New Year.

Wow, one week into the New Year already? How time flies. I really must apologise for having fallen off the blogging wagon so precipitously in November. It's not that I had nothing to blog about, quite the contrary. Far too much happening, including battling The Snows. We really did have some astonishingly bad weather here in the east of Scotland from the end of November, right up till Christmas and beyond. The Fishwife family live in a decent sized town with almost everything within walking distance so we were fine for food and general supplies but I did nearly get stuck at the spinning retreat I was attending, an hours drive away up in a tiny village in the hills, when the snow first started. And the schools were closed quite a lot and Hubby was working from home mostly and really, the entire routine of life went to hell in a handcart.

It was quite fun in some ways though and certainly made for a less stressful Christmas, given that shopping was not regarded as a good enough reason to dig the car out yet again! Presents and visiting and general obligations to run around attending things got cut back quite a lot but we didn't find this made Christmas less enjoyable. Quite the opposite, actually. We did the important things and they were quite enough.

I also got an amazing amount of crafting done. I've been concentrating on smaller projects recently which means actually getting some FOs for a change. And once I'd actually got the bobbins cleared on the wheels I felt much more inspired to tackle some more unusual projects. I've done a bit of test spinning for a indie dyer called Dyeing for Yarn, who is about to start selling hand painted fibres in her Etsy shop. At the spinning retreat we did a big natural dyeing project, which deserves an entire post to itself soon, and I've started a Spinning Challenge 2011 thread on The Yarn Yard forum on Ravelry, where the idea is to challenge yourself to spin regularly every month for the next twelve months. I don't need much encouragement to be honest, but it's nice to be able to encourage other folk to do the same.

My spinning groups start back next week, actually, on Tuesday and Saturday, then I've got The Sheddite Gathering at the end of the month in York (three days of knitting, spinning and socialising in a convent in York, yeah!) and two spinning workshops in Feburary. A busy couple of months and I'm really looking forwards to them. :)

Finally, a couple of Cat Pictures. I made two felted Kitty Pi-s as Christmas presents for The Boyz. First one was for Ollie...





Then, after due reflection on sizing.......



A somewhat larger Pi for Paws...



Which was still a bit snug, but he likes it anyway.




Happy belated New Year to you all!