Believing in the future
We’re a year and a bit into the pandemic and our lives have been thrown upside down in so many ways. We will all have different experiences of the pandemic depending on where we live and what type of work we have. We have family in two countries with very different lockdown restrictions and it’s been incredibly tough to hear about family meeting up when we’ve been denied any social contact. At the same time it’s very frustrating when older relatives ‘over there’ haven’t got their vaccine yet and we’ve had ours.
If anyone had asked me a year ago how I expected 2021 to be, I wouldn’t have got many things right. I was recently back to full strength after a back injury that had plagued most of my 2019 and I was ready to make 2020 my year when the pandemic hit. The hardest part in the beginning was to come up with a new plan and try not to mourn the plans that didn’t work out.
We had planned a wedding with friends and family in the autumn of 2020, that had to be postponed. Instead of feeling heartbroken over this we decided to get married with just 2 witnesses and to have a mini-wedding for ourselves, and then once the pandemic has subsided, we’ll throw a wedding party for friends and family. That way we get the best of two worlds, a small intimate wedding focused on us, and a big party where we can enjoy the company of our guests.
October 2020
Making the wedding a small and intimate affair made it magical. The beautiful local park was the venue for our champagne breakfast.
The pandemic also made it clear that with two people working from home every day, we need decent workspace as well as living space. Since we wouldn’t have any guests for a long while we decided to turn the guest room into a full office. Out with the old uncomfortable sofa bed and in with a large desk. To save space we put the desk in the middle of the room and created a workspace each diagonally from each other, it now feels like an open office landscape and we have each our own workspace that doesn’t intrude on the other. We also feel like we can close the door on work after the workday is finished, sit in a different room and feel like we are free of work.
The pandemic and living through lockdown have helped to narrow down what is important and what isn’t. For someone who comes from Sweden with large living spaces, big gardens and nature around the corner it has been a challenge to live in London, especially when we’re not allowed to go further than the local park. We see our homes differently and our needs have shifted. Our home went through a phase where we decluttered the space we spend most time in to help our minds rest. Without a commute or a break between workday and leisure time it helps to have a restful home that gives energy.
Even the clothes and knitting patterns I’m using have changed to reflect the need for basic shapes, comfortable without feeling lazy, simple patterns and colours. Comfortable and still elegant has become the trend through everything.
Simple patterns
The Effra hat is a perfect example of simple texture and shape working together for an elegant look
There are a lot of things we’d like to change but some things are out of our control, others can be done. Change for change’s sake isn’t good, but changing the cushion covers on a few throw cushions to break an ingrained pattern can be just the thing we need to feel like everything isn’t same as always, there is a future after the pandemic too.
