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Keeping Busy – Learning New Skills

IdleEmma

     Hello everyone, hope you’re doing well. Times are strange at the moment and either people are incredibly busy doing essential jobs or stuck at home self-isolating and social distancing. If you’re stuck at home, I hope you’ve got some crafts to cosy up with. I thought that I’d try put together a list of some online resources for learning crafts here and that people can comment with their sources.

     If you’re a knitter or crocheter you’ll know about Ravelry They’ve set up a list of events that you can check if you want to find a knit-along or crochet-along or a livestream to watching.

     A while back Marie from Cosy Crochet started doing the Crochet Course over on Centre of Excellence. I enjoyed reading her blog series on doing the course and considered it myself. The courses cost money, normally £127, but at the moment they have an offer up that if you use the code UPSKILL all courses are £29 so now could be the time to learn a new skill. Maybe that crochet course or the knitting one (which I’m going to do!) is up your alley or you’d rather cross stitch, embroidery or even card making. 

     Maybe you’d like to learn to weave – if you do, there’s a free Weaving 101 course on Yarnworker you might be interested in.

     Skillshare is always a good site for learning new skills. It costs money (monthly charge) but if you’ve never signed up before, you can get 1 or 2 months free and then cancel before they start charging you. There’s a ton of creative videos there so there’s bound to be something you’re interested in.

      So those are some of the resources I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to share some other online resources that might be of use to people and just what you’re doing in general to cope with the extra time you might be spending at home.

14 thoughts on “Keeping Busy – Learning New Skills”

    1. It is – it’s a relaxing way to spend some time while listening to music or an audiobook (trying to stay away from the news and even podcasts that talk about news and events!), it’s one of those hobbies that takes just enough attention to be interesting but not so much that you can’t watch/listen to stuff while doing it.

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  2. Such a good idea to spread the word about learning when you might be wondering what to do with yourself in, as you say, strange times. I belong to a craft group and we are all telling each other – via social media, not in person – about courses we are finding, whether they are just a half hour thing, an hour, half a day or even a full course over several sessions or weeks – especially if they are free !

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    1. Nice to hear you’re craft group is still trying to help each other from a distance!
      Even if you don’t have loads of extra time, focusing on learning something new is still a better way to use time at the moment instead scrolling endlessly through social media (that’s just a terrible idea at the moment, so much panic on social media!). As you said, even if it’s just a half hour type course/video, that’s still useful. That’s a half hour your’re not spending worrying about the corona virus . Hope some of the few links I posted have been useful.

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    2. So true. I spent most of the day in my garden tidying up foliage today – didn’t even check news or social media til mid afternoon. Lots of Vitamin D in the sunshine, felt good about exercise and making good part of a scruffy garden, plus not stressed about what is going on in the world.

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    3. So much gardening get done by people at the moment! I mean, not by me, I prefer yarn work over yard work but yeah, my parents are getting a ton of unplanned gardening done. I prefer to leave the garden to the cats rather than use it myself 😀

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    4. I like to see a nice garden but not sure I actually like the process of gardening much! When we moved to our house we thought it would be great to have a big garden for lots of kids to play in. We had one, he enjoyed using it like a football pitch and had a climbing frame – now it’s more mature shrubs etc that get overgrown and we have badgers that have a trail right from behind our shed across the garden and under a fence – and when the fruit falls off the trees they make a real mess gnawing on the windfalls!

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    5. That sounds like my type of garden! I like to think that being a bad gardener/just not wanting to do garden work is just helping nature out a little!

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    1. Both my sisters are working from home too – quite a change when they’re used to being in offices and travelling into work. Hope you’re able to use the time you’d be travelling to and from work for some self-care time at least 🙂

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    2. I would usually walk to and from work, 3 miles all told. So I’m going out very early and walking that distance before coming back for breakfast. I’m also making a conscious effort to get out of pjs, putting on make up and doing hair. 😊

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    3. Good decisions – important to still do things like get dressed for work evening if you’re working at home to get you into that mindset and break up the day. I need to get better at getting up early to go for walks because it get’s busier in the afternoon with people going for walks but I enjoy sleeping in too much!

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