Thanks for the joy

I've been meaning to come through to update my various listings, stores, and socials, but the longer I left it the sillier it felt. For some reason, today was the day.

As mentioned in previous blogs, my health is an ongoing focus for my attention. My chronic illness is continuing to be variable and trying to manage the many platforms for this wasn't feasible.

All my patterns will be available for free on Ravelry moving forward, the existing YouTube videos will remain up and available for the moment. Maybe one day I'll take them down, but the turtles continue to inspire people to try crochet so I'm happy for it to stay.

I have disabled the listings on Etsy, but as mentioned, they are available on my Ravelry instead.

Shiny Crochet on Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/designers/sarah-shiny-kelly

Shiny Crochet on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/shinycrochet

So what have I been up to and what does this mean going forward?

In the last few years since I last updated this, I have honestly barely crocheted. In part, I'd burned myself out on the hobby with trying to find a way to create tutorials, patterns, and content while also having limited energy. But I also think I sincerely lost a lot of interest in it once I didn't have a purpose for the things I was making.

Now I am feeling more free to dabble in other hobbies and crafts. I've been learning sewing in a proper way, dabbling in painting and miniature house crafts, and just allowing myself to find joy in the tasks I can do as my health allows.

I may one day come back to this platform, or come back to the idea of Shiny Crafting and making things that way, because I do truly love getting to share the things I make. It's just a lot of work to document and communicate while also creating, which needs energy and focus I don't have at the moment.

Wishing you all the best and happy crafting.

Comments

Upcycling Old Clothes - How I Repurposed My Band Shirts

This seems to be the year of adding crochet to my clothes and I am very okay with this. I have a tonne of shirts that aren't fitting right after putting on weight. Many of them are not replaceable so I've been mulling ideas on resizing them. I had a spark of inspiration on Friday and decided to run with it. Spoiler of the finished product, but look how great it turned out! (7 minute read) Enhance Band Shirt Let's go on the journey together! Really actually a journey, you'll notice some of the photos have varied backgrounds. I was making this while on the way to a friend's place and while visiting. So we have some train seat & Ikea rug backgrounds. Materials: Band shirt (or any t-shirt you have) sewing pins scissors Sewing machine (or hand sew the seams) recommend rotary cutter with skip blade, else a hobby knife and ruler will work in a pinch cutting mat 4 mm hook 4 - 8ply yarn, preferably cotton or no-pill of your choice yarn needle yarn sc...

Jeri the Frog - free frog crochet pattern

Earlier this year I decided to have a go at making a pattern for a frog. I'd started noticing frogs popping up all around, then a friend actually suggested I make one. I remembered making one several years before without writing any notes. I was in the midst of many other projects so I put off starting this pattern. As always though, I was thinking about how I would go about the design, what's in a frog after all? (5 minute read) froggie frogs When I'd finally made headspace to look at this project, I was then overwhelmed by options . I started with sketching them out because I wanted to pinpoint what makes the toy look like a frog, I looked up actually frogs, plushie frogs, toy frogs, and more. Over breakfast on a couple mornings I sketched and doodled and floundered on options some more. I was really enchanted by blobby boy to the top right of with the creepy clear eyes, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around how I would achieve that, let alone write th...

I Ziggy - Zagged my first jumper!

Winter always sneaks up on me with the cold; and every year I plan on making myself a jumper, but by the time I settle on a pattern, it's Spring. This year, the stars aligned. The season's cold started so much earlier, and hit so much harder. And the perfect introductory pattern popped up. The Ziggy Jumper, by Stitches by Trudy. (7 minute read) Candid selfies are possible with The Ziggy Jumper (and a Bluetooth clicker) The final detail I needed to start: the yarn. I've been working through my stash for the last year or so, but with only cottons and limited hand dyed yarns left I needed some thing new for this. A cheeky sale popped up from Spotlight so I went to check out their options. I had looked at their online catalogue, but it's not the same as looking in person. The moment I saw the Value Ball Rainbow 3 Pack I knew it would be perfect for this jumper. The colour changes were long enough to be nice sturdy stripes, and the colours beautiful. Though I didn't...

Search This Blog