My Own Personal Sunshine

It’s a strange time to be a designer.

Very recently, I discovered that an annual job I had expected to be renewed wasn’t going ahead as usual. The Irish Department of Education essentially decided the knitting course I was prepparing for primary school teachers wasn’t a priority this school year.

And while this wasn’t a job I was wholly relying on – don’t go putting all your eggs in one basket, naturally – designing a craft course every year or two for the Department was something that I had begun anticipating as part of my project list. It was also a job that gave me a welcome financial bump towards the start of the year.

I’m now suddenly staring down the barrel of a much leaner year and that, my friends, is definitely giving me a dose of the awl anxiety.

To balance out this deficit, I’ll be working more hours than usual on designing new patterns, and I’ll be hustling more.

I have to admit the absence of ‘the hustle’ in my life the last few years has been a welcome respite. Advertising my work is not something that comes naturally and so, dipping my toes back into the social media stream is coming as a bit of an emotional shock.

As I scroll through my peer’s work, I can’t help but feel like everyone has become so much more advanced all of a sudden. It’s a disconcerting feeling.

I’m not just talking pattern-wise – though there is a sophistication there I was certainly not prepared for – but also presentation-wise. Reels, videos, social media graphics, colour-palettes, oh my! I feel very much like a tornado has lifted my cozy little home and dropped me in a bewildering, technicolour land without even the favour of squishing a witch to start me off.

I am standing here at the first yellow brick in that road, bewildered, I’m afraid.

I miss the days when a nice flatlay would do the job, or when Ravelry was actually a place people spent time. God, I miss those days and the lovely direct contact and feedback I could get from makers. I even miss the days on there when I’d get yelled at for using the “wrong” currency when posting about a new pattern, or for using “incorrect” terminology for something I invented.

In comparison, social media now feels more diffuse, more transient; it swipes your confidence then disappears too fast for you to yell at it. I’m not sure how prepared I am for so gossamer a feeling.

I keep having to remind myself that the thing that made me unique still does, and that all the flash and flare of a tightly edited reel is either something I can do without, or something that I will learn to appreciate. I keep telling myself that the things that inspired me still do, and they’re still there, awaiting my return.

In that spirit, I decided to look inward and consider where I was when I started this journey. 

As a young girl, I grew up experimenting with crochet in the depths of rural Ireland. It was the 80’s so, we had no internet, and we were isolated enough that craft books in any form were a rarity, so it was just me, the land around me, and my hook.

So, returning to my roots, I took a walk through solid, Irish countryside.

I breathed in, and out, in and out. My old bun bhrógaí ate up the tractor-marked tarmac and I focused on the hedgerows and verges all around me.

I enjoyed the earthy aroma of dairy cows newly released into their fields, I smiled at new lambs, and I said hello to the bumblebee queens scouting around for wildflowers. And much like them, I scouted, too.

The Irish landscape rarely concerns itself with providing massive, awe-inspiring sights. We have no Grand Canyons or formidable peaks. All our mountains were ground to a nub during the last glacial maximum. Rolling hills and soothing, curving mounds were left in their place as the ice retreated. We have clayey soil perfect for grass and deciduous trees, and wildflowers.

And it’s these wee beauties that soothe my soul this time of year.

Yellow. So much hope in that colour, isn’t there?

Between primroses and dandelions, cinquefoils and daffs, cowslips and oxlips, wild Ireland comes alive with yellow in early spring. I like to think it’s the island’s own attempt to make tiny little sunshines while the sky remains grey.

There’s a lot of comfort in that yellow, and a lot of defiance, too.

I’m choosing to learn a positive lesson from all the yellow audacity surrounding me.

Maybe the sun isn’t shining right now and maybe the loss of that one big job feels like my own personal grey grey March sky, but I do have the power to fill my own hedgerows with sunshine.

And you know, maybe I’ll manage to find my own little niche in the social media madness by focussing on the small beauty of each stitch I make.

Maybe, much like my quiet walk in the countryside, people will find me and appreciate me just as much as I do each any every intractable little bloom.