One thing I have always done with this blog is to limit it, to only talk about work, or things that closely resemble work. This year I’d like to share more than just work. I want to share personal projects, personal discoveries and dreams, and to not just limit the blog to things I make for sale.

My reason behind this is that every experience we have shapes who we are, and the things that we create. By only sharing work, I’m forcing myself to work inside such a rigid framework that it can be very hard to break out of – and I end up sharing nothing at all. Some of the things that shape my work never have their story told, and I’d like to share them.

Anyone who follows me on instagram knows that I am a huge knitter. I love it. Being able to knit has opened up a whole new world of fashion for me. The action of knitting, the patterns, the yarn have all combined to give me a new appreciation of clothing, fibres, textiles; and I’ve also gained new viewpoints on what fashion is, what sustainability is, and how this speaks to the environment. It’s changed my wider outlook on society as a whole, and has made me consider things like the economics of the wool industry, China, India, wages, animal rights, and the list goes on.

I also sew (obviously!), and I really love making my own clothes. There’s so much I don’t know, but I’d like to share those personal projects here as well. I don’t intend on ever designing or selling my own line of clothes, I’m just a dabbler, and I like well made simple outfits – stuff I rarely find at the shops. I also like to think about where my clothes came from – were the workers paid sufficiently? Do they have to work 12 hours a day to feed their family? Is the dye house taking environmental precautions? Where was it made? Do children work in the factory – etc. It seems much easier to circumnavigate these issues if i make as much as I can myself.

Gardening. As an adult I have been wanting to grow my own food for awhile – but as a renter I put it off. Whenever I began a garden we would inevitably end up having to move, and the loss was always such a downer that I vowed to not do it again until we owned our own home. Last October we found out that our landlords are quite happy living overseas thanks very much and don’t intend on moving back for at least a few more years – so we have some sort of permanence before we can buy something permanent!

So I started a garden. And I LOVE it. I’d go so far as to say it has become an obsession. It began as one garden bed (albeit a large one), and has grown in size and now encompasses 4 more raised beds, and 4 more garden beds. Yikes! It’s producing lots of veggies, and i think we will have more than we can eat. I hope to store some of it for over the winter, I need to learn about root cellars. So prepare yourselves to see my love of all things plant.

These are just some of the things I hope to share more of in 2016. I’m already dubbing this year “the year of personal projects”. I really plan on focusing a lot of energy making things for the joy of it, hopefully at a ratio of “one for me, one for you.”

I will be starting a few of my Indigo seeds in pots so I can move them, in the hope that our new home will have a garden where I can plant them in the ground. I also have an idea to explore about setting up a dye garden off site, but I’ll need to look into that a little further before I can get to excited about if it can go ahead or not!

One of the saddest parts of having to move is knowing how much we had made this place our home. We really love where we live and invested in our lives here more than we ever had in past houses!

This also means the gorgeous bulb garden bed I planted, full of jonquils, daffodils, iris, ranunculus and anemones will most likely be lost, although I will attempt to dig a few bulbs out with the dirt so I can bring some with me in pots. There is around 300 bulbs in the bed though, so I wont be able to dig up all of them. It’s also full of dwarf snap dragons and cottage flowers, it’s the flower garden I’ve always wanted.

I have a lot of house hunting ahead of me! We were lucky with the house we’re in now, it’s very big, we have a guest bed, and both my husband and I have our own work spaces. It’s unlikely we will find something so large for the same price again, so the downsize is going to hurt! We’ve gotten used to having a lot of space.