My husband came home from a week away just in time to catch my cold. We holed up for the weekend, warm blankets and tea keeping us company.
We drove to the shop today, finally snivel-free and bright-eyed, and I spotted some daffodils growing by the side of the road. The tired grass here on our little peninsula in Chepstow is still browned with winter. The dark green daffodil plants were stark against the grass and easy to spot, even in a car going 40 MPH. I imagine they’ve grown rogue, having originated at some point or another from someone’s garden.
It all reminded me of a poem I read once, about daffodils: 
I can’t think of one person I know who hasn’t learned something incredibly useful from an older person in their life, whether that person may be a relative or a stranger. Our lives, all of them, are built upon the choices and knowledge of the people that came before us.
Which is why The Amazings project in London is so fantastic. The premise of the company is simple; it offers variety of courses offered by amazing people over the age of 50. But it’s so much better than that. The Amazings wants to offer courses from real people with real experiences.
Ooh, I’m excited! February’s craft of the month is the beautiful, varied, and well-established craft of embroidery!
(If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me mention it earlier this month.)
Embroidery didn’t catch my eye until I worked as a photographer for my grandmother’s business (website in Finnish). She sells printed linens and cloths for DIY embroidery, amongst other wonderfully crafty things, and wanted to set up a website. Spending so much time with the embroidered linens helped me appreciate their elegance and the beauty of hand-embroidered pieces.
Now, I look for vintage embroidery in second-hand shops and love the often bright and geometrical styles of contemporary embroidery.
So here’s the confession: other than half-finished kits I’ve never done embroidery. It’s on my long list of ‘loved but never tried’ crafts, much like crochet was. So in the spirit of my craft-a-month project, here goes!
What to expect this month: 
It was beautiful in Chepstow today. The morning started out grey, but by midday it was breezy and bright and the earthy smell of spring was in the air.
The local florist shop smelled heavenly of lilacs when I stepped inside. You could call today’s bouquet a treat for having kept to my 2013 goals so far, but honestly I just thought they were too beautiful to miss. (Insert naughty self-satisfied giggle here.)
Whenever I see creamy pink roses I dream of bringing them home to a magazine-esque country cottage filled with vintage floral prints and the smells of home-made bread and wild flowers.
… We can all dream, right? ;)
My Project 365 is so far a success. I’ve taken just over 700 photos. That’s more than I took in the entire year of 2012.
Don’t worry! I’m not going to share all 700, just some highlights:
January is coming to a close. The first craft of the year has been pounced upon and conquered as much as I could do with a month’s time to spend on it.
Crochet has tested me, but it has rewarded me as well. I have found joy in the feel of silk and cotton yarns slipping through my fingers to create something I would not have been able to do even a month before. With each stitch I get more confident, and find ideas for crochet projects wherever I look. There’s a freedom to the form of crochet that knitting can’t compare to. (Although I love knitting just as much, all the same.)
As I’ve jumped into this project there have been some unexpected discoveries along the way.
- People share their handmade skills in abundance.
