A New Year...

When my boys were growing up and home during their school vacations we always loved the week between Christmas and New Years.  We would play games, do puzzles, watch movies, eat lots of great foods.  It was great!  I tell myself every year that I am going to relax and take some time between the two holidays to "rejuvenate", but I guess I really need to let those days go.  We all have to work during that week, no more school vacations.  

I told myself I was going to bake everyday, blog, craft.  It just doesn't happen.  Somewhere along the way here my little side business has turned into a full fledged, 7 days a week, 8-6 daily job.  I'm not complaining, really I'm not, but I just need to lighten up on myself and tell myself that those "good old days" of games, puzzles and all day in pajamas are long gone.  

We've been super busy in the shop and on the website.....so busy that we've barely had time to catch our breaths.  And if we do have a "quiet" day it's usually spent doing real things like putting the Christmas decorations away, taking all the Christmas out of the shop or my favorite, doing laundry.  

I am constantly looking for ways to "streamline", ways to shave time off doing things, so we can fit more time in for what we love.....creating.  I have pledged to do my designing for the whole year in the month of January and I'm happy to say that that plan is coming to fruition.  I will say sadly, that I cannot share any line drawings of upcoming designs anymore because I have noticed that some of these, from the past, have ended up on Pinterest in "free pattern" categories.  So the saying, one bad apple spoils the whole damn bunch applies here.  But, below are some teasers of what we've been up to lately...

I'm doing a little color planning for what I was going to call Seasonal Hippie bags, but I've since changed my mind and decided to call them "BoHo" bags.  One for each season.  

Above is a design I've had in my head for some time...."Grandma's Lace".  I feel that I can show this one as no one in their right mind, except me of course, is going to tackle drawing this one. 

Above is an Antique adaptation I gave Mom last year for Christmas.  She hooked it through the holidays.  It has a nice vintage feel to it.  

In between the day to day operations and designing for the whole year I've been moving a LOT of inventory and other stuff to the house next door where we do all our production, so it has freed up space in my home office, which I now devote to website maintenance, emails and shipping.  Below is a pretty picture of my shipping area.  It's pretty but a lot of foul language has been coming out of my mouth of late as we are having some network (internet) issues.  Oh well!

A gift to myself, a nice new Apple Mac for my office.

If you look carefully you can see that Spring is starting to spring forth here and there in our shop..

Part of our transitioning all production to the house next door has been hauling all our bolts to and fro.  It sounds daunting, but it's necessary....there is just so much wool.  Notice I said so much, not TOO much, can there ever be too much? Nah!

Since I've made the home/shop office strictly for web maintenance and shipping I needed to have an area to get away and create.  This is the upstairs room in the production house.  Lot of room to spread out.

And speaking of production, we are always drawing and packaging patterns to head out the door.  Here's a bunch of punch needle patterns waiting to be packaged.

...and here we are on a cold, Wintery, Saturday night.  I've been busy punching two designs for upcoming magazines, and just finished a baby gift so now it's on to creating new designs.  The wool below is for a vintage heart for the front door of the shop.  A night of hooking while watching our Patritots is just what I need after a long week.
*I cut all this wool, 3/4 of a yard in about 15 minutes with our new custom made dies for rug hooking strips.  If you want to know more about it visit our website, www.theoldtatteredflag.com  You will be able to cut up to 81 strips of wool with ONE turn of the handle.

I hope you are all bundled up tonight, I know there is some bad weather in the Midwest....of course we are thinking of our friends in those areas.  Stay safe, in fact, stay inside and hook or punch.

Until next time...