Spotlight Sunday

So I read a lot of of blogs through the week. Especially now that I spend a lot of time trapped on the sofa by a sleeping Lily! A lot of these blog feature some amazing advice and inspirational ideas. In light of this I thought I would start a once a week feature to share these awesome posts with the rest of you - just in case you missed them...

What I do think would be really cool would be if this became a thing a lot of us could do. I love seeing where other people's inspiration comes from. Just a thought? #spotlightsunday

1. Weighing out your Yarn - Dartmoor Yarns

Now this was a really good idea. Up until this point I've been going with the logic that if I have 3 times the length of yarn length left then I have enough to sneak in another yarny row. However, Dartmoor yarns have a much more accurate method to prevent games of yarny chicken - weighing out your yarn. If you know how much yarn you use per row then you can weigh the yarn after each row to see if you have enough left for another. 

So I'm off to buy a set of digital kitchen scales......

2. How to fix a cabling mistake without ripping out hours of knitting - Fringe association

With my new cabling skills this post really caught my attention. So Karen managed to cable round the wrong way and managed to mess up her pattern but didn't notice until a lot later on. Wanting to avoid ripping out all her othewise beautiful knitting, she turned to our old friend Google and she found this post from Yarn Harlot. Basically there is a way of just ripping out the cabling without the surrounding knitting and using a DPN to reknit the pulled stitches correctly back up to the row you were working on!

Absolute genius.

3. Toe Up Sock knitting. Free Rav Pattern - Tangled Yarn Knitter

One of my aims this year is to learn a lot more about sock knitting. So this toe-up free pattern post really caught my attention. I'm really interested in the different techniques of sock knitting as I know there are so many different ways of knitting them. 

Here's a link to the pattern - I'm adding it to my 2017 to knit list to.... That list is getting seriously long now...

4. A List of Charity Patterns - Yarnbob

Looking to treat yourself to some new patterns or yarn? Yarnbob has found some beautiful yarny beauties that also give to charity with every purchase. 

I do have a pattern in mind for this yarn...

5. F.O. AIDEZ CARDIGAN - Night Owl Nook

This beautiful finished knit is a freebie pattern that you can find here. Night owl initially knitted this is 2014 and then it died in the wash... So, feeling inspired she's reknitted it in a slightly looser fit in Wool of the Andes Superwash Bulky. It's now fully washable and looks absolutely stunning! 

Definitely a pattern for my To-Make List.... I have a feeling this list will be still in progress into next year!

So that's my list of posts that's really inspired me for this week. I'll see you all same time same place next week!

Love to you all and happy knitting

MrsKirstyHoll

x

How to get inspired for 2015

As many of you may be aware I am a social media marketer by trade. I find Pinterest a great way of bookmarking all of my social media related pins.






If you're interested check out the entire board here:

Follow Kirsty's board Social Media on Pinterest

For the last few weeks this pin with has been repinned about 5 times a day. It's one of my most popular pins on the board. With this is mind, I thought I would put together some of the best advice I've found from around the internet for staying inspired!

For starters you need to start spending some time each day to stop and reflect and what you want to achieve. When you get up in the morning spend 20 minutes doing some exercise (5,7) with all your social media turned off (6). This will get the blood flowing in your brain and your heart pumping.

This doesn't have to involve leaving the warmth of your house if it's cold and wet outside. I have a number of dance games on my Xbox/Kinect in my living room which I'm going to start using. Doing this inside your house means you can also combine it with your morning beverage of choice (6). Caffeine can be a great source of inspiration.

Coffee is a drink of the Gods
http://justincasedeck.com/

While you're relaxing post exercise use this time to start working out and planning your long term goals (2). What do you actually want to succeed in? You are way more likely to succeed if you feel strongly excited or happy about it (2). This will help you draw motivational energy that will keep you focused and on track. Do not pick more than 1 or 2 main goals as this will stretch you to thinly (3).

Now you know where you want to be, you have to work out how you're going to get there. What things (think small steps) do you need to succeed in to get to where you need to be (9)? Planning a journey with goals will allow you to feel more confident that you are making progress. 

Once you've decided on your goals you need to find ways of keeping yourself motivated. Getting additional input from other sources can help re-boost your inspirational reserves. Try reading some new authors, try out some new music and read blogs about your goals (2, 3). It's also worth spending some time trying to find speakers online that inspire you (4,5). This can be a really good way of putting yourself back on track if you're wavering. 

I'm not claiming that doing any of this will make your life easier. However, I hope that by finding your goal and setting yourself on the path will make you life more enriched.

