Captain Tom 100 Challenge completed!

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am delighted to tell you that I completed my Captain Tom 100 challenge over the bank holiday weekend of sewing 100 items. It was a bigger challenge than I was expecting. Speed sewing is not my natural way of sewing, neither is sewing to order, but I had to do both in order to finish in the 4 days allotted.  Also, I had to deal with daily life and a new medical challenge but I did it! 

I made 101 things in the end by hand and on my trusty vintage sewing machine, Elsie:

14 shopping bags from an old, clean but slightly damaged double duvet cover of my Mum's

20 washable and reusable makeup pads from an old, but clean towel and 100% cotton poplin from my stash

7 embroideries on denim from my stash

10 hair bows made from 100% cotton poplin

26 mug rugs (fabric coasters) using three different fabrics from my stash

24 lavender bags made from a remnant of pure cotton alphabet fabric and home-grown lavender from the garden.

Keeping on sewing was quite hard at times. And I'm unable to do very detailed sewing work as the daylight wanes. Electric light isn't particularly comfortable to work in for sewing. Or at least, not the electric lights I have available to me at the moment. So I had to manage my time effectively. And I was more reliant than I was expecting on friends and neighbours engaging with me by donating and offering moral support. Each donation and comment really did spur me on that little bit more and really lifted my spirits when I was flagging.

Planning and cutting things out takes at least as long as sewing the item in question. It's hard to predict how long it takes for that so inevitably, it takes longer than you'd like. And my trusty sewing machine is certainly trusty, but it takes time to wind bobbins, get the tension right, thread and rethread it and coax the presser foot over thick layers of fabric and wadding. I certainly got to know her very well that weekend and she worked really hard and really consistently.

Raising money for charity is hard. There are constant demands for our hard-earned cash, and my campaign was yet another one. Getting my donations in relied heavily on my personal network chipping in and me taking the time to keep people up to date with my progress. As I shared my progress and results, more people engaged. I think all but one or two of the donations were from people I knew personally. To get bigger money, you need to get beyond that and I didn't manage that this time and you need to start earlier to build up the momentum and enthusiasm to get the donations in. 

It was also really good to get such positive support from the charity I was fundraising for - Magic Me. I got daily morning emails with words of support and PR support too. that was really helpful for me and a good way to start each day knowing that what I was doing was appreciated and that the money raised would be very useful. They also managed to get me in the local news which was a bonus.

I also learned things about myself during the challenge. It's a long time since I've done anything remotely like this. Committing to and completing the challenge gave me a big boost of self-confidence. My natural state in the past has been commitment-phobic and a starter-upper rather than a completer-finisher. (There's good reason for that which I may write about another time.) Regardless, this time, I was able to counter that tendency and that felt really good. 

At the time of writing, my campaign has just got over the £500 mark. That's £200 more than my goal so it's fantastic! My friends and neighbours have been very generous. The campaign is still open, so if you'd like to donate, you can do that here. 

So thank you Captain Tom for being you and inspiring me to take on this challenge! Rest in peace good Sir. 

On setting goals

It really seems to come around far too quickly, but here we are again and it's less than a month to go until Christmas. It sneaks up on me every year. Just when I think I'm getting organised by getting some presents in advance or by starting to sew my Christmas decorations and gifts, time seems to run away from me and before I know it, there's barely any time at all to do anything.

At the beginning of the year, I set myself some challenges. I've never done this before but since I was going to hit a milestone birthday in January, I thought it would be a good way to focus my year. I was skeptical about doing this. I'm not sure I was even that committed to all the challenges but I put the building blocks in place. Thought through what I wanted to achieve in my life and downloaded a little app, Keep Track Pro (the old version which had the functionality I wanted), to keep track of the numbers and to log when I'd done something towards each challenge. That last bit is important. Having visibility of the numbers and making it really easy to log was key to some of the early successes.

The good news is that I beat my theatre-going goal back in June. I will reach my blogging goal and my making things goal by the end of the year. The fitness and getting into nature goals are about half way there and I'll get a few more sessions in, but they won't be reached, but that's ok. I got part-way towards those goals.

What I've learned about the process is that goal setting can work but you need to do more than just decide to do something. It's important to be clear about the goal, be able to measure it, and, in my case, I shared my goals with some friends so they could help me along the way. I'd go on to say, that I've done rather better with this goal setting than I'd ever anticipated so I'm going to do it again for next year.

I'm still mulling over what the goals should be. I know fitness has to be on there but I need to find a way to make it more enjoyable. And I'd like to include walking again but I think I'm going to get a list of specific walks I want to do and tick those off as I go. I also want creative things to be on there in some shape or form. I'm also going to keep a list of shows attended, but it won't be a goal as such. I think the habit is already ingrained. I'm wondering about making a goal of visiting a specific number of different venues or fringe shows instead of just 'shows' but that may be taking too much on. I'm also going to have the blogging goal in there. 

What I haven't decided on is what work goals I'll set myself. I deliberately didn't set any work goals at the beginning of this year. This experiment wasn't about work success, this was about living more of the life I want to live. But having seen how effective it can be, I'm going to think through what those work goals might be. 

Barcelona and the events I do the week of Mobile World Congress are on the agenda for sure, but I'm mulling over what else would be relevant next year and the year after in terms of events but also some consulting and maybe something else. Who knows? I'm still at the thinking stage.

Do you set goals? Do you use apps to help you with reaching those goals? What works for you?

Day 28/30 NaBloPoMo