Grounding with Canning and Crocheting

I don't know how anyone else's life has been this last few years.  I can only speak for myself. I will write in here for those who may look back on this post years from now and not understand the context but in 2020 the world was hit with the Corona Virus aka Covid 19.  Things that you may only see in movies previous like whole countries shutting down to prevent the spread of the virus actually happened.  I am unsure that there has ever been another time in history where pretty much the entire planet was experiencing the same difficult event.  I personally have not lived in my lifetime through any major world crisis that extended and affected me for such a long period of time.  There have been wars, I remember where I was 9/11, but this has been different.  Again for future readers, we actually sat in our house for months.  You were encouraged to not see people, not do anything that was unnecessary.  I thought that this might last a few weeks, maybe a month.  I figured there was no way that it was going to go on longer than that.  I mean they shut down sports and Disneyland.

We are now here about a year and a half later and our countries are still dealing with virus.  I feel like I've been in a emotional, physical and spiritual marathon.  There is so much information that is being put out.  I will actually be very interested to see twenty years from now and be able to look back and see what was accurate and what was false.  At this point we don't have enough time to have enough data to know what is what.  Really this is the thing they make movies out of but it's actually real life.

In the midst of what I would say is world chaos I have found that I need to be grounded.  I look back before the virus and I am tired.  I see in my life a lot of activity but I am not sure that the amount of activity was really productive.  As we have had to slow down, I've realized what really fills me up.  I've learned that close friends are priceless.  I could spend days with my kids and my grandson just being with them.  This summer I actually ended up getting sick with the virus and ended up hospitalized.  It was a scary time.  I knew that I would be ok but there is something about spending days really sick that starts to tell you a little about yourself and your life.

I have a friend who a few weeks ago mentioned that we should go blackberry picking and make jam. The two years ago Jaime would not have time to do that.  There are more productive things I can do than stand on the side of a road and pick blackberries and then take a whole other day to make jam.  I don't really eat jam but I've been spending more time building friendships again in my life.  I figured why not?  What I didn't realize is the ritual of picking berries and making jam with friends would create this peaceful feeling in me to the point where I have become a bit ridiculous about it all.  I've added crocheting to the mix because my first grandchild was born in July.  I never knew that you could love a kid so much and be motivated to do things like crochet hats because of course, he needs them!

I think there are times and seasons for everything and I am in the season of slowing down.  I want to enjoy the process.  I want to create beautiful things and watch my friends and families face when they try pear honey for the first time or my grandson when I finally made a hat that fit him.  I am not sure I am changing the world one jam jar at a time but I am creating peace in my world.

Here are some pictures of my latest projects.  I will post the projects separately with directions for some of them if you would like to get your own grounding time in and go back to a time when life was more present and the little things mattered.