Hello to you all my wonderful crochet friends and Daisy Farm Crafters! I want to actually post a picture of myself today and let you know how incredibly happy you make me every day. The Daisy Farm Instagram account hit 41k followers last week and I am in awe of the fact that I have that many crochet friends to talk to and share my ideas with.

I also love that you, in turn, share with me pictures of your gingham blankets, sprig stitch bun beanies among so many other things and we get to celebrate success together. I also have felt closer to those of you who email me your own struggles with infertility, loneliness, or illness and tell me how a new crochet pattern has helped to ease away some of the pain.

I am truly honored every time one of you tag me on Instagram and share your lovely work with me. If you are new to the farm, please know I’m just a wanna-be granny who started crocheting blankets and sharing the patterns to those blankets in hopes that my oldest daughter Hannah would indeed grant me granny status. My crocheting project started over two years ago, (although Hannah has been trying for 6 or so years) and the love and hope that it has brought into our lives is overwhelming.

As an example of this love, take this beautiful scarf that is around my neck in the picture. One of the first accounts I found on Instagram that truly inspired me was called Elizabeth Park Collections. (You can find her here.) As time passed we became Instagram friends, seeing that she lives halfway around the world from me in Australia! (Oh but someday, I hope to meet her in real life.) But out of the blue last fall, she messaged me and said that several skeins of gorgeous Australian merino wool had my name on it and she wanted to knit me a scarf. I was so excited! Also, I was honored, humbled and oh so grateful for her gift.

Her scarf has come to represent to me the best of this giant world-wide crochet community. Every time I wrap that fine merino wool around my neck I am reminded of love. Her love of yarn and knitting and wanting to share, my love of crochet and wanting to share, your love of craft and wanting to create. Do you see how powerful this all can become? Love really does make the world go around, doesn’t it?

So, I’d like to share with you all something else personal about me. All last fall I’ve actually been having some health struggles of my own. Okay let me be blunt, we are all girls here and I think three guys, (one of which is Mr. DFC.) I’ve been bleeding like there was no end to tomorrow! I joked with my friends that it felt like I was giving birth every day, I’d wake up in the morning with a dull ache across my back, and by noon, well..you get it. I’ve had lots of pain, a never ending time of the month, and yesterday, I was given the official news: I have uterine/cervical cancer. Ahh! It’s so scary to write that word.

I met with an Oncologist today and he’s hoping to schedule me for surgery this Wednesday and it won’t be until a week later that I will know for sure what the prognosis is. The best case scenario is that surgery will take care of removing all of the cancer, worst case is that it spread to my lymph nodes in the area and I will have radiation treatments.

Many of you know that the face I use the most for Daisy Farm Crafts is my youngest daughter Annie. She’s my DFC model, who has had medical trials of her own! She’s my Epilespy Warrior.

Annie is no wimp about medical trials having had brain surgery when she was 11. I spent a lot of time with Annie in the hospital back in those days. She had never ending seizures for two years before they found the lesion in her head that was causing all the trouble. One thing we used to do after getting out of the hospital would be to see the funniest movie we could and get laughing again. Our favorite at the time, (highly inappropriate for a 10 year old, but we were desperate and most of it went right over her head thank heavens,) was Pitch Perfect -1 and 2. We recited a line out of that movie when Chloe, played by Brittany Snow, discovers she can’t sing because she is “living with nodes” but hilariously proclaims that “she. is. a. survivor,” over and over. It made us laugh out loud and it seemed to meet our circumstances that no matter what life handed out, Annie was a survivor.

So I could not help but give Annie the news like this:

And it made her laugh.

And I’m so glad it did.

If we learned anything through the “Epilepsy Years” is that you take every day one at a time and make sure you laugh at least once. It really does help.

I’ve been hesitant to share this all with you, but my older sister, when I talked to her about it, said “Are you crazy? You have 40 thousand friends who will pray with you!”

And she is right. How can I not share with some of the dearest people I have actually never met in real life, but have brought so much love into my life. We do all know each other though, don’t we? We all make the same stitches for our blankets, some of us even use the same brand of yarn and hooks. We’ve all stood in the yarn isles staring at the many types and colors, thinking what would look best as what–imagining about all the possibilities that ball of yarn could turn into. We are all yarn sisters and two yarn brothers.

And, I have an Elizabeth Park Collections scarf, tied tightly around my neck, to remind me of this love every day.

So, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love a thought or two sent heavenward on my behalf, I mean, life has really gotten amazing lately, and I’m not even a grandma yet! There is no way I’m leaving this earth until that day has come.

I love you all!

xxoo,

Tiffany