Yesterday winter arrived here in Nova Scotia with a vengeance! It arrived with a few flakes starting to fall in the early afternoon and within a couple of hours, the snow was blowing sideways and building up in drifts. It made me rather happy.
I am not quite sure why I like the cold and snow so much. I think it has to do with the coziness of curling up with the kitties all wrapped in a blanket. I have good memories of playing in the snow too, and of enjoying outdoor winter sports like ice skating and ‘snow football’ when growing up on the south side of Chicago. I love how things look too when there is freshly fallen snow – especially since I live in the country in such a beautiful place. The river and the woods are almost magical when they are blanketed with a layer of white snow, and I enjoy the cold crispness of the air when we take our walks on these winter nights.
We walked early yesterday, before the darkness set in. It was quite grey out even at 4pm and the snow was still coming down and blowing almost sideways. I dressed in layers and we chose to walk toward the wind on the way out so the wind would be at our back on the way home. That was a good choice.
The only thing that was cold on me was my face. I wore a scarf, but since this was a wet snow, it got damp very quickly and did little to protect my cheeks and nose from the biting air. We only went about a mile or so and decided to turn around a bit short of our usual distance, as we were not only walking toward the wind, but we were heading gently uphill too. Coming home was pleasant enough though and we weren’t at all cold. It was quiet and pretty out and it felt good to stretch and take a break for a while.
When we returned, I went back to working on the pattern packet for the new ornaments. It is all finished now and I have it ready go. I can post the ornaments on the site now and move onto the next project.
I am really proud of this pattern. It may sound silly, but I do like the way it is put together. As I said in my earlier entries, I want this pattern to be very detailed so even new scrollers will be able to make these. In making it such, I included 14 step-by-step photographs so that really show the process of building these ornaments. I wanted it to be a mini-lesson in itself. I hope that even the newest woodworker will be able to read it and go through the process and easily accomplish making these ornaments. To some who are more experienced it may seem redundant, but I feel that I would rather have too much information available than not enough. If someone is already familiar with the process, they always have the option of skipping over the instructions that they already know.
I have been debating on whether to send out another notice to my mailing list regarding this pattern being available. I am not really good at deciding how much contact with my customers is enough and how much is too much and considered ‘pestering’ them. Typically, we send out one or two newsletters per month. I think that is a good pace considering the number of new patterns we have to offer. But since I have just sent a newsletter out last weekend, I think it may be too soon to send another.
I do have other avenues of advertising that this is available and I think I may try that just to see what the response will be. Many of my regular customer do read my blog here and they will certainly be aware of what I am up to. But I also have some other places that I could post and let those who do not follow regularly that there are some new things.
Today I need to get going on the final part of the calendar series for Creative Woodworks and Crafts magazine. I only have about a week to get that out and I need to design the last five months of it and also get the samples cut and mailed out to New Jersey. I will start drawing on those designs today and hopefully they won’t take me too long. I pretty much know what I am thinking about doing, so it should move rather quickly.
I also have more designs for Valentine’s day that I want to finish, as well as another catalog deadline that will be due at the end of the month. I haven’t been good about getting a quantity of designs in the wholesale catalogs, as what they are looking for now are mainly spring and summer patterns and I am still here working on Valentines. It seems like it is always a bit of a battle to keep up.
I suppose it is enough to keep me busy and out of trouble though. I truly enjoy everything that I do and hope that my business continues to grow in the way it has been this past year.
I wish you all a wonderful day today and hope that you are all staying warm and cozy.
Happy creating!