Hello 2023

Hello and Happy New Year to you all. I must admit to being a little tired after a hectic but really lovely family Christmas and my plan is to approach January at a slow pace. Taking time to recalibrate and think about what is in store for 2023, both in and out of the sewing room. It is a big year for me. I will be 60 in March and have decided to keep a notebook all about ‘the year of being sixty’. I want to muse on past, present and future thoughts, not really about myself, but about the landscape in which I live. I began today (1st of January) just thinking about what the world was like on the day I arrived back in 1963. Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister and Cliff Richard was number 1 in the charts that week with ‘Summer Holiday’. I realise this might have been a popular upbeat kind of song because the winter of 1962-3 was one of the coldest and snowiest on record. In general perhaps my written musings will sketch the outlines of many thoughts, but whatever it turns out to be, it might help me come to terms with what seems like a difficult line to cross. Perhaps being sixty means freedom, but at the start of this year it feels ominous.

Meanwhile, I have lots of craft projects lined up and it kicks off with the ‘Scout Shawl’ from Florence Spurling Studio. I have seen so much buzz about this project over the last year and on summer holiday, I purchased some delicious wool from a charming Cornish shop and I am excited to get my knitting needles clicking away again…it’s been a while.

These beautiful hand dyed yarns should make up into a really pretty patchwork fairisle shawl but for sure this is a real challenge for me technically so we shall see how it goes.

I am also planning a bold new quilt. It is a free pattern from the Tilda’s world website here and is a ‘Dressing gown/kimono quilt’. I love this website and take a lot of inspiration from it and this quilt just pops out for me as a ‘must make’. I have alot of gorgeous Anna Maria Horner fabrics that I want to use up and these are perfect for this project. It will be fun to place the patterns together to conjure up, what I hope will be, an Oriental Odyssey brimming with colour and cheerfulness. It also fits in with my plans for the instagram #januaryinjapan which follows all these newly available japanese novels and book reviews. I have a couple of thrilling looking books to begin over the next weeks.

There are of course a couple of projects that are in flux carried over from last year and I hope to wrap these up. One is of course (if you follow me on Instagram) to finish my mystery advent calendar quilt that my daughter designed for me based on the movie ‘You’ve got mail’ which is going to be super fun. I have most of the blocks completed now and just some embroidered touches to add. But it will take time to put it all together to form the quilt and I can’t decide on a backing at the moment either. I’ll be writing a separate post all about this when it is finished.

Also waiting to be finished is my needlepoint seat cover, inspired by a visit to the Natural History museum and this is a priority now. The canvas is filling up with lots of textures and motifs so I need to keep working at it.

So you see the sewing room seems as busy as ever and I am so looking forward to sharing all this with you as a work through my list.

Meanwhile I wish you all joy and happiness for the forthcoming year and I hope will accompany me on my journey through the months.

All the best, Ruby xx