Did this help? It would be great to here your goals below!

Do you have any tips to feeling inspired? Post below!





REFERENCES
1)https://twitter.com/CompellingCVs/status/476719932382912512/photo/1
2)http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Inspired
4) http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/communication-success/201402/how-unleash-your-creativity-and-find-inspiration-today
5)http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/04/49-ways-to-get-inspired/
6) http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230064
7)http://lifehacker.com/the-science-of-inspiration-and-how-to-make-it-work-for-1467413542
8) http://fizzle.co/sparkline/motivation
9) http://www.inc.com/laura-garnett/how-to-get-and-stay-inspired.html

Life Hacks - Lets Clear this up. You have been lied to.

About once or twice a week I have a link pop up on my facebook feed. ‘Life Hacks for your home’, ‘Life Hacks for your kids’ etc. I can only admit that there are some awesome ideas. But how many of them will actually help you? How many of them actually meet the definition of a ‘Life Hack’?

Taking to Google to define a ‘Life Hack’ seemed the most obvious choice of starting points…

Life Hack

Informal Noun

Definition: A strategy or technique adopted to manage one’s time and daily activities in a more efficient way.

If we go by this definition, I think there are a number of bloggers who have completely misinterpreted ‘Life Hacks’. Now do not get me wrong, I do not claim to be an inventor of life hacks, but I am a whizz with a search engine.

Our first visit is to the website that got my thinking – it appeared on my facebook feed earlier.

Viralnova.com

Now this website got off to a pretty good start. Using a post-it note is a pretty good fix to clean your keyboard. 

I am a bit of a post-it hoarder and both my home and work desks have a large number of these things hidden in corners of desk drawers. So using these to clean your desk saves you going out to buy something specific to clean and collects all the dust on the sticky end – so very efficient.

Again, idea number three – using paper clips to easily find the end of your tape – is also a pretty smart idea. It saves wasting tape through folding over the corner and we all have spare paperclips around the desk. There are also another few ideas (7/9/10/12/16/18/20/21/22) that do fit into ‘Life Hack category’.

However, some of the ideas create more work for the potential ‘Life Hackee’. Idea number 2 is great for someone who loves recycling. Fashioning your used toilet roll tubes into seed pots does not help you manage your time effectively. It will only make additional work for you. My granddad saves time planting seeds into individual pots by filling an old plastic box with compost and adding seeds. He is nearly 90 and apparently has a better grasp of ‘Life Hack’. Please save your cardboard tubes for idea number 7 (cables lose in a drawer is a nightmare!).

The status of ‘pretty clever idea’ can go to ideas 4, 5, 13 (although standard clothes pegs are cheaper to use than going out and buying trouser hangers), 15 (any sealed plastic container will work just as well… or perhaps recycle an old sweet jar…) and 23. Ideas 6 and 17 are awesome interior design ideas. However, it would be just as easy to stick a blob of blue-tack on your wall then the idea with a tennis ball. The makeup brush holder looks fab with the coffee beans, but it would be cheaper and easier to use sand or something (or just a jar?). Hack 8 – charging your phone in aeroplane mode. In this mode it can’t send or receive messages. It will charge quicker (as less battery is being used), but the only feasible benefit is if your phone takes AGES to turn off and on again. Number 19: using a lazy susan in the fridge is pretty clever, but not very space efficient. What will you do with the corners? 

Note: How to tie a tie (14) is a not a life hack. That is something I had to learn when I was 4. It is just something you need to know how to do. Like ironing (although my husband brought me a trouser press as I end up adding creases with an iron….). Life Skill, not Life Hack.

So a quick Google search lead me to a facebook page (1000 Life Hacks) that is dedicated to supposedly posting ingenious ideas to make your life easier. Having had a look through, there are some pretty good ideas- such as putting lemon or lime juice in shampoo to stop your hair going frizzy. Sounds pretty cool – if anyone can vouch for this please get in touch.

However, at the heart of it, it basically a mixture of ideas that people have recycled from other people. The posts alternate between advice, scare mongering and some really good design ideas

.#1219 – If you listen to music frequently it will reduce the risk of a brain tumour over the course of your life – (http://1000lifehacks.com/post/79589990691)

This really annoyed me. Using ‘science’ to scaremonger is complete pet hate of mine. If they want to post this, they need to post the research. This post had over 100 likes. People, if you see things on the internet it does not mean that it is true.

When I look for ‘Life Hacks’, I want ideas that will actually make my life easier. I want them to fit the definition. Internet users, bloggers are using this term because they know it will lead to you searching their page and seeing their content. Do not be fooled.