Skip navigation

Monthly Archives: January 2012

Needle felted guinea pigs

In preparation for another (secret) craft that I plan on making, I decided to pick up needle felting (as it is a technique that I think I may need to use).  I’ve long thought about learning needle felting, after seeing so many projects that Tally has made with felt (yes, all separate links).  It seemed so very easy and versatile.  And also possibly a good way to relieve some frustration (since needle felting involves jabbing a needle with some vehemence over and over into some wool roving).

Seeing as how I’d never done this before, I picked up a needle felting kit and made me some guinea pigs.  The kit ended up being totally unnecessary in the end.  I could have easily picked this up on my own.  It really isn’t a very hard technique at all.  Anyway, here are the results.  Or rather, just one result.  Because I am too lazy to take pictures of more than one guinea pig.

I will call him Roofus.

Here is another photo of Roofus.

Incidentally, I have been seeing things about needle felting all over the place online and so I thought it was popular technique.  Lots of people had mentioned that they were able to pick up supplies at their local craft store, like Michael’s or Joann’s.  Yeah…apparently not.  Or at least, no one else needle felts in SoCal besides me.  A trip to my local Michael’s yielded a pitiful selection of wool and needles (i.e., no separate needles, only in handles, and nearly everything was out of stock).  My trip to Tall Mouse yielded nothing.  They had no needle felting supplies.  But at least they were able to answer my query on whether or not they had supplies for such.  This is important.  Because at my local Joann’s, they had no idea what I was talking about.  None.  They had no idea there was even such a thing as needle felting.  They pointed me to felt sheets.  And then to sewing needles.  And then to the quilting section.  They were very nice and tried very hard to be helpful, but they had no clue.  At all.  I was surprised.

Oh well, online shopping it is.

Spontaneous Happiness

I actually finished this book (Spontaneous Happiness by Dr. Andrew Weil) awhile ago.

I’m not much for self-help books.  I generally find the boring and not terribly helpful.  To be vague about it, I think self-help books deal with symptoms and not the root cause.  But anyway, I picked up the book because I like reading the odd column I find written by Dr. Weil on the various news sites I visit and I was curious as to what he had to say about happiness and what he did about his depression (he suffered from dysthymia).

Dr. Weil promotes the idea of emotional well-being in his book as opposed to the very general term, “happiness.”  Happiness is hard to measure.  I mean, how happy are you supposed to be at any time to be considered healthy?  Also, being happy means different things to different people.  Thus, Dr. Weil does not consider “being happy” the neutral point of emotional well-being.

Dr. Weil puts forth the idea that we should reconsider happiness, which he associates as a response to outward things, as our emotional neutral zone to contentment, which he defines as something that is more enduring and something outside of satisfying needs and desires.  To this end, he speaks of his medical model of integrative medicine, in which you do not treat a person as a biological machine, in which some input gives you an output just through chemical means, but that emotional health and biological health are intricately tied together.  Thus, the book provides advice on biological means on which to help stabilize mood and also strategies from psychology, all toward the means of supporting emotional wellness.  Toward the end of the book, there is an 8-week program that can be tailored to the reader’s needs.

I like his effort in refreshing the medical model and what he says in this book about how integrative medicine is needed in treating what seems to be an epidemic of depression (as well as everything else).  If nothing else, this book gives some perspective on your well-being as a whole person.  Emotional health is just as important as biological health if YOU are going to be healthy.  I would recommend this book if you’d like some tips in maintaining your emotional wellness, or at least look at emotional health in a different way.

By the way, this book isn’t treatment for major depressive disorder.  You need to see your doctor about that.