Winter Colour

 I thought I'd write a small post about my houseplants and the winter colour in our conservatory. It's traditional to bring in a sign of Spring into the house on St. Brigid's Day (1st Feb).

I had just bought a new orchid - but sadly managed to break off one of the flower stems when I was unpacking the plant. Luckily they make great cut flowers and are still going strong after over a week.

 I bought four amaryllis from Marks and Spencers this year- so far three of them have flowered -- two different types of red and a pink!

The flowers are so over the top and full of colour. I can't remember what the 4th one is so it'll be a surprise :)

My first ever bromeliad - hopefully I will be able to keep it alive!

 ...and then there are my lovely orchids....

The yellow one is a new one this year  -  I always try to keep an eye out for orchids (and other houseplants) in the reduced section in Tesco or Marks and Spencer.

January

Out of curiosity I've decided to keep all the labels from whatever wool I work with each month - the above was the month of January! I think it's quite impressive really - it was one hat, one shower puff and 9 pairs of wrist warmers. February is proving to be a slower month so far as I am using sock yarn and a 3mm hook and it is much much slower to work with, but I guess it will average out over the whole year.

 One rainy day last month I decided to do my big sort through all my yarns - so the above photo is just about everything that I own! I cleared out a big bagful of stuff that I wasn't ever going to use and will pass it on to a fellow crafter for their projects.

Embarrassingly, I found several lovely yarns that I'd totally forgotten ever having bought!!

For quite a while now I've been quite firm on my 'yarn ban' -- I try to only buy yarns for custom orders (or if I'm on holiday!!) so I don't have quite AS much as I used to but it's still an awful lot.

Having sorted through it all though, it's given me inspiration to use up lots of it - mostly in wristwarmers (these really are my most favourite things to make)

Keeping Going

 Apologies for not keeping this updated yet again - Peter was terribly sick with vertigo and that kind of took over for a while. Fortunately he is 100% again but it was a hard week or so.

 As you can hopefully see, I'm keeping busy - I want to try and get my Etsy shop running properly again; I only have less than 15 listings there at the moment and need to get proper photos taken of the other wrist warmers that I have, and to get them listed too.

Starting Over Again

Well, it's the middle of January already and the last time I posted in here was way back in August. A LOT has happened - we lost four cats last year and it's hit me SO hard. James and Bertie to kidney failure, Oscar to lymphoma and we had little Bear with us for just a few months before she was killed on the road.

It was an incredibly tough year; Oscar and Bears' deaths hit me especially  hard and to be honest I've really struggled with my depression in the last few months.

We've decided not to take in any more cats - unless they turn up in our garden - as it just hurts so much when we lose them. Maybe in the future we will foster kittens/cats for Klaws (our local animal rescue centre) but right now we have Pearl, Dinah and Ivy and hopefully they will be with us for a long time.

I just haven't really been coping too well with all the loss so I've let my Etsy shop slide - I'm still crocheting away (it can feel sometimes like the only thing that keeps me sane sometimes)  -  I just haven't been photographing and listing it online.

My Christmas markets were quite successful - which is great as I'd nothing going on Etsy last winter; I went to three -- Caherdaniel, then Cahirciveen and Waterville was last. Waterville has always been my best one - it wasn't this time round but I think it's probably because it was my last one and I didn't have SO much to choose from. The most important thing was that I was able to raise the funds to continue the sponsorship of my two girls through ActionAid Ireland.

Airmid soaps asked me to make more of the soap savers and scrubbies for them towards the end of the year (this also helped boost my sponsorship funds) --- you can buy them here … https://airmidsoap.com/collections/accessories they've been so great to work with - I'm really proud to be one of their suppliers.