Iiiiit’s Saturday! That means it’s time for the third round of The Paddy Factor!

Today’s topic: Is handmade always better than shop-bought? Why?

Funnily enough, Emma was only the second person I ever gifted a handmade present to and I blogged it here at the time. I made her a pair of wristwarmers.

So why was Emma only the second person to receive something I’d made as a gift? Well, quite simply I didn’t believe that things I’d made were ‘real’ presents. I didn’t think my projects were of a high enough quality to gift and I worried that anyone receiving something I’d made would think that I’d copped out or worse, that I was too much of a cheapskate to spend money on them. The problem is that I spend January to November saving up so I can purchase random tat for the people in our life, just so that they have a gift to open.

Last year, I worked out that even if we bought only for our closest family and friends and allocated only £10 per person we were still going to be out £500 before we even looked at gifts for each other or the children as we have been blessed with a large family and superb network of buddies. Now tell me, friends. What can you buy for £10 these days? More to the point, what can you buy for £10 that has depth and meaning? That shows your giftee that you have considered their personality, hobbies and importance to you? Even more pressing was my concern that with a family of our size, £500 is a lot of money that really could be put to better use than increasing the dividends paid to the shareholders of the High Street. Every year I find myself running around the almost-bare shelves of High Street shops at 2pm on Christmas Eve almost crying with fear that I might not get something – anything – for somebody. Where is the meaning in that?

Reading about Charlotte‘s christmas hampers (flick back a page or two to see what she made) was a serious wake up call – handmade and homemade did not mean that less thought or effort had been put in. In fact it was the exact opposite! I read about how much effort she and her husband put into their Christmas gifts and realised how much I’d have loved to have received a gift with such effort put into it.

With the advent of online selling communities, it has become trendy to buy from artisans and crafters who produce on a small scale and for me this is still within the realms of handmade. I appreciate only too well how difficult it can be to find the time to craft as I can only do it when the older children are at school & nursery and Greer’s asleep, but by supporting these selling communities not only can you find more individual items – you are also ensuring that your chosen shop owner has an income. In my experience most of these shops are run by people like me – work-at-home parents or simply creative types who require a base to set themselves up.

The best gift I have ever been given came from my husband and I posted about it here. It’s a one-off, I couldn’t potter into the city and find 20 copies of the same thing staring back at me. It’s individual and more to the point, it was a very personal thing with meaning.

In short? I do believe that handmade is far superior to shop-bought, but I do still have lingering doubts that any gifts I make will be accepted in the spirit they’re proferred. In those cases, there’s always Etsy, Folksy, DaWanda, Coriandr, Misi and a host of other sites providing shop space for crafters and artists selling handmade lovelies that I’d be proud to gift. And which (to me) are a more ethical and thoughtful way to buy presents.

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So it’s the second in our new regular feature ‘The Paddy factor’ (the first can be read here).

Today’s topic: What scares you – and why?

Ha! There is no way I am sharing what I’m truly scared of or I’ll be getting the mickey taken out of me for aeons Seriously though, as a parent I obviously have the usual fears of my children or husband being sick/maimed/killed and that is probably the most pressing fear I have. Recently though I’ve found myself becoming quite concerned about the environment, our effects on it and the world as it will be when my children have children.

Bob and I were chatting about this earlier. With us having four children we’ve obviously faced indirect criticism for our family’s carbon footprint* and it is something that concerns me but when we broke it down a little, it isn’t really so bad. We don’t fly our family anywhere, we grow and raise our own produce, we’re fairly careful with our energy useage, we recycle as much as we possibly can including running both a wormery and a compost heap, we have spent a large amount of time with the kids in cloth nappies instead of disposables, we only occasionally use pre-prepared foods and mainly buy from local shops. Additionally, I’ve kept and reused all of the kids’ toys & clothes so we’re not heavy consumers in that regard. Admittedly there is always more we can do but we try our best. The prospect of our children having to grow up in a country where they can’t live in a house near green space is quite terrifying for me and I do feel guilty for having had four children and increasing the burdens on the earth. I do hope that by raising them with an awareness of green issues that they will pay back their existence as it were.

