Dozy Writes

I have been doing a bit of crafting recently which has always been a favourite pastime of mine. 

I thought I’d share the story of my latest project, a rather large magazine file holder. I was looking for something to hold the plethora of notebooks and sketches I seem to accumulate as well as something sturdy enough to hold my tablet.

I briefly considered buying a magazine holder but I love crafting and my partner, A.P, is exceptionally good at making things so I figured that we could come up with something ourselves.

I had originally wondered if perhaps I could use bamboo for the frame. A.P had stumbled across some large pieces of bamboo on one of his little wanders and had returned bearing three six-foot long poles of said bamboo for testing.

I got caught up in a rabbit hole of bamboo craft reels on social media but early attempts to work with it indicated that it wasn’t quite as easy as it looked on Facebook.

Thankfully, A.P had also found some sturdy wired mesh that he had been using as anti cat defences around the house to stop the little terrors from wrecking the roof tiles and going into places they weren’t supposed to. He suggested trying this mesh so I worked out a new design based on this material and got ready to commence the project.

The frame proved to be somewhat difficult as the mesh was more rigid than I had initially realised but A.P fashioned it into the shape that I wanted then I set about weaving some T-shirt yarn through the mesh to fill the gaps. For those of you not familiar with T-shirt yarn, it’s made from fabric off cuts from clothing factories resulting in reduced waste.

This project was in danger of turning sanctimonious, what with the repurposed wire mesh and recycled fabric. Fortunately a dangerous side effect of the materials was about to be revealed that would kick any smugness out of the way.

You see, it was impossible to cut the wire mesh so that it was flush with the border, or at least it was with the tools that we had, so I was left with dozens of incredibly sharp edges. Every time I wove a piece of yarn through the mesh it resembled an experience akin to repeatedly hugging a sea urchin. When I say repeatedly, I mean at least 1500 times.  

It was savage. Blood was trailing down my arms and more than once I had to act quickly to stop it from transferring onto the yarn and possibly leaving a permanent stain on the holder. 

I could have bought two magazine holders from IKEA for under a fiver and even had them delivered to me, but no, I had to make my own holder leaving me with scratches up my arms as if I had been attacked by the gang of feral cats that prowl in this area. 

And that was before I started using the glue gun. You may have heard me complaining before about my lack of fingerprints. After this experience, what little fingerprints I had were scorched away by the first degree burns I received from the hot glue. I’ve watched videos of others using glue guns and I’ve not seen anyone else recoiling and swearing as they realise that another finger has been taken out of action. What on earth possessed me to use such a thing?

Eventually, I finished the blooming project. It’s full of mistakes, some of which I noticed as I was going along but I decided to carry on regardless – there was no way I was going to undo any of the yarn just to get stabbed 15 million more times. I have added some photos so you can see what I was working with.

Photos: 1. Testing the T-shirt yarn (note the sharp edges); 2. The finished result; 3. The finished holder next to a sparkle jar made from an old jar of gherkins and my favourite fairy lights (yes, I am that twee).

It’s been funny looking at this magazine holder because it’s made me realise that I no longer care quite as much about something being perfect. I can see the mistakes in the finished article but they don’t bother me in a way that they might have before.

Thinking about it, this project has been good practice for me to get more comfortable with making mistakes. Sure, I’ve made bonnier things but I’m happy with it because I’ve finally realised that how things look doesn’t actually matter all that much. Or at least not as much as I used to think it did. The effectiveness of this holder is more important to me than how it looks.

I prefer this way of thinking. It causes me much less stress.

I used to love having everything matching, particularly with household items. I wanted everything to be perfect.

I was 21 when I got married the first time and I was obsessed with the idea of creating a perfect life filled with perfect accessories.

My new husband and I bought a house and immediately set about installing a new kitchen. Then we made some improvements in the garden. I created a herb garden and started growing some vegetables.

This was followed by decorating the bathroom, installing double glazing, and then a complete refurbishment of the living room. I had matching furniture, crockery, cups and utensils.  It was all coming along rather nicely. 

I had set my sights on redecorating our bedroom next when I had a disturbing dream one night.

In the dream, I walked into my house and everything was sawn in half. The furniture, the ornaments, everything. It looked as if the place had been ransacked.

At the time I thought it meant that we were going to be burgled and I started to worry about all kinds of eventualities.

Six weeks later we split up. 

Suddenly the dream made perfect sense. Of course, everything being sawn in half was the perfect image of the act of breaking up. I think my subconscious had been preparing me for something that I knew deep down was going to happen. It was only a matter of time.

