crafting composure

hands in motion // embroidery // anxiety // original research

[craftingcomposure-blog]

7.09 pm

I am getting so much feedback on my embroidery! I have been trying to post my work fairly consistently online and sometimes people leave comments about it! It’s amazing because I since I have social anxiety I feel very uncomfortable about meeting or talking with people in person sometimes, but the internet can be a safe space that I can choose to walk away or engage with on my own schedule. Sometimes people I do not even know comment on my photos and it is an amazing feeling!

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. I posted some photos of art made by female-identifying artists that I enjoy. It felt awesome to talk about other people’s art as well and to be a part (however small) of an online crafting community.

On the flip side, with trying so hard comes the potential for rejection. Which I have experienced a bit. It is disheartening and discouraging and I think this is why I was so hesitant to try to publicize my work at all. It is very scary to try! However I have been rejected for two things so far and I’m still here! Still making, still trying, still applying for things. Sean is also a very encouraging and supportive force in my life. Thankful for him and for myself for being strong and persistent.

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The three hoops I have finished so far. I thought it would be therapeutic to work on them in order, you know, anatomically-correct heart, wooden box, sparkly heart case, etc, but I just dove right in and the idea is so much more full and lovely now than I could have hoped. I put another hoop in the “finished” drawer today and I had such a lovely feeling completion and pride. Holding them together was even more calming than seeing them together. 

I’m beginning the wooden box tonight most likely. The heart will have to wait for another day when it is more sunny and I am able to trace on the window. 

I literally had a moment the other day where I just sat on the couch and just actively accepted and welcomed things that were going to happen to me. I got asked to potentially co-host a NSCAD Mental Health Collective meeting and invite people to work on craft-based projects while I help lead an open discussion on this topic. I also got a hugely vast number of participants willing to participate in the email interview so far as well, which is excessively encouraging. I haven’t felt this settled, correct, confident and healthy in a long long time.

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3.20 pm

I have been in such a good place lately. I can’t seem to find enough time in the day to get all my embroidery work done, and I am delightfully busy. Is it the working & being busy that is stabilizing me or is it the craft?

Reading more Foucault and haughtily entitled Doctor’s accounts of anxious patients in the next couple of days. 

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Feeling a little better. The power of craft.

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9.48 am

Depressed today. No energy. No drive to be productive. Roaming around aimlessly. Feel like garbage.

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9.42pm

Taking care of mum’s dog is exhausting. Haven’t slept properly in days. Kind of run down feeling, especially not valued in a particular personal friendship lately. 

Aside from those facts though, embroidery is going swimmingly. I have finished the jewelled heart case and have started (on the hard part first) the 4th level of the protection (the spike ball). I have 2 more outer layers to do after that and one or two inner layers, depending on time. I still have much reading to do.

Thinking of doing a public call out for interview questions on this project. I am shy and a large part of my anxiety is social so even just me asking for interviews is facing my fears. I hope to be respectful of interviewees’ needs, that would make me feel comforted, to comfort someone else with anxiety.

Quick thoughts before early bed.

[craftingcomposure-blog]

11.31 am

I have been feeling very “normal” lately. I use the word normal very pointedly, to describe a state of mind that is not overanalyzing, not self-destructing. A state of mind that is accepting. Embroidery is a huge part of that. I keep coming back to that concept, and repeating it, because I cannot believe what a help it has been for me.

I have begun that series set that I planned for the second instalment of this project (Crafting Composure). Whenever I am feeling anxious, especially when I am alone, I have a horrible sinking feeling in my chest and stomach. I feel physically nauseated and my chest feels constricted and painful. I get waves of temperature, usually accompanied by hands and feet becoming clammy. What makes me feel calm is to picture my heart as a stand alone entity. It is scared and vulnerable how it is. I visualize it being encased in a flamboyantly sparkly pink case, encrusted with gemstones. That heart case gets enclosed in a spherical case, decked out with spikes and studs. Then, that protected heart is placed in a final spherical case that splits in half and opens. It has a convoluted and untraditional lock where the two halves meet. Finally, ostentatious chains and a padlock are affixed to the final case. Throughout this visualization process I say “you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay” over and over and over again until I begin to believe it. Sometimes other layers make appearances if I am feeling especially vulnerable. Sometimes a small wooden box encloses my heart before the jewelled heart case. Sometimes a layer of bubblegum with broken glass or razorblades is included (imagine... trying to scrape away bubblegum with broken glass away with your fingers - they’d be cut raw). All of this is an effort to protect myself, to create a defence.

Sometimes I am torn between whether I should be doing this or not. Is this creating more distance between my already socially alienated self and the rest of society or my partner, Sean? Or should I continue with this visualization process because it makes me feel calm and gives me relief. I am currently in the camp of the latter option. I think anything that can be helpful to a person with mental instability should be an option they can feel free to exercise. 

Anyway, all of that is to say that I have begun embroidering. I started a piece yesterday afternoon and I was so caught up with it that I stayed up far too late and nearly finished it. I am at my mum’s for the week, taking care of her dog (which is also an AWESOME source of anxiety-reduction :D) so I plan to do more work while I am here. The sun is not shining because of last night’s storm but the snow is reflective and beautiful and bright and I am grateful for the opportunity to look out this big picture window and stitch my anxieties away. 

