Finally Feeling Christmassy and a free chart!

Hi y'all!
Wow, it has been a mad, hectic week.  I've had so many orders it has been amazing.  Thank you all for showing me so much support.

I'm finally feeling Christmassy.  Ds is now off school and that means we can get those xmas smells going with baking and cooking and doing fun things.

I tried really hard to get a decent piccie of the tree but failed magnificently!  Apart from the tinsel and lights, all of the decorations are hand made, gifts, exchanges and even a few made by myself!

Oh, and what is this on the tree?

A beautiful RAK from Shirlee!

Om goodness. You should see the finishing on it!  It's perfect.  I really love it and want to say thank you Shirlee:  it is friendships like this that have got me through the last three years. Thank goodness I took that step 7 ish years ago to start a blog.  I really have met the most wonderful people though it and love our crafty community.

Oh, hang on..there seems to be something else on the tree! Hmmm wonder what it is?

It's a beautiful card sent to me and made by Elaine (lanyblue). Thank you so much Elaine, it is so beautiful and wow, very delicately made.  I think it is tatting?

I'll have to frame it after xmas because it's way to nice to end up in an ex-christmas card pile. I do that with all my hand made gifts: frame them or turn them into ornaments so all that hard work isn't wasted just because this christmas is gone.  Do you do the same?

I had a beautifully crocheted christmas tree sent by Michelle G: the photo didn't come out so I will try again later and put it up in the next post. Thank you so much Michelle xxxx

I have finally got my ghosts up on the wall. I am going to frame Scrooge, the wall hanging just doesn't work   It looks like they are all a bit wonky but that is actually the wall. When you live in a 200-250 year old stone and rubble house, level is not a word you can ever use!

The walls bulge out everywhere! Thinking about it, not a lot unlike myself teehee.

 Now work has been mad.  I've been working 15 hour days all week but I put my foot down last night and decided I am going to start to be a bit stricter with myself.  It's a woman thing isn't it?  If we do something we put our all into it and then crash and burn. So this is me, being grown up and learning from past lesson. I am going to try to stick to a 9.00 am - 6 pm work day. Designing is fun so I will do that whenever the mood takes me but the shop side, the admin side etc: that has to be 9.00 to 6.00.

Anyway, last night I started knitting for my new granddaughter.  She will be called Alyssia (I may have spelt that wrong but it is a modern version of Alicia).  I will be calling her Freddie.  I can spell that rofl.

The stitching looks like it is wonky but it isn't: it's crinkly wool and looks so much nicer in real life. This is the back.  Its a variagated yellow and mint but know we know it is a little girl, I can start getting the pink out!!!!

There's lots of news workwise.

Holmsey Hare and his Year of the Hare is going really well. So well that we now have a facebook page for all things Holmsey.  Holmsey Hare's Haven.  Fergus is allowed in as well but he has to promise to be good!  Bless him, he tries sooo hard!

It's a nice place for people to share all their Holmsey and Fergus Stitchyness and for me to offer little stories and free charts.  Feel free to pop over and join in!

The 2015 Thread and Chart Club is up and running.  I have had to tweak prices and am completely confuzzled by postage costs. At the moment it is going to cost me 5.00 euros to send threads and chart seperately (which apparently is cheaper than sending together) but I am going to look into that further.  That is about £4.00 stirling.  I refuse to be ripped of by postage costs so am going to have to come up with a cunning plan methinks!  I doesn't help that I am charged differently in different post offices!!!  What on earth is that all about?

Again, members of this club will receive exclusive special offers and freebies to try and combat the cost.  I want to be fair, and a hobby should be fun, not a guilty pleasure...that's what chocolate is for!

And of course, with the changes in the VAT laws (cheers Amazon and Google and especially you EU!) I have decided to switch to paper charts.

I have found a format which means it only costs me 1.20 euros to post worldwide..that is about 90 pence stirling and a lovely, silky, high grade paper so it feels nice.  

The printer must have thought I was mad, but we are creative. We want something that feels nice, that looks nice and that makes us thing we are important enough to have some effort put into it.  I kept feeling the papers with my eyes closed, and when I found one I really like liked the feel off, that was the one the printers had to go with.  I refuse to have people pay five euros for what works out to be basic bog standard A4!

I haven't decided if I am going to stick with etsy and the manual emailing system: my memory crashed and burned within a day as I forgot to send an email HALFWAY THROUGH SENDING IT!. I might experiment a little with it but it seriously adds to my workload and takes me away from the designing. T'is a dilemma that's for sure!  Thanks to the new EU laws, as far as technology is concerned, we have taken a huge step backwards!

I would love to hear your views: paper charts or pdf?

Ok, well this is quite a long post.  I hope I haven't bored you. 

I will leave you this weekend with a free Fergus chart for a last minute ornie!  He sneaked over to Holmsey's fb page so thought he might keep out of trouble if he is here too.
Just right click, save, print.  And most importantly, have fun!