Ten Years Later – What Next…?

Ten years ago I set off on a journey around the United Kingdom without fully understanding where it would lead.

Looking back, it seems I’m still doing much the same thing. The vehicle may have changed, but the adventure continues…

It’s a strange thing, looking back across a decade. Sometimes ten years can feel like a lifetime. Other times it feels as though the memories are still sitting just around the corner waiting for you to stumble into them again.

Recently I realised that it has been ten years since I first announced what would become the All Counties Craft Challenge.

Even writing those words feels slightly surreal.

Partly because ten years seems impossible. Partly because I’m fairly certain there are still boxes in my craft room that haven’t been unpacked since then, lol!

At the time, I don’t think I fully appreciated what I was setting in motion. What began as an ambitious fundraising challenge in support of Mind eventually became one of the most important journeys of my life.

Now, in hindsight, driving around the United Kingdom in a motorhome teaching craft workshops sounds either wonderfully inspiring or like the opening chapter of a cautionary tale.

Fortunately, it turned out to be mostly the a good thing.

It took me across the United Kingdom, into workshops, craft shops, village halls, television studios, motorhome parks and more service stations than any human should reasonably be expected to remember!

There were wonderful days.

There were exhausting days.

There were moments of laughter, moments of uncertainty and moments where I genuinely questioned whether I had finally lost what little common sense I possessed but, somehow, mile by mile, county by county and workshop by workshop, the journey unfolded.

Looking back now, what strikes me most isn’t the distance travelled.

It’s the people, the conversations, the kindness, the stories shared across craft tables, and of course, the friendships formed. The quiet moments when somebody would tell me that creativity had helped them through a difficult chapter in their own life.

Those moments stay with you.

In many ways, the challenge was created because creativity had helped me navigate difficult waters of my own. What I didn’t expect was to discover just how many other people were carrying similar stories.

Craft was rarely just about the finished project. It was connection comfort, focus and expression. Sometimes even survival.

Ten years later, I find myself reflecting not only on that journey, but on the path that has unfolded since.

Because the truth is that creativity has taken me in directions I never could have predicted.

When I first started sharing craft projects, I doubt I could have imagined that one day I’d be happily disappearing down rabbit holes involving SVG construction, cutting machines, typography, surface patterns and other topics guaranteed to clear a room at most dinner parties.

At times, I’ve wondered whether those interests made sense together. Whether they were connected at all or whether I simply had an alarming inability to sit still and focus on one thing for more than five minutes.

Recently, however, I was challenged to look at my creative life from a different perspective and, rather than seeing lots of separate interests, I began to see a common thread.

A fascination with how things work.

Not just making things. Understanding them. Building them. Explaining them. Teaching them.

Whether it’s a folded paper project, a cutting file, a typeface, a repeating pattern or a creative workflow, I seem to keep returning to the same questions.

How was this built? Why does it work? How could it work better? How could somebody else learn this?

Suddenly a lot of things started making sense.

The challenge. The tutorials. The blog. The videos. The endless experimentation. The seemingly random creative detours.

Perhaps they weren’t random after all.

Perhaps they’ve all been different expressions of the same curiosity which is either reassuring or evidence that I’ve been obsessing over the same thing for decades while disguising it under different craft supplies.

I’m choosing to believe it’s reassuring amd positive and that has been an unexpectedly comforting realisation because if the last ten years have taught me anything, it is that the journey is rarely as chaotic as it appears while you’re living it. Sometimes you only see the pattern when you step back far enough.

As crafters, I suppose we should know that better than most.

So as I mark ten years since the beginning of the All Counties Craft Challenge, I find myself feeling enormously grateful.

Grateful to everybody who supported that adventure.

Grateful to everyone who has followed this blog.

Grateful to every workshop attendee, viewer, reader, supporter and friend I’ve met along the way.

You have all become part of the story.

I hope your lives have continued to blossom and grow since we met last.

All Counties Craft Challenge Diary - Dumfries 7

All Counties Craft Challenge Diary - Dumfries 9

As for what comes next?

Well, I suspect there are still a few chapters left to write.

There are still ideas I want to explore. skills I want to develop, things I want to understand more deeply and ways I want to help people create with greater confidence.

There will almost certainly be new rabbit holes and there will definitely be more cups of Yorkshire tea and if history is anything to go by, there will be at least one project that seems perfectly sensible when I start it and utterly ridiculous by the time I explain it to someone else.

I don’t have a grand announcement today.

Just a growing sense that the next chapter may not be about changing direction.

It may simply be about understanding more clearly why I started walking this path in the first place.

And honestly?

That feels rather exciting.

Thank you for being part of the journey.

Here’s to whatever comes next.

What about you? What have you been up to in the last ten years…?