The "Blog Cos You Want To" Club

Time for another meeting? After all, I am trying to get going again. Cos I want to...

Want To No 4: Don't Strain Yourself, Don't Explain Yourself

Here's a quick one (and you might find it has surprising results...). 

Don't sprain yourself, don't explain yourself

Simply post a picture of your project. Maybe something you made years ago? Something you'd like to revisit? You don't have to say how long it took you to make, or where you bought the supplies, or what you ended up doing with it. Just show us the photo! All crafty bloggers love to look. Reading is dandy, but looking, some days can feel just right.

But wait - here's what I found; and maybe this will work for you too. Freeing myself from thinking about a post with words .....helped me to come up with some words.

WHY WILL THIS WORK?  I told myself I just needed to find the felt hat and take a picture. And as I looked, I remembered why we made it, all those years ago now and it was an easy story to tell.

There was a hat competition in school. And that's fun if you are a five year old girl. But an eight year old boy wasn't quite so enthusiastic. It had to be a good hat. So we decided on a rugby playing theme and, for inspiration, we used ideas from a felt "league table" wall hanging he had seen in a magazine. The plan was that you could move the flags round your hat, or put on new ones, depending on who you were supporting that week; so he coloured and I sewed on some velcro and made a rugby post from a bendy foam hair curler thing and we created a rugby ball shaped pompom for the top, and he took it into school - and he won a prize. Job done!

So, deciding not to tell the story had me - telling the story. And it did something else, too. It made me realise that, over the years, I've made lots of things (and the rest of the family has too) that have gradually worn out, or been passed on, or donated; and each of those things will gradually slip from view and be lost..unless I take a minute to take some more pictures. This hat was lying in the bottom of an old toybox. Next stop? who knows? I think we know where it was probably heading. But, even if I do end up moving it on now, I have a picture. And the story. And a post, too.

So, go on, give it a try. Find something you made. Tell yourself you aren't going to right anything. Then wait. You might find yourself unable to walk away. You'll start typing, maybe just a little, but you'll have some words. because you told yourself you didn't need them. Push yourself a little and you'll end up with an entry for Abi's One Photo & Twenty Words. Two photos, and you'll have something for Helena's Zoom in, Zoom Out.

Oh, the possibilities...

Blog Cos You Want To - also found here (Play on the Popular), here (Five Things) and here (Leave a List Lying in Limbo)