2006.

Here we are.

The other week I cropped this picture taken from the hallway of my old house in London. It was a grey day and there was a single crow perched on the roof of the children’s library next door with a rainbow behind him. Somehow that moment encompassed my feelings regarding life, how the simplest of things can bring you joy- the trick is keeping your eyes open.

I finished the cabled hat for Head Huggers today, as my grandmother presided over my learning of cables during the holidays. It’s always lovely to learn a new stitch or skill and remind your brain that learning is everywhere. I would post a picture of the hat, but my camera decided to break last week, allowing me to get reacquainted with the non-digital world.

Lately I’ve been told about craftivism being mentioned in the unlikeliest of places, which is lovely despite feeling like a baby bird I’ve coddled has left the nest, with me wondering where exactly my place is now. That’s what the new year is about isn’t it, reassessing where you went last year and where you hope to go this one?

This Banksy piece used to greet me everytime I was in Shoreditch, and I was saddened to see it had been painted over when I was there in November. Sometimes I feel like that mural reflected what life in the west is all about- scurrying through a maze to find that piece of financial gratification that will finally allow you to live the life you’ve always wanted, even though your life has been there all along.

I used to have a hamster when I was young. And he had a wheel. He loved the wheel. And died next to the wheel. He was still a hamster who lived in a birdcage that we had modified for his house. Is it possible to get off the wheel? Or to get out of the race? Is it just a cultural entrapment that we’ve all been told to believe in, even though we never get anywhere different in the end?

I don’t know.

But I do know that it is the beginning of a new year. A new year with possibilities and moments of clarity and ideas full of art and bad days and good days and inbetween days. And that craftivism has become more to me over the past few years than just an idea, it has become a way of allowing myself to relinquish my belief in the wheel while also moving forward (albeit slowly) towards having a life where I notice the small tiny things of everyday life that bring joy more and focus on the race less.