Here we are again

Well, here we are again, the beginning of another year. I hope you had a good break over the holidays and had a chance to spend time with people you love.  We had a busy Christmas day and a quiet Boxing day with the rest of the time spent either relaxing or looking after the grandkids. Thank you so much for all the loving thoughts and cards sent our way. We appreciate your kindness very much.

Gracie has settled in well and will soon be 5 months old. Hanno and I are learning how to groom her. It's like shearing a sheep. Her coat is wirey and thick and although she doesn't like being clipped or brushed, she seems to like having less hair. She is a real scallywag though. She loves running off with balls of wool that someone (ahem) seems to leave around the place.  She always goes for the best yarn - in the photo above she has my organic fine merino, but she takes the organic cotton too. 😡

I spent time over the break watching test match cricket and knitting a new set of dish cloths.  I'm using up the end pieces of organic cotton used over the past two years on various projects.  The old dishcloths are not completely written off yet. They'll be transferred to the rag bag and used as cleaning cloths for another year or two.

I hope to teach myself how to crochet and needle felt this year but my main project will be to work on my family history so that I'm happy to give a copy to my sons, grandchildren and sister. Those of you who have put any time into genealogy know that it's never finished but I do want to feel as if I've discovered as much as I can to give me, and us, a sense of who we are and where we came from. Family history is important to me and I sometimes see patterns from past lives repeating in ours. Consequently, I've added a family history tag to my side bar.  I'll talk about this in greater detail if there is some interest here because I do think this is part of a simpler life as well as being a valuable lesson in self awareness and acceptance.

 Leftover passionfruit cheesecake portions, prefrozen in wedges to be frozen again in plastic bags.

Over the holidays I made sure I had time to think carefully about my plans for this year.  I thought about closing the blog and forum but after mulling it over for a few days, I realised I'm not ready to close up shop yet. There are still things I want to share with you and I have strong connections with many people here and on the forum that I don't want to break. As soon as I decided to continue on into my tenth year, it felt right. I doubt I'll be blogging when I'm 80 but I think I still have a few years left in me so I hope you'll continue to read.

One of the most requested topics in the past year has been simple home cooking, so I'll be doing a weekly recipe during the year. It won't be anything fancy, it will be the food we eat here so I can photograph the stages to present along with the recipe. I hope you enjoy that.  I've also been asked by many readers to revisit some of my older topics such as budgeting, housework, baking and household sewing. That's on the agenda for this year too.

Thanks for coming back. It will be interesting to see where we go this year. ♥︎