room and also sending hands to anyone else who seems to need one. Please write your name or nick on the back so I/we will know who is lending their hand to this project 🙂 (And if you send other contact details I will write you a thank-you note eventually!)

A cut-out in the shape of my hand, coloured with watercolour and markers — Here's one I made earlier...

Please send hand images to:

The Sick Chick

P.O. Box 904

Cary, NC 27512-0904

I will be ever so grateful and hopefully this will be what I need to get myself out of a funk and get cracking on helping others! Many thanks in advance!

New Year, New Start

I know that it is something of a cardinal sin amongst bloggers and podcasters to apologize for being absent, but nonetheless I do wish to say that I am sorry for not posting. I’ve been dealing with some difficult health challenges this autumn plus we’re *still* dealing with moving from the UK, so much to do and so very little energy to do it.

But I miss the camaraderie of the blogosphere and I would very much like to post more often. So please, if you are so inclined, send prayers/energy/candles/etc my way that I will have the stamina to blog in this new year. And now, on with the show!