…since I last posted here. I am so sorry I have neglected all of you. But there are times when life puts so much weight on your shoulders, you must decide which to carry on and which to drop. I don’t want to make excuses because I don’t like them either but if you are interested in what happened to me, please go ahead and read the story of my last three years… If you prefer not knowing anything about me because you are so angry at me, I totally understand, please just skip this post then, I was struggling writing it anyway because I don’t like to take my family-related stuff out to public. Just know that I feel terrible guilt to neglect you.

If you decided to stay with me for the rest of this post and get to know the reason for my absence, let’s jump into the middle of it… About two years ago my daughter was diagnosed with ASD and it was quite a shock for my family. The thought that something is not right with her wasn’t new to us, life had always been hard with her, she literally never slept, someone (usually me) had to be awake with her through the nights, too and she hadn’t started communicating with humans like other children do (by communicating with humans I mean she didn’t even seem to notice anybody. But she did notice dogs… in fact that is how she finally learnt to speak: with the help of dogs… but let’s not jump that far ahead in the story just yet…). The year prior the diagnosis was extremely hard with more and more frequent meltdowns, therefore I had less and less time and energy to focus on work. We needed to do something about it so we started to investigate the problem. After about a year, at the beginning of 2019 she got the diagnosis. We started to search for educational possibilities immediately and we soon realized that we need to move to the capital city to be able to provide her with the help that she needs. So we packed everything – including my mother 😀 – and sold both our house and my mother’s house to buy one in Budapest. We found a house that had a small apartment attached to it (for my mother – this way she would always be around if we needed help…). They were cheap (by cheap I mean according to other real estates in the capital city. According to our budget it was the only thing we could afford) but they needed renovation badly and the previous owner had a huge amount of bank depth on the houses, so they were in a state before auction. We decided to make a deal with the bank and buy the houses even if that meant that we need to do construction works while we are living in the house.

A few days after we signed the contracts in March 2020, the pandemic reached Hungary and everything was shut down. I don’t know if you have ever tried to sell two houses and buy a third one at the same time with all the stuff being moved from the two houses to the third one. Top that with a pandemic, a renovation (during a pandemic), a child with ASD (who doesn’t like changes, during a renovation, during a pandemic) and the struggle with bureaucracy to clear the depth of the previous owner in the estate records (during a pandemic). This was the worst. There was a misunderstanding between the bank and the land registration office and even though we settled all payments towards the bank, the land registration office didn’t want to delete the mortgage from the papers. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget about the problem that the previous owner had nowhere to live anymore so he tried to stay in the house as long as he could with his daughter, two huge dogs and a huge cat… and we let them live with us in the smaller apartment for months because we couldn’t bear the thought that they haven’t got a home any more because of us (I know. It was not because of us. We payed their depth, and their depth was not our fault… the bank would have taken the house from them anyway… but still. We wanted to move in a house that we payed for – and that meant they have to leave at some point. By now they managed to find a small apartment nearby and took out another loan to pay for that apartment but they are not homeless at least…). All in all, I don’t want to say we have tough two years behind us but WE HAVE TOUGH TWO YEARS BEHIND US…

Some photos of the renovation for you to get a picture of what I was talking about… 🙂 (the last of the works were finished in March 2021, that is when we could finally took over all parts of the house):

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With all the above going on, as much as I would have loved to continue working on Gynka Knitwear, I just couldn’t manage. All my yarn, needles and even my computer were in boxes in a garage for months. At first I tried to read and answer all mails and Ravelry messages at least but after a while I had to let go of this too, because I couldn’t keep up and I was tired to excuse myself all the time for being so slow on reacting. If you happen to be someone who hadn’t got an answer to a question, I hereby apologize and please feel free to contact me again via email: gynkaknitwear@gmail.com. I will monitor this email daily from now on and start to catch up.

As to our struggles, we are over the worst part now and everything is settling down. We cleared the depths from the estate records, construction works are finished (inside at least. But before we start the works outside we have to take a deep breath to forget the hell of the last two years…). We were able to find a kindergarten for my daughter which she finally loves and she slowly starts to communicate with us (she is 5 now). She has also learnt the difference between night and day so she started to sleep 6-7 hours at night and we couldn’t be happier because if she sleeps, we can sleep, too.

Now that life is getting back to normal (if life can be called “normal” nowadays…), I would like to slowly get back to work, too. I decided to stop making ready-made items, so I shut my online store down. It is too much work for me right now and I had to choose between knitting and designing. I will continue writing patterns and I am currently working on something totally new to GK… I hope to announce it soon because I am very-very close to being ready.. I also hope you will like it. I am also planning to continue to write new posts to this blog biweekly or so, this way I can keep you updated about what is happening. It is hard to promise anything at this stage because you know… we have good weeks and bad weeks with my daughter… it is hard to tell whether I will or won’t be able to do any work regularly. But I will try my best, as I always do. I know some of you are relying on me, and I won’t let you down.

I also won’t spam you here with my private life anymore but in case you are interested in the end result of our new home, I have an Instagram account dedicated to my hobbies (creating our new home, indoor gardening and knitting) I would be more than happy if you joined me there, too! Please follow my account: @plantaknit on Instagram to see updates.

At last but not least I would like to say a huge thank you for being here, for reading my blog, for knitting my patterns, I can not tell you how much it means to me! You are the best! Hope to welcome you back next time!

Happy Knitting!

Mici