Good morning and good afternoon @ENKELI @PeppyPatti @MDT @Glisten @AuntGlow @Shaz51 @Appleblossom @Faith-and-Hope @Snowie @tyme @Emelia8 @avant-garde @Ru-bee @RiverSeal and all forumites here this Friday. I hope your day is going well for you.
I’ve been absent this week from the forums as I was on a mental health/carer respite at a facility and unfortunately it didn’t go very well for me- limited internet coverage, no tv access, bad weather, poor location, badly designed facility and a trauma incident- so I’m trying to work on getting my overall health, including mental health back on track by focusing on some self care strategies for the next few days. I’ll be around the forums more often as of next week!
@ENKELI Thank you for the great response. It’s very much appreciated! Like you, I have found diamond art painting to be relaxing and very helpful when dealing with anxiety and stressful situations. What designs have you done? Do you like certain design topics like animals for instance? I came across this hobby at a PARCS stay back in February/March this year and thought I would give it a go to pass time and to see what all the fuss was about, especially since my housemate/best friend had been doing this for several years and seemed to really enjoy it. Anyhow, I got given a dog picture to do at the facility- a cheap one from Kmart- and although I initially put the dots on wrong, another participant showed me how to do it properly and I started to enjoy it, going on to complete the project along with a cat picture- again, from Kmart- whilst I was there over the 2 week stay. I found the process to be calming and almost meditative in that I was able to just focus on the process of putting the dots down on the picture and not thinking about my other issues that I was dealing with inner life at the time, including a lot of mental health issues. Suffice to say, when I left PARCS, I ordered some more kits from Kmart and a new hobby was formed. I’m currently working on a large cat canvas from Kmart - started back in late March and have been doing this in between knitting, cross stitch and crochet projects- and I started a peacock project this week whilst at a mental health/carer respite facility which really helped me with my anxiety and stress at the facility. I also completed 3 bookmarks this week from Kmart.
As for knitting, I’ve knitted since I was 8 - My mother taught me how to knit - and I’m now 48 so I’ve knitted lots of things over the years. I knit for charity in the form of blankets, beanies and kids jumpers with the blankets being the easiest to do as I just cast on 40 stitches and knit until the strip measures 120cm. 8 strips knitted is 160cm and makes an adult blanket for charity or 6 strips is a baby blanket. I often knit beanies when I feel anxious as I know the pattern and it helps me focus and calms me down with the beanies going to charity. It allows me to use up my odd balls of leftover wool and I get to be creative with the colours. The same goes for the blankets with no blanket being the same as another one. I also knit jumpers for myself as I prefer these over the jumpers I can buy at Kmart, Big W, etc as I can make them to for me and the length I like- I’m tall so I like long jumpers. Most of my wool is from Spotlight when it’s on sale - cheap acrylic which is easily washable in the machine and lasts a long time.
I’m glad you’d like to look at taking up cross stitching. It’s a hobby I enjoy as well. Spotlight do have some small kits and are often on sale so keep an eye out for them. Often a good starter kit is a kids kit which is simple yet easy to do. The internet is a great source of cross stitching information as well, including videos of how to cross stitch and how to get started. Cross stitching is something I took up at uni 20 odd years ago and I purchased a magazine with a free kit with it - a turtle that said best wishes in the kit. I think the magazine cost me $20 as it was from the UK and I really liked it. Australia don’t produce cross stitch magazines which is why I had to get a UK one from the newsagent at the time. Now I access the magazines from my library via digital downloading as it’s free to access and saves me money as some of the designs in the magazines aren’t my style and I was often wasting money on them which I now can’t afford to do. I’ve just purchased a kookaburra kit to do - a reminder of my respite holiday this week- and I’m in the process of completing an anchor design as a reminder of my recent cruise ship holiday.
Time to go and relax with a nice cup of tea and a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch as the weather here in Victoria is getting cold! Tonight is booked with me watching the Melbourne Storm play the Roosters in the NRL followed by watching the US tennis open later on.
Take care and stay safe!
Judi9877
