8 Comments

This was a delightful post! I too love when things work out, especially these sorts of tinkering experiments.

I’m currently making a sweater for my daughter, hopefully to be finished by her birthday in September.

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Baking is my creative outlet. I bought local native blueberries in bulk and have baked 2 pies, pancakes and a blueberry crisp. Will be freezing the rest.

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yuuuuuum!

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Erin, I love your work and excited to be a paid subscriber to support your work!

I'd love a post on how you support a creative habit of, well, creation. I'm a new mother (who works too) and trying to find time to make and create has been the biggest challenge, and the biggest thing I miss about my pre-kid days.

Thank you! Can't wait for the book.

PS: love the Conscia shampoo.

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Lisa, I don’t have any magic advice, but I had my second kid last November and I’ve kept my creative practices alive since my first was born five years ago. I work full-time, not really in a creative field, and the simplest way to put it is to just take the time. It’s simply but not easy and doesn’t work every day, but can work a lot of days. It can be tricky depending on what your creative practice is and how much equipment and setup it requires, but I try to push myself to make something every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Generally this is knitting or crocheting, which are both pretty portable, but I have other (too many) hobbies and some are harder to fit in than others.

It’s a delicate dance to get most of the life stuff done that needs to get done and have time for creative practices, but it’s a worthy goal. It’s also important for our mental health and for our kids to see us doing the things that light us up. Fully recognizing my privilege as a partnered parent with a decent co-parent, but also wanting to tell new parents to fight for the time to create.

Also not sure how far into parenthood you are, but if your kiddo is under a year old, just know that it gets better/easier to do things as they get older! (Except for when they are trying to mill themselves as toddlers 🙃)

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Caitlin, thank you for the incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking response! My kiddo is five months old and for some reason I thought maternity leave would be a crafting haven -- and it was not!

You’ve inspired me to try to pickup my packable hobbies and try to make them a daily habit. Getting out the serger and sewing notions is not going to happen anytime soon...

Please let me know knitting/crocheting projects you love!

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I too thought maternity leave would allow for a lot of crafting! Even the second time around when I should have known better, hahahaha. I did squeeze some in here and there--every time I pumped I was knitting, and that made it something to look forward to rather than dread.

If you're not already on Ravelry for knitting/crocheting patterns I highly recommend it! I pretty much love anything Brooklyn Tweed puts out, although their thoughtful construction might not be the best for sleep-deprived brains. I'm also very into Andrea Mowry's patterns right now, and Purl Soho always has gorgeous, simple designs.

Hope this helps--my only other advice is to sometimes use free time to prep other projects, even sewing projects, so you're ready when various pockets of time open up. Sometimes I just want to make progress on something when I have a small amount of free time, but taking the time to prep something can be helpful for the future so that I'm not stuck without a project at some point or so that if a larger chunk of time opens up unexpectedly, I can work on something bigger--hope that makes sense.

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Thanks so much, Lisa! I think the answer for me definitely lies in finding ways to make that creative work also be my paying work, which definitely has some pitfalls! Will see if I have anything useful to say on the subject!

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