Thank you everyone for your comments (it’s v.embarrassing sharing photo’s of your work). Yes @Willow I get ideas from photo’s and pictures and then mix my fav bits together! Although they never turn out as well as you’d like. That’s the joy of cross-stitch you know exactly where each stitch goes! I’m loving your reindeer @Leigh65 thank you for posting - Your cross stitch looks a small aida count? I did a huge 11count picture for my baby niece, it took 3months followed by months of physio for RSI - who knew cross stitch was dangerous lol!!! so i now stick to smaller projects! Happy chocolate powered stitching!!
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Thanks for your kind comments. I’m quite a beginner stitcher, but I really enjoy it… to be honest, its more than that, its quite a raft for my mental health, I’m sure a lot of people feel like that about crafts.
Yes, @ClareC it’s 18 count Aida. I like to stitch on Aida in the winter due to light issues, easier to see, and I often move to 28 or 32 count even weave in the summer. I like the different look of each one.
Oh, @Erica I have indeed got chocolate on my stitching at various times, gratefully it has worked that I’ve needed to stitch over that bit anyway!
Thankyou @Liz59, I will do that, am thinking it might be around 2030… I am not a fast stitcher!
@Duncan, you are right, it is based on Scandinavian designs, I love them, mostly monochrome and lots of reindeer and stars. They transport me to another world, and perhaps because my great grands were Swedish, there’s some genetic throwback.
Have been writing all my life, did a doctorate in English when I was 40, which was wonderful, necessitating a very long thesis and immersion in many other people’s book-worlds. I wrote a novel in lockdown. People thought it would be rather high brow (lol) given my academic background but I like to transport myself with cosy magical themes, my book was about magic cakes. I think we could all do with some of those! Am currently writing another one, also very light, it features a very thoughtful opinionated dog… Writing always helps my mood. I’ve also written journals, diaries, short stories, had a few articles published years ago, but got derailed by other things. Feel that my chronic health diagnoses have been quite sobering and am trying to use them to open up my creativity again and prioritise what matters, for me, words are always first on the list.
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And @Willow, thank you for your comment too! Your poetry is lovely; thoughtful and poignant. Yes, it’s fascinating to see what other people are up to and have a peek in their work baskets (so to speak). I think I am just a bit nosey!
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I love how you put it @Leigh65; our crafting being a raft for mental health. It’s really felt like that for me—almost like an urgency to release emotions to make sense of what I’m feeling.
I’m so in awe of your studies and other writing, Dr @Leigh65. Despite my best intentions I’ve never quite been in a position to do the PhD I fantasise about, but I still have life in me so who knows 
What a beautiful idea that we might bring the arts of our heritage with us like we do genetics from elders.
Here’s to further crafting!
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Hello everyone. This is the artwork I produced to accompany the poem THE FINAL LEAF that I shared recently. For some reason when I was in hospital I wasn’t able to upload it. Warm wishes Willow x
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Oh @Willow that is the most beautiful artwork I have ever seen.
It has taken my breathe away, thanks so much for sharing it with us, I feel honoured.
Be very kind to yourself now you are home.
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Hi , i hope you are doing ok , i would like share some images on here that i created during treatment … how do you do ut !!its lovely to have creative respinses to lifes experiences x x x
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Hello Willow, Love that, it’s really arresting and beautiful. It reminds me of the bit in my chi gong routine where we ‘hold the moon’. I imagine a great silvery ball of a moon just the same. Crafting is so cathartic and can help so many people, as well as those who craft. Thankyou for sharing it with us xx
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Thanks for your thoughts! Please go for it if you get a chance to do further studies, I never thought I would be able to do it, but things sort of fell in place after a relationship break up, it was now or never. I would love to read that you have found a path towards realising that dream. I think that the idea that those things that fuelled us most when young (often as children) are those things that remain most fundamental to us. I was always writing little books and starting ‘chapter one’ when I was a child, and library-book-day was always my favourite day. It’s gone on for a long time. Maybe you are similar? I still havent realised my ‘book in the world’ dream, but cant give up on it. I think it will be a healthy outlet for me as I come to terms with my (rather multiple) health issues. Do you have a writing practice? I love your cherry blossom haiku, by the way.
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Hi @Artynan
Thanks for asking. @Duncan has added a good ‘how to’ above as well so I’m using his screenshot! In the box where you type, there is an icon for photos - as in the picture below:
Click that and it will then allow you to upload a photo. If you are using a computer or laptop, you can also drag images into the box where you are typing and it should automatically upload.
