Our lives right now are all about staying home as much as possible, keeping our family and ourselves safe, and trying to contain our worry in a worrisome time. H4TG staff are right there with you trying to figure out how to navigate this new daily (temporary) normal! We'd like to share with you some of the ideas that have worked for us when it comes to de-stressing, figuring out how to work from home efficiently, managing kids, working in some sort of fun time, and more.
If you are like me, you suddenly find yourself searching for things to do with those extra cracks of time we now have. Suddenly, the wish that “if I just had more time to spend at home” has been granted. Absolutely not the way I would have wished for but here we are. Most of my time is filled with work, my family, reading and attempting to keep our house clean and organized. Not super exciting, I agree. So, I decided to use this interruption in my regular routine to try a little something new.
On a recent trip to Joann Fabrics with my husband, who needed some additional material to sew our COVID masks, I did something crazy. I bought yarn and a crochet hook. Full disclosure, I am not a crafty person by any means. But as I ogled all the pretty yarn colors, I thought to myself, here is your something new! Once home, I make myself a cup of tea, get a comfy seat and proceed to search YouTube for videos on crocheting. I eagerly click on my first one, “How to Crochet Let Handed for Absolute Beginners”, sounds promising. I watch the instructor slowly go through the basics: how to hold the hook, how to correctly wrap the yarn around my fingers to create just the right amount of tension, create the slip knot and make the chain. I take a big gulp, pick up my hook to create my slip knot. Okay…just barely got that down, now onto the good stuff. I begin to make my chain. Hmm, okay how did she hold the yarn again? Let me go back and watch one more time. Oops, not quite right. Rewind. Well, that was a little confusing, I need to find another video!
Fast forward two hours and 5 videos later, my head is pounding, and I have a small foundation chain that looks as if its been mangled by a wild animal. I won’t even go into my attempts to learn how to single crochet! I have made a promise to myself not to give up, but I think I would get the most benefit from in-person instruction. So once life gets moving again, I think I will look for a class and see where it goes. But for now, I hear my husband and son in the den, and it sounds like they have got a good movie on. I make some popcorn and go join them.
-Karen Wilson, Fundraising & Marketing Manager