Karen’s Chat – I’m an Eclectic Person

I am an eclectic person. If I see something and it catches my imagination, I want to do it. Since I retired, it became more noticeable.

My go-to place is YouTube where I’ve spend hours researching my chosen subject. Then I collect everything I needed. It’s given me hours of enjoyment making what I watched.

In 2021, a Facebook friend gave me a huge haul of craft stuff. A lot of it I didn’t know what it was, so I turned to YouTube. I was amazed at all the things I could create, and couldn’t wait to get started.

The more I watched YouTube, and more recently TikTok, they streamlined my feed. Exciting crafts I didn’t know existed came up and it wasn’t long before I fell down a rabbit hole!

Over time, the list of crafts I tried grew bigger.

• Card Making
• Stamping
• Die Cutting
• Paper crafting, pockets, pads, bookmarks, etc
• Pencil drawing,
• Knitting
• Crochet 
• Writing
• Cross Stitch
• Reading
• Junk Journals
• Bullet Journals 
• Reading Journals
• Graphic and video-making
• Glue books
• Digital drawing 

I quickly discovered that you need imagination to generate your own ideas – and I didn’t have it!

I need a template or pattern to copy from. Only then would I be inspire. It made my new hobbies frustrating at times. Talented people made it look so easy.

Although, I’m proud to say, writing stories from my imagination literally knows no bounds.

When I set up a bullet journal in 2024, I made a list of everything I had that needed attention before I could publish. I was shocked at the length of the lists.

• 21 novels and novellas
• 83 short stories

Since then, I’ve published some of them. My latest book is a small short story collection. It felt good to get some of the shorter pieces published at last.

Somehow, I’ve managed to reign myself in. I know I can’t do everything. So I’ve cut back and only a few. I share them here, and if you put #craft in the search bar located at the bottom of the main page, you’ll see some of them.