gen­uine mud­pie turns one today! :D Here’s a look back at the year past.

One impor­tant learn­ing: try­ing my best to do some­thing real­ly, real­ly well, regard­less of whether it would be “worth it”. That was the thought that start­ed this blog, and it is still the goal and spir­it of gen­uine mud­pie. Most of the things I make I don’t plan on sell­ing, and I share my pat­terns freely, but the reward of the cre­at­ing process is tremen­dous. I’m blessed to not have to think about mak­ing a liv­ing through the things I make, and I can there­fore make what­ev­er ridicu­lous things that make me hap­py. Writ­ing here has kept me think­ing cre­ative­ly and helped me through some dif­fi­cult times of doubts and uncer­tain­ty. And if what I make and share here can lead to one oth­er per­son feel­ing hap­py or inspired or moti­vat­ed to cre­ate, then it’s all worth it.

One won­der­ful redis­cov­ery: when gen­uine mud­pie start­ed cro­chet­ing was the only needle­craft I wrote about. But over the past year I’ve begun knit­ting again, and along with it the gate­way to the vast and won­der­ful land of knit­ting pat­terns. Though as I start­ed cast­ing on projects I’m also remind­ed of why I gave up knit­ting in the first place — things can take a long time to knit. My first project was this jack­et, which I actu­al­ly com­plet­ed but took apart, because it turned out too big. Since then I’ve start­ed and tak­en apart 2 oth­er cardi­gans. What hap­pened, you ask? Well, I would start a project and before I get past the waist shap­ing I would come across anoth­er sweater that I like bet­ter, so then I would take apart the first sweater to start on the sec­ond one. Well, this has got to stop or noth­ing will get done! My goal, there­fore, is to stick with the cur­rent cardi­gan I’m knit­ting for my mom and to have it done before her birth­day in May. I can do this thing!

One great under­tak­ing: my Etsy shop opened after years of con­tem­plat­ing. I think hav­ing gen­uine mud­pie the blog makes it a bit eas­i­er to make the com­mit­ment of open­ing gen­uine mud­pie the shop. I guess it’s the fear of fail­ing, you know, what if I put myself out there and I don’t get any sale? So it helps that I’m already “out there” through the blog. But I won’t lie, busi­ness has been slow. It’s a tricky busi­ness, because on top of the price for time and labour (and how does one put a price on that?), there’s the Etsy fees and Pay­Pal fees and the killer ship­ping fees. So the plush­es are not as afford­able as I’d like to price them, and per­haps that con­tributes to the slow sales. I don’t know. But some­how I feel per­fect­ly OK about it. I guess part of it is that once I sew a face on a plush it becomes sort of a crea­ture with char­ac­ter and every­thing and I have a hard time part­ing with it. But I would cer­tain­ly be excit­ed if they could go to a good home and put a sil­ly grin on some­one else’s face oth­er than my own. So the shop is open for now, and peo­ple can go vis­it, and I’m hap­py about that.

One awe­some sup­port­er: gen­uine mud­pie would not be pos­si­ble with­out my hus­band, Mike. The new site would not exist with­out his design and cod­ing exper­tise, and my posts would be utter­ly bor­ing with­out his help with the pho­to shoots. Most impor­tant­ly, he was the one who encour­aged, and con­tin­ues to encour­age, the whole craft­ing endeav­our itself.
“What if nobody reads it? What’s the point of writ­ing a blog if nobody reads it?” I asked a year ago, as I was debat­ing whether to start a craft blog.
“You should do it,” said Mike, mat­ter-of-fact­ly, “because you want to do it, and because it’s fun.”
He said the same about the store too. I am so very blessed to have him in my life, some­one who thinks that a cro­cheted tater tot is impor­tant enough to spend a whole after­noon tak­ing pic­tures of it tum­bling in and out a tin foil pan, some­one who thinks that what­ev­er is impor­tant to me is impor­tant to him too. I can­not ever thank him enough for being such a won­der­ful, gen­er­ous, lov­ing man he is.

And I also can­not thank my fam­i­ly and friends enough (there are too many to name) for tak­ing the time to read this blog on a reg­u­lar basis, and for mak­ing a point to tell me that they enjoy it. I so, so, so appre­ci­ate your encour­age­ment and kind­ness. It means the world to me to hear that gen­uine mud­pie made you smile.

One big thank-you: whether you have been jour­ney­ing with gen­uine mud­pie for some time now, or you’re new to this blog, and whether we have con­nect­ed through your com­ments, or you’ve been qui­et­ly read­ing, I’d like to thank you for being a wit­ness to my cre­ative process by vis­it­ing me here. Thank you so much for stop­ping by, and I hope you con­tin­ue to enjoy read­ing about my crafty endeav­ours and oth­er mus­ings here.

And alto­geth­er, it makes one hap­py, crafty year. HURRAY!!! :D

With much gratitude,
Trish