Your Favorite Crafting Experience?

Dear users, dear authors,
would you like to share something about your favorite crafting experience?

Dear Josefa,

I don’t think there’s just “one best crafting experience” in life. I can think of so many. So I’ll just start off on the spur of the moment. What has stuck with me?

I once received a request for one of my free patterns (the Spiralibus Hat). A customer messaged me asking for a specific step to be explained again. I wrote back explaining how to do it and included a picture with an arrow pointing to the relevant part. The customer thanked me and asked me to please reply again without any photos at all. She explained that she is blind and relies on special software—or her friend—to read the text aloud to her. But she can’t see pictures. She has to be able to visualize everything in her mind’s eye in order to work.

We solved the problem together, and I still get goosebumps today when I think about it. We sighted people take it for granted that we use our eyes for our handicrafts. We count, look, and count again. But how difficult that must be when you’re blind. The woman used to be able to see but then lost her sight. It was her favorite hobby, and she simply wanted to keep doing it. Like any other woman, she wore her new, hand-knitted hat with pride—but for her, there’s so much more to it than that.

In any case, that really moved me.

I’m looking forward to hearing about your experiences and stories.

Warm regards, Ina

Ina, your story is truly wonderful and very touching. My best experience was this:
A dear friend asked me to crochet a sloth for her son (who was 3 at the time) because he loves them so much.
So I designed one that’s easy for little hands to hold.
When I sent it off, two days later I received a totally cute photo (I’m allowed to share it here) and a voice message from the sweet little guy, in which he thanked me so very much. Even today, he still carries it around with him everywhere. It makes me especially happy because, these days, it’s no longer a given that children will be excited about something for so long—often, everything is so fleeting.

I gave one of my grandsons a Sandman with a music box inside as a birth gift; he loved that little Sandman very much. When the boy was about 6 or 7 years old, he came up to me one day and said: “Grandma, look—the little guy really isn’t pretty anymore, but I love him. Can you do something to make him look better again?” I took a look at it and said, “We can sew him a suit that looks like what he’s wearing.” He was absolutely thrilled and immediately brought out my box of fabric scraps and started looking for something that might work. We found something that worked, and then we worked together to sew the *little man* a new suit. My grandson turns 24 in February, and the *little man* is still sitting on his bed.

Oh, what beautiful, heartwarming stories. They really warm the heart :-)

I’m thrilled and very touched by your stories, Ina and Mel. The little guy is so cute, and you can clearly see that he really loves the sloth. Yes, that really brings joy.

So I’ve been thinking about what my best crafting experience has been. Of course, there are many…
But the best one was definitely when my granddaughter (the daughter of our foster daughter) asked me to crochet a suit for her stuffed animal. She’d been carrying that little sheep around for more than 10 years by then, and it was about to fall apart. So I crocheted a suit for the little sheep, and she’s still absolutely thrilled with it today. That way, the little sheep got a new lease on life, and she can even still take it to bed with her—even at 13 years old. Here’s what it looked like after I finished crocheting it:



There’s just nothing more rewarding than giving gifts to children. And yes, of course there are adults who are also very happy to receive something handmade. My kids are always thrilled with the knitted and crocheted items for the grandchildren.