Don't worry, be happy

It seems that the air is filled with concerned voices and fearfulness. I know it sounds superficial but sometimes you have to go back to basics to get your confidence back.

All of this made me think that Christmas this year should be an opportunity for investing more time (not money) in creating gifts that have more meaning and value because they have a personal creativity. I'm not alone. There are books being published every day and discussions in every paper and I spotted this article by the Sunday Times writer, India Knight. Her book, The Thrift Book: Live Well and Spend Less pretty much tells us what our mothers knew best. It's about time we learned some lessons from it. I've just completed another well-attended beginners' course of crochet classes and I can tell in my own little field that there's a hunger to pick up some long-forgotten skills. Learning was never so fun and potentially so profitable.

The internet is a-buzzin' with ideas and projects and I'll be looking at a few in the next few weeks. Before then, I wanted to alert you to a nice publication from the States (good luck to all of them today, by the way) which you may, or may not, already know about.

Craft: magazine is choc-full of ideas and projects and lots of crochet. I love this hanging decoration from Emilie Friday.

A digital version is available which is useful for international customers. There is an excellent blog which picks up on the magazine and it's contributors and it gives hours and hours of happy browsing. In addition, if you want to really enter the digital age, there are podcasts of patterns and projects. For more ideas there is a Flikr Craft: pool which features finished projects and work in progress. I love this one from Feltroterapia. There isn't much crochet there so...

...get to work!!!