Wow! That was a bit heavy so to lighten the mood I’ll share that for the longest time I was terrified of Care Bears. When I was a kid around Nairn’s age, I had Care Bear wallpaper on my bedroom wall. I also had a sleep disorder (which still plagues me occasionally now!) where I’d wake up from a sleep – I can physically be walking around, talking coherently and remember things – but my dream would still be going. So on Christmas Eve when I was 4 I woke up in my bedroom and the bad boy from school was in my wallpaper trying to shoot me. Even now I can still remember it, so very freaky and of course this bad boy had probably done nothing more serious than drop litter or swear or something ridiculous like that. The net result was the same, I refused to sleep in my bedroom until the wallpaper was changed and I developed a hatred for the Care Bears.

See! They look a bit sinister don’t they!

I’m sitting racking my brains and I really can’t think of anything although I am one of the jumpiest people you will meet. There’s been so many times that I’ve been upstairs and Bob has suddenly appeared and frightened the living daylights out of me even though I’ve heard him plodding upstairs, so much so that he now whistles to make sure I hear him! Poor man, I don’t know how he tolerates my idiosyncracies.

What about you? What scares you?

*I’m not totally sold on the theory behind calculating your carbon footprint so I tend to try and think it ecological impact terms instead wherever possible

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Do you know, for my birthday my lovely friend Emma gave me a jar filled with pieces of paper telling me to “delve into that” whenever I couldn’t think of anything to write about. That jar has sat on my shelf for nearly four months and I haven’t yet written about any of the topics she has suggested so I decided to do something about that today. I’m going to make this a weekly thing until the jar is empty, then I’ll invite questions from my loyal fanbase

Today’s topic: Cats or dogs?

Let me tell you, friends. I am not blessed with a Dr Dolittle streak. When I was a kid, my parents were 100% against my siblings and I having pets. I had a dog for two weeks until I went back to boarding school after the holidays and my Mum took her to the Cat & Dog home, and cats were out of the question because my Mum hates them. So of course the first thing I did when I got my own place was bought a cat.

We had Sparky for maybe three weeks when he jumped out of my (3rd floor!) window in pursuit of a passing pigeon. Somehow he survived but spent the next two weeks in the vets, recovering before coming home where he lived with us for two years. Alas, when Bob and I began courting Sparky decided to voice his disapproval by attempting to destroy the house and so he went to live with our best man Barry. He still lives there, periodically being affectionate but more often finding new and exciting ways to upset Barry!

Soon after Bob and I moved in together, our friend Lizzie decided to move to Bristol and we offered to take her cat. Tuna moved in and lived with us until about a year ago when she shacked up with a neighbour. Sadly, Tuna was knocked over and killed earlier this year.

For Findlay’s 5th birthday, all he asked for was a kitten. Constantly. For maybe six months? I was quite excited by the prospect although worried about how Tuna would take it, but eventually decided that the company aspect would be nice and so took up the offer of a kitten from a friend of a friend. Went to pick up the kitten and accidentally came home with two – Kipper and Sausage. They lived with us until Christmas last year when we went to London for the weekend and they moved in with the neighbour. I’m beginning to feel a little self-conscious here. This is Sausage:

Turns out that Kipper was a little promiscuous, and so our first litter of kittens arrived two weeks before Erica was born. Here’s Kipper and her babies:

In September, I realised how much I’d missed being without a cat for nearly nine months. After a chat with our neighbour, she agreed that Sausage and Kipper were really her family’s cats now and I visited our local SSPCA shelter with Nairn. I was only going to look! That night, we came home with Sia…:

… who had five kittens on Erica’s birthday. Sadly two of the kittens didn’t make it, which left us with two gingers and a black kitten. One of the ginger kittens has gone to Edinburgh to live with Kate and the black one has gone to live with Kate’s colleague which leaves us with Horatio:

We also rescued a litter of kittens in January and managed to rehome four out of the six which left us with Yola…:

… who we haven’t seen since the week after Greer was born, and his brother Fitz who I don’t have a photo of. So we now have four cats – Sia and Horatio who live inside, Fitz who pops by for food every other day and Yola who we suspect has found someone to feed him.

So in answer to the question? Well, I’d say it has to be cats

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