It was devastating. I had just turned 19 when I met him and I truly believed that we would be together forever. We got engaged 10 weeks after we started dating and our relationship was fairly volatile, involving innumerable crises, but we were inseparable. 

We were obsessed with each other and I think we both thought that was what love looked like. We got married two and a half years after getting engaged and I suspect that we both had some misgivings about it but I also think we were each so desperate to have something fixed in our lives that we overlooked them.  

It wasn’t all awful. We made each other laugh and we had a very strong connection to each other. I remember conjuring an image of us celebrating our silver wedding anniversary, and realising as I did so, that I would be 46 years old by then. It was hard to imagine what being that age would look like. I never expected it to be a life without him. 

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It’s easy to see now that we both had serious emotional issues as a result of our individual experiences which naturally affected our relationship.

All the matching furniture, plates, and cups in the world couldn’t fix that.

I continued with my need for matching things long after the divorce from my first husband. The one area where this didn’t bother me was the type of car I owned. I’ve never been bothered about having a nice looking car, it’s always been about practicality for me. Is it cheap to run and will it get me to where I need to go? However, this was the exception.

Over the years, I still found it important to have nice things, but I gradually started to downsize. It was easy in part because I kept moving to smaller places and the novelty of owning over 1,000 books wore pretty thin by the time I’d moved them for the third time so I gradually got rid of more and more items.

I saw this as a sign that I was less bothered about having a perfect home but the problem was that whilst I was reducing the amount of kitchenware and furniture items that I owned, the number of pairs of shoes and fashion accessories seemed to be increasing.

I’ve always owned lots of pairs of shoes. My primary motivation for starting work at the age of 13 was to be able to buy outrageous shoes. My second husband reignited my love of 1950s fashion clothing and accessories so before I knew it, I had a new set of items that needed to be meticulously matched.

I realised that I had subconsciously copied the pattern from my first marriage but this time I was using clothing and accessories to create a perfect life. Yet again, I was presenting an image that was aiming for perfection but the reality inside my mind was far from that. I still felt severely lacking. 

A few years after the break up of my second marriage, I began to feel more of an imperative to downsize on a bigger scale. I noticed that I was feeling less attached to my belongings, seeing them less as a reflection of me and merely as practical items.

It was a gradual process and, on the occasions when I had a big clear out, I would feel a huge release afterwards. I realised that I didn’t need to possess an item or gadget for every possible scenario and I adjusted to the idea that I could make do with less. It was a cleansing experience.

I began to introduce mismatched items into my house: a selection of different types of mugs; random ovenware; and some eclectic furniture. The world didn’t cave in and I gained a little confidence.

Around this time, I had started to visualise a future without too many belongings. I had been thinking about moving away from the Highlands where I had lived all of my life but I also started dreaming about doing some travelling, something that hadn’t appealed to me so much when I was younger. 

I made the first step by moving to London. I had randomly started to make friends with some Londoners and wanted to experience for myself the reality of living in a densely populated and multicultural place.

You can learn a lot from living in London. Prior to moving there, I’d had this preconceived idea that Londoners would all be obsessed with image and of course there were many people like that – I just hadn’t expected the image to be so depressingly dull. I was quite disappointed by the number of people I observed dressed in grey and beige. 

However, the sheer volume of people inhabiting London meant that I encountered a lot more folk who had less of a desire to present an image of perfection. London life can be more transient so many people seemed to be happy to make do with whatever odd bits of furniture they could find. Equally, there was a much larger number of people who were eclectic in their dress but not necessarily in a curated way. 

It was refreshing to see. There is an anonymity in London that felt quite liberating at times. It also came with challenges but I felt reassured that I didn’t need to keep repeating the same pattern if I didn’t want to.

In fact, I recognised that I had already broken away from the pattern to some extent – my relationship with A.P had started to evolve in a way that was different and definitely not in keeping with the image of a ‘normal’ relationship.

These experiences, combined with the liberating feeling that comes from having less  belongings, have culminated in the wonderful realisation that I don’t feel the same need to make something perfect in the way that I used to. Whilst it hasn’t completely disappeared, it doesn’t register the same intensity.

I have recognised for a long time that my worth as a human being doesn’t come from the type of house I have, my belongings or my appearance, but I have found it challenging to feel confident when putting that learning into practice.

My imperfect magazine holder has been a pleasant reminder that I’m doing OK. 

It has also made me realise that maybe I need to pull back on some of the dangerous crafting projects, I’m not sure if my body can cope with it!