not quite normal

crafting a life outside the expected

When we were building, there was a common theme in the comments I would get when I was asked for updates, and I would express my impatience, and my excitement to get it finished and start moving in.

“I bet you can’t wait to get into your new craft room!”

I would just smile and agree, partly because I was indeed looking forward to being in my new space, but mostly because I didn’t have the bandwidth for the questions that would inevitably come after explaining my (very deliberate, well considered) design choices. Smile and nod and keep it to small talk was my main goal in these conversations.

The explanations came when closer friends looked at the plans, or got video walk throughs during Friday night zoom drinkies. “Um, girl, where’s your craft room?” was one of the most common questions. And I get it, I do. I have a LOT of stuff. I am constantly elbow deep in multiple projects. In town, I had a (very lovely, light filled) craft room, as well as an adjoining photo studio that more often than not became a craft-room-overflow space. My entire online identity is built around crafting and creative play - this substack, obviously, but it is just part of my digital ecosystem built around a blog, an insta (and weekly insta party), and even a podcast, all focused on crafting and the creative process. Surely as a prolific maker and sharer, I need a fabulous, Pinterest perfect space to work on my projects and create content around them?

Indeed, I do not. Not only do I not have a craft room, but as the primary designer of our home, and final arbiter of layout and inclusions, I very deliberately chose not to add one. This is not to say I don’t have a space at all - I have a sweet little nook behind the kitchen, that in a normal person’s house would be a hallway and linen press. Instead of filling it with sheets, towels and mothballs though, I’ve kitted it out in IKEAs finest, and despite it, in theory, being the main thoroughfare from our bedroom to the laundry, my fold-down table is more up than down, and the space has well and truly become mine. It’s not large, and I have to move to the dining table or school room to cut out a garment or baste a quilt - and don’t even ask about the loom that has become a permanent fixture in our living room. But with some judicious selections of furniture, and working hard during move in week to cull, arrange, and sort (a process I started when it first became obvious we were going to be in the cabin much longer than expected), it is a delightful and surprisingly functional space.

Because here’s the thing: even when I had a craft room, chock full of storage options and more supplies than I could poke a paintbrush at; girt, not by sea, but by a gorgeous, custom, full length built in deck on three sides of the room; even then, I tended to mostly use it as storage space and instead hauled my projects up to the dining table, a space better connected to the rest of the family.

It was this knowledge of how I use my space that inspired the current set up; a small space to work on ongoing projects, and plenty of storage, plus options to stay organised in other parts of the house when I want to craft but hang out too. There’s also the acceptance that this is just a season - my babies are growing faster than my mam heart can come to terms with. Our first baby flies the coop in 9 short months. Boy2 will be off only a couple of years after that. The day is coming, quite rapidly, where I will have an empty house and an empty washing basket, and more empty rooms than I have ways to fill them. It was those days in mind, the majority of the time we will spend in this house as empty nesters, that I was designing for. One day I will have a craft room in those empty spaces. For now I have my nook, my boxes, my trolley. As

Louise Tilbrook

so eloquently put it, “the perfect…space is the one you have in front of you”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Plus, a bigger craft room means bigger messes and bigger messes need more cleaning, and who has time for cleaning when there’s crafting to be done?

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ON MY CRAFT TABLE THIS WEEK

one// it’s new quilt time! A friend has a milestone event coming up in the next couple of weeks, and it was the perfect excuse to start a new quilt.

two// galumph went the little green frog…I got lazy and stopped counting the stitches on the sides of my mandala blanket, and got out of step with the pattern further than I was able to fudge. Nine rounds, with around 600 stitches per, had to come out. There may or may not have been sulking.

three// it’s been a million years since I participated in a swap, and it was fun to jump back in with a little low key postcard swap. I don’t trust postal services with handmade postcards though, so I popped them in an envelope with a cute wax seal to get them safely to my recipients

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IN MY ORBIT THIS WEEK

watching// The Way Home on Binge. I raced through both seasons in three days as I cut and laid out my quilt, and now I’m on tenterhooks waiting for season three…in January 2025! Not happy Jan. Any suggestions for something good to keep me occupied in the meantime?

reading// back in the literary-inspired web series days, I started following a director & screenwriter, Yulia Kuang. A decade later, she’s done a whole heap of cool stuff, including writing a novel which came out last week. It sounds like a super fun read, so I grabbed it on release day and can’t wait to get stuck in over the weekend.

listening to// Apple Music, trying to decide if I really want to make the leap from Spotify after a second price rise in ten months. I feel like a fresh start is good because I’m discovering new-to-me listens, not just the same five songs on repeat that Spotify sends me.

trialling// a reboot of my morning basket. I have it packed and ready, I just need to get better at getting it off the trolley of an evening and have it waiting and ready for me on the table. At 5am the old brain cells aren’t firing brilliantly and the key to an uplifting morning routine is removing as many friction points as possible.

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It’s been a busy week of back to school and finding out groove, with limited crafting time. A spot of knitting here, a bit of collage there, trying to keep on with my daily photos. The first week is always hard, and my online stuff is the first to suffer. Insta has been quiet, I missed a week of substack, my blog has been opened and promptly closed untouched. Like my craft space, it’s about accepting the seasons, and the ebbs and flows, of life. We’ll find our groove next week, and I’ll start making more progress. And of course, the weekend is upon us and I have been plans to tick some things off my list!

If this is where we leave you, have a wonderful crafty week!

Below the jump, let’s chat reality vs expectations, and my thoughts on project one of my “Feels Like Home series”.