Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share.
How are you? I hope you are well and are having a great weekend.
Things for me have slowed down through the last week as I had my flu and pneumococcal vaccine last Tuesday and I’ve been a bit under the weather since. Despite feeling like I’d been punched in both arms on Wednesday, I headed back to see my exercise physiologist, and wasn’t too bad. The dreaded sit-to-stands are getting easier and my capacity is improving. Shortness of breath is still problematic, but that’s what I’m there for. My physio is very encouraging.
The next paragraph touches on thoughts of suicide but also the very kind intervention of strangers who saved her life.
I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading, particularly recovering from the vaccine. I can’t recall whether I’d finished Julie Goodwin’s memoir: Your Time Starts Now last week. She is Australia’s first MasterChef and despite her professional success, she had a few bouts of acute depression, anxiety and is a reformed alcoholic. She also came very close to taking her life but was spotted by some strangers who spent a couple of hours with her and then she called her husband and went to hospital. She has such a loving close-knit family and she’s such a lovely person and through the book, she walks you through her thought processes and it’s a very helpful insight into someone who is so successful and has it all on the outside, but being brought down by this grueling disease. I have also just finished reading Wendy Harmer’s Lies My Mirror Told Me. Wendy Harmer has achieved so much that I couldn’t possibly do her justice here, so I recommend you click on the link. By the way, these books tie in together well not just because they’ve been written by women of a certain age, but they’re both highly creative, highly successful but have overcome a few significant hurdles and haven’t always stayed on the horse.
I also finished off a little pouch I made on the spur of the moment, but which took more than a moment to finish off. Even if you’re not into craft and I am only a very new recruit myself, I thought I’d go into how I put it together and a few of the challenges I faces. The white “flower” (or is it a diamond?) was cut out of a doily I bought at the local thrift shop. I had a piece of hot pink felt which came from a swag of fabrics from my grandmother’s cousin who is a retired top-end dressmaker and fashion designer. I was trying to decide quite what to do with it as it wasn’t a bit piece of felt and I was trying to decide whether to cut it in half or make a pouch. There wasn’t enough to make a bag. I settled on the pouch and though I could put business cards in it, which are currently floating round in drawers beside my chair, along with brainwaves scribbled onto snippets of paper, which are generated all around the house. Having worked that out, I decided to join it together with blanket stitch, which wasn’t as easy as I’d thought and I really struggled to keep my stitches even. So, you could say the pouch has a “rustic appeal”. Or that in might’ve been done by a second-grader. However, my question is whether AI could’ve done a better, or even perfect job? No doubt it could and already does, but which has more appeal? More heart? What are your thoughts?
Anyway, here I am walking through the creation of what really should’ve been a a quick and easy project for the experienced crafter, but that’s not me and I had to really put some thought into the next step…how to attach the white flower onto the felt. I was tending towards glue, but that can get messy but not as messy as my stitching. So I consulted the person who seems to know everything about everything and the penultimate “Mr Fix-it”. He recommended using an iron-on glue patch. Very nifty but also a bit scary. What if you make a mistake? Glue it the wrong way? Stick it to the iron? Or, if the iron burns and destroys my precious creation? But before all that could be put to the test, we had to work out where to buy the patch and eventually Geoff arrived home with the goods. He also recommended I have a practice run. Good thinking 99! (BTW I can also be a bit goofy like Maxwell Smart). So, as you can see, it worked out well in the end and I’m pretty chuffed. Moreover, I beat a bit more of my annoying perfectionism and consequent procrastination into submission, and I guess that’s what I wanted to particularly share with you,
Do you struggle with perfectionism? Or perhaps, you’ve experienced avoidance which can easily go hand in hand? Do you have any strategies for overcoming it?
Well, I’ll have to leave it there for now, as time has run away from me again.
This has been another Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Natalie the Explorer– thank you very much!
Best wishes,
Rowena
Beyond the Flow 