Wishing that the best of 2009 is the worst of 2010 for all of you. Happy New Year, and thank you so much for reading, commenting and engaging with me & my family over the last 12 months!

So there’s a lot happening Chez Nous right now. Yesterday was Bob’s last day at work. Terrifying. Naively I did not expect to have this level of panic when Bob’s last day arrived – after all, we’ve known it was coming for a few months now – but it’s real. Really real. My husband is no longer in possession of a secure job and in three months I will be in the same boat. We have plans afoot which we’re keeping close to our chests right now – not because we want to be edgy and interesting, but purely because the concept of failure is simply not one we can entertain. If you’re at all intrigued you can follow The Life Craft on twitter and we’ll see where things go from there.

You may have seen me whinging once or twice recently about my poor pictures as a result of our camera (a much loved and overused Canon 300D) giving up the ghost so Santa Claus brought Bob a new Canon 500D. He managed to shoot this picture last night so I’m hoping my new photographs will be a similarly excellent quality!

Christmas this year wasn’t quite what I’d planned it to be and I think that’s okay. Under the circumstances it’s more than understandable but there’s still an element of disappointment there for me, the eternal child. I had great plans of an adventurous Advent with Christmas activities every night, steaming mugs of hot chocolate and black & white films to be watched with my all-consuming children. Never happened. Of course, perhaps that’s me expecting too much of my children who are of the cbeebies generation – The Wizard of Oz simply doesn’t have the magic that In The Night Garden contains, nor do my children have the patience to sit through 101 minutes of dated cinematography which has led to possibly the second big decision of the year thus far…

…but I’ll save that for another blog post

Posted under me

I was updating my Ravelry projects over the last few days and had asked my wonderful hubby to take some photographs of #2 in the longies I made for him earlier this year. Of course I was banking on #2’s usual hamming-it-up-for-the-camera which simply didn’t happen. Thank the deity for chocolate though, a wee bribe and he was suddenly all for it again!
The toes just make it for me. I want to tickle his feet!

I counted up my completed projects on Ravelry and I managed an average of one knitted project per month through 2008 which isn’t bad but could have been better. A lot of my knitting time was spent on Erica’s christening gown which I ended up ripping out, and by a lot of my time I mean easily an hour a day for three months. When I go into a knitting frenzy though I tend to zip through my projects, there’s no happy medium! Ah well. I have a few projects lined up in my queue and probably the largest of those is the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne. It’s an adaptation of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s February Baby Sweater and it is just divine but also the largest project I will ever have attempted. I do baby clothes, I do toys, I do gloves – I don’t do adult garments!

On the subject of adult garments, did any of you see this gorgeous owl sweater which Ysolda Teague linked to yesterday? How amazing is that?! I’d have to admit that I think I’m probably too busty to pull off such a delicate sweater but it’s just a fantastically-executed design and I think from what Ysolda was saying, the designer is a relative novice! I can’t believe how chuffed I was creating my mittens but I really hope that girl has an enormous feeling of pride in her work. Admittedly, when Jessica Marshall Forbes of Ravelry and Kathy of Grumperina are leaving comments on your blog then it’s a pretty safe sign that you’ve created something amazing. Well done Kate!

The other thing I wanted to blog today was this bird bag made my Carina Envoldsen-Harris. I don’t want to hotlink her image and steal her bandwidth, but can I recommend that you all go and check it out because it’s a thing of beauty AND the best bit? Carina’s bag was made from fabric you can get in ikea!

So, a Happy New Year to all of you and lang may yer lum reek wi’ ither fowk’s coal! My resolution for 2009 is to blog at least once a week, even if it’s just an update on things I’m working on. We’ll see how long that lasts!

Posted under general crafty updates, knitting

Well, I promised I’d have more photos of my handpainted wool but being the clumsy oaf that I am, I got all tangled up last night whilst reskeining so I gave up and wrapped it into a ball for now. Photos soon though, I promise!

Last year I decided not to make any New Year’s resolutions, choosing instead to compile my mission 101* list. This year, my sole resolution is to sew up and complete all my WIPs by the end of January so I can plough on with new projects and have some empty bags to keep them in! I have a sweater that I finished two years ago in my bag which hasn’t been sewn along with a pair of Lil Devil Pants which I finished in September, a few precut felt bunnies, wedding invites that are half done and goodness knows what else. I’m too flighty for my own good.

For those who have visited my blog and commented on the start of my journey, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and hope to see you returning in the new year.

Wishing you and yours all the very best of happiness, good company and health for 2008

Vonnie, Bob and the kids

*Mission 101 is a resolution-type exercise. You make a list of 101 things you want to achieve and you have 1001 days to do it in. Great for procrastinators!

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