I don’t want to stop things while the posts are coming thick and fast but I have a major website building deadline for the end of this month, and general life, plus the snow, plus the fever/throat virus I got last week means that I really need to step away from the internet and get the site properly out the door.

I’ll be back in early February. Have fun!

(ps. The Shop will remain open, just so you know.)

As I said in the 2009 round up post, in the midst of Christmas preparations madness I recklessly abandoned all my jobs for the night and got to grips with crochet. This is the lovely flower motif by Sarah London – the first of many. (The pattern was lovely and this novice got on fine!)

I also made a few stars, following the tutorial by The Royal Sister. (Check out the rest of their free tutorials on the right hand side of the blog.)

I was hoping to make enough to use as coasters, though really I think they’re destined to be a garland. I might even use them for the rest of the year, to cheer up a forgotten corner somewhere.

On an unrelated note, I was inspired by this to recycle the christmas cards we were sent this year into next year’s gift tags. After umming and ahhing about whether to buy a large circular punch (I will eventually since it will be great for labelling re-used jam jars), I ended up using my round corner punch instead. (This made for a very good project while up and about with FB at 5am this morning.)

I don’t do big resolutions any more. I have never found that they work, and always made me feel bad.

However there are some small do-able things that would make a real difference if I got to grips with them and so here they are:

• Use the breadmaker more. We eat a lot of bread in our house, and making it at home means I don’t have to keep going to the shops to get it. (Also it’s quicker to set up the machine – assuming I do it in time – than going to the shops.) Plus it allows me to make it lower in salt, which is better for FB.
• Stop buying commercial sweets, and make your own instead. I bought ‘Life is Sweet’ by Hope and Greenwood and a digital thermometer before christmas, and after making various things as christmas presents I’m enthusiastic to carry on once every couple of weeks or so. Plus I don’t buy anything by Nestle any more, and I feel really uncomfortable buying chocolate that isn’t fair trade given the links between commercial chocolate, child labour and slavery. So homemade sweets are the way to go. I’ll let you know how I get on.
• Buy drinks in glass bottles. I have given up my fizzy drinks but I still drink alot of sparkling water, and while I know we can re-cycle our plastic bottles I think it’s probably better that I drink more water from the tap, and that the drinks that I do buy come in glass bottles.

I think that’s enough for the first few months of the year.