Plenty of Time to Buy Before Christmas

Had a hectic couple of weeks making and selling. Some things newly added to shop

And the weather's turnes wintery- yippeeee!

Christmas is Coming!!

I should learn to practice what I preach about stretching time.. It seemed that almost the whole of last week was spent in my trying to organise the local art network's Christmas sale and I don't know what took me so long, because it seemed to be over in a flash. This was the first time we had done this; we were allocated a space in the local shopping centre & had to provide our own stall. Translated, this means me borrowing tables from the park over the road, transporting them to the shopping centre (up in the lift was interesting - so much so that I decided to make the return journey ( complete with tables) down the stairs - which was even more interesting!!) I now have muscles on my muscles. It had been hard getting people to commit - why do people not respond to emails telling you that they won't be there? Along with the headache of organisation, I decided I didn't have enough low cost items for the stall so decided to expand my greeting card collection and frantically produce linocuts on handmade paper:

And guess what, not one of them sold!

Here's a couple of shots of us when we've just finished setting up the stall:

My stuff was spread over the ends of two tables.

My friend felted house did very well on the day, as did Maggie with her jewellery. In fact I purchased this lovely copper ring from Maggie with my meagre earnings; it's so me and so comfortable, I love it

The day was brightened by my youngest little pixie face coming to visit and her meeting Peppa Pig

The words "Never" and "Again" may have crossed my mind

Stretching Time

I'm currently reading 'Power Thinking' by Caterina Rando having been seduced by the illustrations. One thing that I am finding really useful this week that's in this book is the view that tasks expand to fill the time allocated to them. She says you can allocate half an hour to get ready for that meal tonight, or you can allocate an hour and a half, either way you will get ready and it will take that long- how true! She recommends setting artificial deadlines in your day by which you have to have completed tasks. well, I've been using this since Tuesday and I'm getting through stuff at a rate of knots I feel almost as productive as Fairysteps. I've decided that Christmas is a week earlier than it really is so I have to have everything done by 18th December. The reasoning behind this is, every Christmas I think "if only I had another week, I could relax and enjoy it all". So that's the plan this year, let's see if it works....
So, I've made myself lists of things to do and I'm approaching my tasks like the proverbial bull in a china shop. I'm also trying to let go of my perfectionism and finding that some things will just 'do'. so the linocut that I carved for cotton gift bags...

 Has also been used for my christmas cards...

& I found I'd freed up enough time to make some Christmas cookies for the local Arts Network meeting

Yum!