2016 was a bad year.

We all know 2016 was a bad year. Virtually every celebrity died, UK and US politics burst into flames and Hodor was killed off in Game of Thrones.

I lost my felting mojo.

You might have noticed – my online activity dropped lower than xxx Ok, so I did a bit here and there, but the passion was – gone? Hmm, maybe not gone. Muted? I wanted to feel, but all I got was apathy. You see, for the first 6 months nearly all of my time was taken up with fibromyalgia and buying a house – felting had to be scaled right back. Then my nan died. It was horrible and unexpected and all of a sudden I just didn’t want to felt any more. My nan was fascinated by felting and, as she was with all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, she was a proud and supportive influence. I made her a rabbit that my mum knitted clothes for, and it sat by her bed. Without her, even though I have dozens of loved ones who show me support and encouragement, I lost interest in a lot of things.

That wasn’t the only reason felting took a back seat, and I won’t bore you with the ins and outs, but there did come a time when I looked at my fibre stash and thought ‘Am I done here?’ I honestly thought that there was a very real likelihood that I would never get back into it and, bizarrely, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I mean, if you’ve lost interest in a hobby then what do you care if you’ve abandoned it forever? Yet I still felt sad. Did I want to put this hobby to bed, or did I want to get back the spark I once had? I honestly didn’t know.

So I made balls.

No, really. Get your minds out of the gutter, I’m only talking about the shapes! But I did, I made balls. I didn’t have the passion or the energy to make anything even vaguely challenging (having moved to a new town, my new commute to work took it out of me for a few months); as the proud owner of a new Burmese kitten (a breed so people-orientated that they can’t bear to be apart from their humans) I wasn’t able to snatch more than half an hour here and there, lest the cat try to run off with one of my needles. By making balls I was getting back into the right frame of mind – and I cannot emphasise enough how important that was – whilst slowly building up a stash of ‘parts’. When the time did come that I felt ready to start making things again I already had a bag full of basic shapes that I could use as a starting point for any future project.

So… Not the funniest post from me today, but I wanted to give an update of sorts. My felting mojo is most definitely back, and I have a bit more of a plan, a direction, than I had before. There are things I want to do, and you will also notice small changes happening on this website as I tidy things up a bit, move things around and update my branding and images. Nothing major, but I want to start making some exciting little changes. But more on that another time. For now I’m just happy to be back.

So if you’ve lost your felting mojo, you know just what to say.

Balls.

Here’s the cat by the way!

PS – I also wanted to point out to those of you who follow my blog – even though I don’t update my blog very often (although this will change) I do still update other parts of my website, but I don’t think you get notified when I do that.