Hope everyone has had a festive festive season & a happy new year. I’ve had a fun but full couple of weeks, with very little break from work (despite lack of posts here). Despite best intentions, I accomplished virtually no weaving, but I did squeeze in some time on some more text-driven projects I have in mind. I intended to handmake Christmas cards, which kind of happened, but was all very last minute. I invented a Christmas card-cum-mini D.I.Y. weaving kit that I gave one each to my mum & sister. I feel slightly guilty about it, but they were at least handmade… I did manage to handweave one card – very hurriedly! – for an older gentleman, who has been a friend of the family for years. At least he will appreciate it!
I don’t generally ‘do’ New Year Resolutions, but there is quite a lot in my head that I would like to see happen in the coming year, so I thought the act of writing it out might push me to see more through.
- Moving house. 😦 Not happy about it, but we’ll be looking to move on again as soon as we find somewhere. I’ll be happy to be in a different house, but I just hate all the upheaval and not being able to get on with all the ‘usual’, day to day things. Hopefully, this will be the last time, for a while…
- Set up Etsy store. I need to do this sooner rather than later, as I know it will make things easier for everyone involved to have a ‘proper’ online shopping facility. This is my resolution for January. I will do it.
- Finish adding products to site. Okay, the blog is a never-ending process. But I still have quite a few products in my head that just need a little bit of work to turn them into real kits and concepts to sell online. There will definitely be new products added in the near future. Watch this space…!
- Exhibit at more craft fairs. Again, time limits the amount of saleable stuff I can produce, but I would ideally like to fit in 3 or 4 fairs this year. I have found a couple of organisers who arrange things relatively local to me (not being able to drive, this is quite a big issue for me) so it should work out…
- Write a book! Okay, maybe it sounds unrealistic, but I’ve been looking into it in a very real sense. I already have a lot of material – I just want to pull all the D.I.Y. weaving ideas together in one place, with some miscellaneous extra bits, too. I’m looking at self-publishing rather than mainstream, mainly because I just want to get it done, but also because presentation is quite important to me, and I don’t think the author has much control over that aspect with mainstream publishing. But using my home-printer isn’t financially viable, so I will lose the nice recycled papers I prefer to use, regardless. I need to look at viable printing options that retain a measure of eco-friendliness, but are also, and essentially, low-cost. I’m thinking about hand-making the covers to retain the personal touch, but I need to think about how realistic that is. As you can see, there is lots of stuff bubbling about in my head, with regard to this!
- Self-publishing some zine-type things. This is where the idea for writing a book originated from. I soon realised that there is too much D.I.Y. weaving material to make a single, financially-realistic zine, but not enough peripheral material to pad out a whole series of D.I.Y. weaving zines. But I do still like the idea of running some small booklets off, on the home printer, and am thinking of website/blog reviews, book reviews, that kind of thing.
- Re-format Stitchery stuff. My stitchery/bargello designs fell completely by the wayside in the latter half of 2008. It’s not my driving focus at the moment, but I would like to re-organise things slightly, so that the designs are more visible/accessible. If I get the D.I.Y. weaving book off the ground, it would be nice to dosomething similar for my bargello ideas, too.
- Weaving. Hey, there’s a novel thought! I really hope I have time to do some weaving this year! I had an idea months ago, to make some truly miniature weavings and I guess that is the thing I should focus on first, to follow through. Look out for weavings a borrower would be proud of, at TangleCrafts this year!
- Isn’t that enough?!
So that’s my grand plan. Wish me luck – I think I’ll need it! Did I mention I work full time, as well…?
