Ducks

Shawl for my mom. Pattern: Muir. Yarn: mystery acrylic that will not block properly.

I've been trying to get all my ducks in a row before I started blogging for the new year - catching up on illustration projects, stocking my shop, designing new prints. Possibly I'm not a very gifted duck herder, or my ducks are more disobedient than other people's. All they want to do is sit and read the new Neal Stephenson, Anathem, while knitting lace (Muir, from Knitty).

It's been a productive holiday, gardening, picking weeds and drawing them, painting doors (only 4 to go... should be done in another 2 years), sewing doorstops, hanging pictures; but not designing a new website, learning Illustrator, finishing a handbag design.... So those are things to look forward to this year!

Someone asked me for links to design blogs, and I realised that I don't read many of those. But craft blogs are a different story. Thinking about the kind of things I like to post about, looking back at my 500 posts (!) and the comments on them, scanning the blogs I like to read, I see a definite focus. An article in Craft clarified it for me: "Crafters value objects that can teach them something new. A product rich with stories about it's origin, maker, materials, and techniques of manufacture is infinitely more interesting than a product without a history. "

So that's what I'll be thinking about and trying to communicate this year. It was the generosity of all the people sharing 'how to do things' that drew me into the internet in the first place. I want to add to that, as much as I can.

(I carved a stamp set for a little boy for Christmas, depicting the cars from the movie Cars - there's no point fighting an obsession. When I gave it to him he said: "Did you make this?" in a slightly puzzled tone. "Yes" I replied. He considered this for a bit, and then asked "But how did you know about the cars?" My answer, that I went on to the internet, seemed to satisfy him. Maybe it's a start.)