Making Christmas

This year, I've laid off the gift knitting, but the cookie cutters are getting a work out. I'm looking forward to spending time with family & friends. (And to my mammy's roast spuds.) I hope you all have a peaceful festive season.

Growing older, not growing up.

I've just turned 30. I am very reluctant to grow up so was expecting to be rather traumatised by the whole event & just wanted to ignore it. But real life & people got in the way.

Friday 13th; I held a bake sale in work, as a fund raiser for the Irish Cancer Society. This will be added to the funds raised in sponsorship of my taking part in the Women's Mini Marathon. I spent Thursday evening baking, washing up & icing, & went into the office on Friday laden down with fairy cakes, oaty cherry cookies & gingerbread loaf. A couple of colleagues also contributed cookies & orange fairy cakes & banana bread. Most impressively, the bake sale raised a whopping €197.23 - not bad for a morning's work. The one lesson I learned from this was to always have paper plates.

Later on Friday, I joined some fellow knitters /fibre nuts for dinner in Yamamori's. There's something about eating food with sticks that is really appealling. We later moved on to the Tea Gardens for a mini-Fibre Fun Friday. There were many laughs and completely rubbish attempts at haiku.

Saturday 14th was spent at the lovely This is Knit, taking part in a steeking class taught by the wonderful Kate Davies. The class was based around Kate's new technique, called the Steek Sandwich (or schtayk sangidge), which is a brilliant neat way of stabilising steeked edges and reinforcing button bands at the same time. The class was a lovely mixture of learning & fun & we got to grope some of Kate's garments & swatches for forthcoming patterns. Most of all I no longer fear the steeking.

Sunday 15th was spent with family; rolling around on the floor with my dotey baby nephew, & eating delicious cake made by my sister in law. I spent the entire weekend laughing, learning & enjoying myself & didn't even notice that new decade passing me by.

It seems that I am not the only one who enjoyed the class; it has also been blogged by This is Knit and by Kate Davies. And by pure coincidence I am mentioned / photographed in both! I am delighted & honoured that the ladies at This is Knit thought that the brooch I designed was appropriate as a gift for Kate, and blown away by her positive response to this brooch. It has certainly made me reconsider previous decisions to completely set aside my past in art & design. Which is probably a good thing!