Wishing you all the very happiest of New Years!

I am not going to go on about Covid and how the last 2 years have been horrible, I am going to look forward and focus on all the joy and opportunities that lie ahead.

As crafters we truly know the value of how crafting can support emotional and mental health, how the feeling of ‘doing something’ even when we are just idly crocheting or knitting simple rows can provide a kind of meditation, we lose ourselves in the process, we are fully in the ‘flow’ of the activity. I was recently reminded of this ‘flow’ whilst watching my 3 year old granddaughter completely lose herself in the imaginary world of her dolls house, the world around her continued as normal but she was lost in her miniature world where she was in total control, it was a beautiful moment.

In Craftopia I have the joy of chatting to so many people about this and how we totally lose ourselves in our crafts, its also wonderfully fulfilling to find that at the end of our immersion activities we have something rather fabulous to show for endeavours – a crafter is never just doing nothing!

Looking forward into this fresh new year I am planning to learn a few more skills, my embroidery is very rusty to say the least and I am desperate to create some usable fabric from a wet felting process. I still want to keep walking every day and to blow the dust of my flute and get back to a ‘Tune a Day’.

We also have many plans for Craftopia, especially in the area of workshops. We already have a few lined up, feeling a little tentative in this uncertain world but we must keep planning and fulfilling our dreams. Please watch out for the workshops coming up – I will post on here and in social media as well as trying to send out a newsletter to all our lovely website subscribers.

Keep crafting,

lots of love,

Ali xxx