January in a Nutshell (2015)

I know I always say it but I can’t believe how fast the year is going already. In January I went back to work after the holidays and we have all quickly fallen back into our familiar family routine. January is a busy month for me anyway with my husband’s and my daughter’s birthday so it always seems to be over in a flash and then before I know it we are in February.

As it was a significant birthday for my hubby this year I treated him to a weekend away for us both. We don’t get to go away together often and with Little G in the safe hands of my parents we took the opportunity to enjoy ourselves. We stayed in a lovely hotel in the Lake District; I don’t know whether you can tell from the picture from our hotel room below but it was snowing big fat flakes at us whilst we were there, totally different from home, however there was a nice wood fire in the bar downstairs…

So my little one turned 4 this year (which I’m still trying to get my head round – where did that time go!!!) and one of the activities we did together was to made her cake for her Nursery friends. There was a lot of munching on the rainbow cherries (aka smarties) more than actual decorating going on but we got there in the end. At the weekend she had another birthday cake at her fancy dress party with all her little friends. Some things never change though, just like last year she didn’t want the party to end! Our activity this weekend has been to write lots of thank you cards to everyone!

And in crochet world this month I’ve been working on some new designs for this year, I’ve done a couple of pattern tests for designers and released a new free pattern, the Moroccan Window 12″ Afghan Square, into the world for my first Crochet-A-Long (CAL).

The CAL I completely decided to do on the spur of the moment, after being inspired by the fabulous Moogly CAL last year. I’ve always wanted to take part in a CAL and I remember thinking that the only way I would be disciplined enough to complete one would be to do one myself. It has been keeping me pretty busy behind the scenes and like anything new mistakes have been made and there are things that I would definitely change if I ever did this again…

What has surprised me though is that so many of you have joined this CAL with me! I never dreamed that there would be so many. There are now over 1300 people in the Facebook CAL group, which is held together by the support of 3 wonderful volunteer admins, and I know others are following on twitter and here on the blog.

I’ve been loving seeing all the variation in colours…