[womenartistszine]

Raise Boys and Girls the Same Way from the series Truisms T-Shirts Multiple of screenprint on T-shirt 1980-Present

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It Is Not Natural

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The Maritimes Are Killing Us

[friday55textiles]

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Sean captured my patch coat.

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10.46 a

I went to visit my mother yesterday. I was having an anxious day so once my class was released, instead of driving home I went on a long drive instead. I went around Eastern Passage - my regular route - but it wasn’t enough, so when I came to the juncture by Cole Harbour Rd and Bissett Rd I turned right and kept going through Lawrencetown. No surfers were out yesterday. It must have been too cold, or not windy enough. I stopped on a remote road somewhere outside of Porters Lake to eat a rice krispy square and smoke. One of the houses nearby had a very large driveway and in the short span of time I was there I saw many cars arrive and leave. I wondered what they were there for.

I passed by my mother’s house to see if her car, and only her car, was there. It was. The front door was open. There were saws, abandoned mid-use, in part of her driveway. Sophie greeted me at the door. Sleepy eyes but tail still wagging madly. That dog is more consistently comforting than any human. Her blonde fur falls in cascades down her back and I pet it. 

My mother told me a story about her walking Sophie the day before. The two of them and Bill had an encounter with a man who owns 4 dogs in Bissett Rd a few weeks ago. The man had said his dogs were friendly and encouraged my mother to let Sophie off her leash. They were not. They surrounded Sophie quickly, barking and snarling. My mother and Bill eventually extracted themselves from the hostile dog situation, even though one tried to follow them. In the story my mother as telling me yesterday, she had walked through the same field that she had encountered this man before. The man had 3 dogs with him this time, and still encouraged Sophie to break free from her leashly constraints. My mother remembered this man and refused. His dogs came to attack her and Sophie so my mother let Sophie’s leash go so she could run away. She said she screamed at the man. When she was telling me the story she was still visibly upset about the event - her voice shook while she recounted it to me. The dogs ended up biting Sophie and the man did absolutely nothing so my mother had to call the police. She informed the Park Superintendent Whatever as well and he’s placing patrolmen in the area at strategic times.

I advised my mother to carry a knife with her when she walks. She said she was afraid a man would turn it on her. I have a knife that I walk with whenever. Daylight, gloom, Halifax, Dartmouth, Sackville. Wherever, whenever. Isn’t that sad? I don’t want to stop doing the things I want to do simply because my gender is prey! That’s garbage. So I take steps to make myself absolutely insane-looking. Carry a knife, eyes akimbo, rip a can in half, use a rock, make sure you have boots on you can run in, make glaring eye contact. Women are crazy anyway, right? Might as well fight stereotypes with stereotypes. Don’t fuck wit me.

[craftingcomposure-blog]

11.16 a

Things have not been good lately. It is funny to see a direct correlation between how frequently I post on here and my mood. I just need to kick my own ass to do the things that keep me going because I feel so much better once I can get out of bed.

Like today for instance. I spent an entire hour after my alarm went off creeping under my blankets, creeping the internet. The internet is a scary place. I am debating stepping off other social media platforms because they just increase my anxiety. Social media causes severe social anxiety for me. 

Yesterday, I was convinced I was not good enough. I was not female enough, I was not jokey enough. I was not smart enough or knowledgable enough or social enough. I was not enough. My anxiety takes a thread of nothing and weaves it into a dense cage for my mind to bounce around in. And each bounce only reinforces the cage, the confinement. 

I wish my sister would come home. It’s funny how twin minds can assist each other like no one else.

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[friday55textiles]

Crafting & Anxiety

For those of you who have suffered from anxiety, nervousness, panic attacks, depression, mental instability or ill health: the following description will be irrelevant. For those of you who have had the good fortune to have never experienced those things, be glad, and perhaps the following will shed a bit of light on your loved ones who have gone through and may still be going through those things.

Mental instability is extremely difficult. It is feeling physically terrible and telling yourself you are supposed to feel this way, or you deserve to feel this way. It is sitting in the chair by the window, book open but not reading, with waves of nausea. It is obsessively checking your phone and counting the minutes since last contact because since then he could have changed his mind, he could have left you. It is looking at a face you don’t want to recognize in the mirror and feeling angry you have a face in the first place. It is having “that” expression, the one you put on to tell all the people you don’t really know all the vaguely happy things about you that don’t matter. It is having to lay down on your cold hardwood floor because that feeling is happening again, that dizzy, blurry vision, repeating feeling is happening again. It is feeling pressure from everyone and no one in particular to never say any of that.

Describing helps. Making helps. Indulging helps. Support helps. Being honest helps. Crafting helps.

For me, crafting - embroidery, knitting, quilting, crochet, sewing - is being honest. It is a platform to me to say things without having to open my mouth because anxiety has closed it for the day. Crafting is a repetitive motion I can forget in. It is a time I can stop the circular thoughts and start the circular stitches. 

I am writing this brief post as another illumination into the anxiety-riddled mind. Into something I have found that has helped me and could maybe help you, dear nervous reader. We can assist and support each other. If you have something to ask, ask me. If something is going unsaid but you just need to get it the fuck out of your head, tell it to me. You don’t even need to say anything, it could just be an empty communication, but I know you’re out there and you know I’m here and you’re not alone. This place and this body and getting out of bed in the morning is hard. Let’s help each other.

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I wrote this many months ago, during the summer. My partner left me the day after. Anxiety is not always a free-floating fear, and I need to stop second-guessing myself.