Let me know if you have any problems and look forward to seeing you pictures.
Bests,
Ali
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Oh I love this @Leigh65, thank you for the encouragement and compliments. My previous hope was to research something about queer parenting and how family therapy could support such families, but at the time I was ready I just couldn’t find any placements nor funding, and had just started my therapy practice so was preoccupied anyway.
Years later it feels like the fatigue and chemo brain from living with this chronic Polycythaemia vera (PV) might never allow me to finish a thought, let alone further studies! My personal therapist is doing a PhD and they say it’s a lot to juggle, seeing clients whilst researching and writing about seeing clients. But funnily enough, like you say, making more effort to write regularly since diagnosis has definitely stirred something up—an inkling that maybe there’s some creative life left in me yet 
I love how you put it, that the creative fuel of our childhoods remains fundamental to us as adults. This really resonates with me as my young self was always writing and making stuff, and I’m much the same still!
So who knows! I’d love to publish some writing under a pen name. I’d also love to achieve other life goals like getting my therapy practice up and running again where I live now. Mostly I just want to—sorry for the bluntness—not die yet as I have too much left I’d like to achieve!
Thank you sincerely for the motivation @Leigh65! If there was one tip you’d give about maintaining a writing practice, what would it be?
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Hi @Artynan a great big welcome to our forum and I look forward to seeing your creative images and hearing more about you.
Really look after yourself.
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Wow! That is just so gorgeous Clare! Well done. I love the composition and the colour changes. It puts me in mind of a particular beach in Kintyre. Hope to see mire of your work
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Hi @ClareC
I began a knitting project I discovered on Instagram, a ‘temperature blanket.’ For two consecutive years, 2021 and 2022, I created one for each of my daughters. This project involves knitting or crocheting rows in a predetermined color palette, with each color corresponding to a specific temperature range.
I used a traditional color scheme, with white for freezing temperatures, progressing through blues, and culminating in red for the hottest days. However, many
people simply select colors they enjoy.
I significantly underestimated the final size of these blankets; they are truly enormous!
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Oh @Jules very clever
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Oh @2DB I could sit and look at that for ages.
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Willow I love the art work. Leigh 65 wow you have written a novel. Jules your tempearature blankets are gorgeous and I know the amount of time they take to make. 2DB stunning. What a talented group. Warm wishes Liz59
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Aw, @Duncan, so much of that made sense… I like that you recognise there is still creative life in you and also that you are writing more regularly. Also, maybe the experiences you have had since you were diagnosed mean that any ideas for a potential thesis would be denser somehow or different in a good way? I think we find the path when we need it and also when the world needs it.
I wrote my first book draft during Covid and then put it aside a little critically. I started my new book when I got my Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) diagnosis and after not writing for a long time. I felt an overwhelming sense that time was running out (I’m nearly 60) and that there was just no time to wrangle with the demon of procrastination. So although unexpected and pretty scary, my diagnosis has pushed me in the right direction with my writing; it has really prompted me to write regularly again and to put aside expectations of perfection.
I received my diagnosis in November and began my new book straight away. It was an also visceral response to that call from my GP, and I am still very much in that space. I find myself writing a really light fun book because that is what I want to read and the place I want to visit every day, I am sort of conjuring my own healing world really. I am not worrying about ‘enoughs’: good enough, literate enough, publishable enough, compelling enough, instead I am writing what is in my heart and what I am hearing. I really feel that I am transcribing stories as I write, that they are being lived somewhere and I’ve been tasked with presenting them to this world. It might sound crazy if you don’t write but I’ve heard other authors say the same and you might understand!
Although they had very different illnesses I also take some strength and inspiration from other creatives with chronic health issues and how they managed, even forged new paths when they were very unwell. Frida Kahlo most obviously, but also Matisse and his paper cut outs and Katherine Mansfield ‘writing to the end’ when she suffered with years of TB.
If I had to give one tip, I’d refuse because I feel compelled to give two 
write every day however you feel (never wait for the muse) and never compare your writing to anyone else. Both easier said than done, but I think that they are major keys in producing a body of work.
Please share more if and when you feel able. Maybe we need a blood cancer writers thread 
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Oh, that is fabulous! Cant believe it’s crochet (I struggled to make a scarf!). I love the idea of temperature blankets, I know you can also do sky blankets or sky scarfs using the colour of the sky every day. You must be very patient to keep going and make something so big (and twice). It looks extremely cosy! xx
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