The Sick Chick

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!

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!)

Here's one I made earlier...

Please send hand images to:

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!

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!

I’ve been trying to make a list of everyone who has publicly acknowledged that they have a chronic illness and who also are crafters.  Maybe they make their living crafting or just use it to cope with the everyday stresses of living with illness.  However, this is obviously an impossible task — there are millions of people who fit this category!  So I’m just going to do what I can and start the ball rolling!

Since this is Invisible Illness Awareness Week, I can’t think of a better time to start ah, taking names

If you are, or know of, a person who is out about living with chronic illness (please don’t divulge secrets not your own!) who is into crafting, please please comment!  Leave the blog, website, Twitter, Facebook, Etsy or other URL where we can find them so we can spread the encouragement!

Invisible Illness Awareness Week 2009

And please don’t forget that I am crafting for the chronically ill & their support teams, donations of craft supplies & postage greatly needed!!

You’ve probably heard of Startitis — the term for the state in which a person is constantly starting new projects, regardless of the number of unfinished objects awaiting their attention.  A new idea comes to mind and wham! they start again, leaving the last great thing in the dust.

While this term is generally applied to crafting, I’ve discovered to my dismay that I have startitis when it comes to blogging.  I have almost a dozen half-finished posts sitting around in draft form, all crying out for my attention.  I’ve been quite ill this last month, admittedly, but the silence on this blog has been caused far more by the dreaded startitis.  As if I needed another disease

I’m going to do my best to *finish* posts now, so if all goes well there may be many in quick succession.  If not, well, I think we know what to blame….

It’s been a wild year since I stopped regularly posting.  My father got worse and then better, but is still on the long road to recovery. My health has been on a roller coaster, my husband has been laid off and we’re currently living with our respective parents in the US & Australia — not because anything is wrong with our marriage but to spend time with our ill fathers. (& also because it is taking soooo freaking long to get a green card for him to join me in the US!! Grr!) Hopefully we’ll be reunited — with a green card in hand — by the end of the year.

Life changed, and this blog is going to change with it.  I’ve been very inspired by Diane Gilleland’s ebook about making crafty blogs. I’m not sure that I can follow her mantra (“It’s [your blog] not about you. It’s about them.”) all of the time since I love to babble, but I shall try to keep that limited to Twitter as much as I can.

My new direction with this blog is to be more open and giving rather than self-referential.  More tutorials rather than just pictures.  More interviews with others than rambling about myself.  And most definitely, more about the intersection of craft and illness, especially how crafts can help heal both the crafter and the recipient. Basically, I want to make this blog more about crafting than the crafter.  That’s the plan, anyway. Please give me a nudge if I seem to be straying away from this.

I’ll probably not be able to write deep, insightful posts all that frequently. My health is poor at the moment and I don’t know what specifically is wrong so I don’t know how to fix it.  So please bear with me if I’m not a regular once a week like clockwork kind of writer. I hope that what does come out will be worth the wait.  In between I’ll probably post a lot of snippets of things I have seen, podcasts I have heard, projects I have planned and stuff I covet.

I want to hear from you, my dear readers, as to what YOU want me to write about.  Is there something you want to know about my crafty life?  About being a sick chick who crafts? Just ask and I will do my best to answer.

So from now, I declare this blog to be re-opened.  There’s still a bit of technical dust as I redo widgets and whatnot and add pages and links and the like, but the important thing is that my mind is ready to write again and now I have a place for it.

Old friends, welcome back!  New friends, welcome aboard! Let the journey begin!