Welcome!

Has everyone returned from the Christmas break feeling revived and refreshed? Or stuffed full of ham and turkey - and, let's be honest, the odd bottle of vino - and vowing to return to healthy eating habits as soon as practically possible?

For me, it's a little of both.

In preparing for Christmas this year, I realised two things.  Firstly, I'd once again ignored my better judgment to prepare for the yuletide season well ahead of time and I subsequently spent most of my spare time in the last two weeks leading up to the Big Day in a constant state of panic and denial.  And secondly, I barely had enough energy, let alone time, to tackle some of the special handmade Christmas projects I'd set aside especially for this time of the year.  And this wasn't the first year I'd come to this conclusion either - every year I say to myself that I'll lean more toward the handmade than the commercial, toward the traditions rather than the havoc.  And every year I run out of time or patience well before I have the chance to get creative.

It occurred to me that maybe I was approaching this all wrong.  Maybe the key to a relaxed, planned, enjoyed Christmas is to start things off ahead of time? And what better time to begin than in January, when ye olde brain still harbours warm fuzzies from recent yuletide glee and there is month after gloriously free month open and waiting to be filled with creative pursuits? Why wait until the 'holiday season' (and the attached panic) begins to hype up in October - or even later?

The more I thought about beginning to prepare for Christmas 2011 now, the more excited I got.  And the more excited I got, the grander my plans became.  I would document my crafty travels, my triumphs and mistakes, the projects that worked and those that flopped.  By golly, I'd set up a dedicated blog! And I wouldn't need to restrict the reporting to my Christmas endeavors either - I could cover all manner of homewares and giftables made possible by the melding of sewing machine, hand and imagination.  Birthday presents, children's bedding and toys, handmade doodads and thingamajigs, new Easter pajamas, sofa cushions - if they could be sewn, I was going to be the girl to attempt them.

And so, armed with a pretty new digital SLR camera lovingly saved for and purchased for Christmas this year, a sewing machine I cantankerously refer to as Hank, and a heady mix of 'this could be brilliant or it could be a disaster', here I am.

I'm not a fabulously experienced sewing machinist (once in high school home economics, I managed to machine-sew my finger to a stuffed frog) but I can generally wander my way through a pattern without losing a limb.  I can't crochet, I can barely knit garter stitch, I'm only a beginner photographer and I generally don't have the patience for individual projects lasting longer than a week (a quilter I am not).  But I'm enthusiastic! And if you read this blog for no other reason than to laugh at my feeble attempts to craft my way through a handmade year, then I've achieved my aim.

Hank, however, may need therapy.