It's going to have to wait

I guess the idea for my next project started with seeing all of the colorful wool things people are wearing at this time of year. Many of them appear handmade, and I think that people like wearing handmade stuff.

Then I saw this Facebook page from Fairysteps and it blew my little mind. Their shoes really strike me as beautiful and all the better because they are handmade. The ones with the buttons are so very cute. Here's a picture from a recent post of theirs:

Wow, huh? Love the low boots, especially. 

I don't know how to work with leather, so my mulling process eventually wandered over to something like this:

There's a site on Etsy (of course) that sells both the soles and the lasts for making stuff like this (well, the shaped bottom part, anyway). I like this idea so much that I'm going to sign up for a wet felting class held in January at one of the local yarn stores. I'll see how much I like the process, and go from there. 

The prospect of making stuff with a depth of color like this from Rosiepink is very appealing. 

They have lots of fun stuff on their site.

HOWEVER.

I've had some angst lately about spending so much time alone between work and hobbies that I don't think I'm going to rush headlong into the wet felt thing immediately. You know, another thing that has me working by myself at home. I spend enough time by myself at home.

Last night I went to a concert by the music director from our church in support of his new CD. I knew many of the people there, but ended up sitting by myself because I guess I didn't look hard enough for someone to sit with. It may have also been the case that I was waiting to be seen and invited to sit. This internal dynamic gives me a lot of anxiety sometimes. I feel like I forget how to be social. 

Fast forward to the intermission, and I easily find several people to chat with. The key? Asking about them. How's things? How's the new house coming along? Duh. It's not actually that hard at all. Yet I struggle. 

But the holidays are hard for me sometimes. I trot out my losses and run them back and forth through my mind. I think about the stuff I want, not the stuff I have. It's frustrating to me that I can't run through a list, check stuff off that is safe and in place and be satisfied with that. It has to do with letting go and trusting the process and I need to work on that. 

I blame part of this on the weather. The cold snap has had me on edge, hoping that everything in my old little house holds together, but it's been fine and it's finally warming up. Still, I'm restless at night and haven't been sleeping well. We might get above freezing today, and I'm grateful.

As far as the wise use of my free time goes, it seems I yearn for more connection, and so should try to do things that get me out of the house. I'll take the wet felting class in January, and see how that goes, but at the same time find some more social things for me to do. There's always people who need volunteers.

Are you familiar with Brene Brown? Really good stuff this week from NPR's On Being show about how being what they called "whole hearted" means showing up and being uncomfortable sometimes. You can't have the highs without the lows. That it's in the times that we struggle that result in the stuff that gives life some of its meaning. So I'm going to do some showing up. 

Hope your Tuesday is grand!