2011

Happy new year! I took down our Christmas decorations yesterday, so am feeling like now is the time to really start with 2011. I was a bit sad to take the tree and and all the tinsel down, especially since Poppy (crazed looking cat above) was protesting furiously and clinging onto everything for dear life. Poppy loves Christmas and this year had become quite territorial about the tree especially. Here you can see her sitting on the tinsel so that I couldn't remove it from the bannister. Bless her, she fought valiantly, but I defeated her. Bah humbug! I ate the last of my chocolate coins while I tearfully packed all the tree decorations away. Still, I'm looking forward to rediscovering them all again next year, when I think I'll try to put the tree up as bit earlier.

This picture has nothing to do with what follows. Just some nice graffiti I spotted yesterday.

I decided not to make any resolutions this year as there were too many vague things I want to do/change and I couldn't pick just one or two to focus on. I definitely have that new year, new start sort of a feeling though and have in the back of my mind a semi-resolution to sort of get my mojo back. This means trying to get back to my more healthy lifestyle (I weighed myself in Boots yesterday and the printout had an advert for their weight-loss scheme at the bottom along with the recommendation that I lose at least two stone!) not live in a shambolic mess and generally just make a bit more of an effort.

Since I am not making any real resolutions, I decided to come up with a list of crafts I want to try my hand at in 2011 instead. I am calling this Craftathon 2011 and have created a category/label thingummy for it over to the right there so you/I will be able to see how the Craftathon progresses throughout the year. There are quite a lot of things on there - some I have never tried (e.g. needle felting) some I haven't tried for a long time (e.g. lace making, not attempted since the '80s) and some I already do, but wanted to include so they wouldn't get shoved out of the way by all the other crafts on the list. I'm hoping that some of them will take on a life of their own and become new long-term hobbies that I'll eventually become good at or find some unexpected way of adapting/incorporating, while others might just be a one-off fun weekend activity. I'm not going to give myself a hard time if I don't do some of the crafts since the purpose of this list is for my own enjoyment and I am also reserving the right to do things that are not on the list. I'm sure I have forgotten some crafts that I had in mind to try and I'm going to be keeping my eyes peeled for any courses that might unexpectedly fit in around work, for more specialised things like stained glass or ceramics or screen printing. Without further ado (there's been quite enough ado already!) here, in no particular order, is the list.

CRAFTATHON 2011!

1. Quilling

2. Lace making

3. Macrame

4. Weaving

5. Sew at least one item of clothing

6. Lino printing

7. Gocco printing

8. Embroidery

9. Make a zine (I was meant to do this in 2010, but failed)

10. Pin and thread pictures

11. Make a rug

12. Crochet

13. Paper cutting/collage

14. Needle felting

15. Learn to use Illustrator

16. Stop-motion animation

I am excited to get started. Feel free to join in and make a list of your own. I would love to hear about it :)