Happy new year and a competition :)

I've been gone for ages, I know. Life got busy and instead of burying my head in the sand, spending lots of time on the computer and ignoring my jobs, I've ignored the computer instead. A revelation, I know.

While I've been busy sewing and doing, I've had ace ideas though and here is my first idea; one day the other week when I was having a Christmas rush on with my bags, I suddenly realised that people were buying my bags for presents. *My* bags. How exciting!!

So my competiton goes like this.....you send me a pic of something you bought from Nicsknots for someone as a pressie with the person or part of the person if they don't want their pic on the Internet and I will stick the names in a hat and one person will win a prize. How does that sound? Get snapping. You have until 7th Jan, my email is nicsknots(at)googlemail.com

We've had a good Christmas of doing not much other than eating and seeing family and playing with new toys, the highlights being a remote control darlek for J who had barbie pinned up against the wall on Christmas morning and was exterminating her good and proper and for L, Barbie and her dog. A dog which eats then poos it all out. Only M could have bought that for his darling daugher!!We were so glad to go down south on Sunday and see family and friends.

I discovered the joys of Tunbridge Wells with J and L while M went in search of his wayward Mother for a morning. To my delight, I found my first actual Cath Kidston shop...so excited that I had to take pics of course :) then we found a book shop that had a Dr Who annual for the grand price of 99p and a Dora one for the same so that cheered two little people up who had been wandering around a busy town too long and we had a nice sit down at the train station to do a bit of train spotting and wait for Daddy to ring and say that he had found Granny. We know how to have fun on our holidays ;)

After lunch with the relocated Gran, we went back to our hotel and I think M must have felt a little bit bad for abandoning us for the morning because he suggested I take myself off shopping for an hour or so. He never does that!! Of course, I didn't need to be asked twice and ran off. I discovered lots of shops I've never been to before, bought everyone presents from the sales and a copy of Knitting magazine that a certain KraftyKoala was in. Her tencel sock yarn was reveiwed next to malabrigo!!! Buy it while you can people, it could be like Wollmeise all over again ;)

When I got home this morning, I got an email to say that I am the featured artisan of the week on the Autonomous Artisans blog. Its a great blog and I spend a lot of time lusting after things that I *need* on that blog. Thank you Lynne and Jon.

So I guess I have almost caught up but some knitting content to end the year might be a good idea? Last month we were at my brothers housewarming and he asked me to make him a brown ribbed beanie hat. You know, like people do in passing and don't really think anything more about but the knitter files this away for gift knitting ideas so while I wasn't driving I finished this.....



It's 'A hat fit for a boyfriend' by Stephanie Nicole that I found on trusty old Ravelry.

I did, of course stumble across a little problem....because I finished this as we were driving around the M25 and the M11, I didn't have my brother to try the hat on and when the pattern says 'Note that this finished hat should only cover the tops of ears. If you want a hat to fully cover the ears, knit an extra inch or more before starting the decreases.' it does really mean it and when my brother tried this on this morning, he decided that it needed to be an inch longer.

I have solved the problem though, J wants a hat to match his Uncle so this is now his hat and I have cast on hat #2.

All that leaves me to say is Happy New Year!! Here's to a great 2009 and I'm going to go and put free postage on all of my things on Folksy for a week after posting this so get spending your Christmas money or treat yourself to something special after a hectic holiday season or if you are one of those really organised people, start buying your presents for next year :)